What is Unvarnished Faith?
Selfies. Filters. Touch Ups. Makeovers. Society has devolved into a digital age of augmented perfection and conjured division.
It’s not just the politicians and the media pundits who look into and reflect off of the shellacked malaise enshrouding our communities. We have let faith become painted over as well. In fact, we each hold a damp brush.
We have let our thin doctrinal divides blot out our vast common ground–our kindred togetherness in God’s heavenly family. We layer on coats of division. Catholic or Protestant or Evangelical. Christian or Muslim or Jew. Religious or spiritual or mystical. Divide, divide, divide. Coat upon coat upon coat.
We can choose differently. We can strip away the difference, the doctrinal customs and judgy platitudes that encase us. We can commit to a different ethos.
Unvarnished Faith.
It’s a focus on love and relationships. A recognition that everyone has the God-given right to dignity, that displaying compassion and empathy and simply saying, “I see you,” can transform communities.
God is love. Love your God. Love your neighbor (however difficult that may be). And yes, love yourself . . . because you were made in the image of God.
God is love.
It took traveling two thousand miles for me to see unvarnished faith at work. Privilege enabled me to make the trip, but it also deluded me into believing I knew what made people rich. The number of zeros in my bank account did not register to those whose bank accounts were zero.
But I discovered we shared a common faith, a common belief that there exists something greater than us, a common understanding that there is a hand at the tiller of our lives influencing the rudder and therefore the direction of our temporal voyages.
We can all access and showcase our common personhood—whether in another hemisphere or the next zip code. Walking in relationship with others is hard. It is messy. Sometimes, really messy. But we are wired to connect with each other, not in spite of our differences but in light of them.
God is love and God is all about being in relationship. Let us go and do likewise. Unvarnished Faith and all.