It seems that at a time when people are avoiding or rejecting traditional creeds (Latin credo = “I believe”) that they are also embracing personals statements of belief. National Public Radio is still running its “This I believe” series, sponsored by a big corporation. Some are real statements of faith, or values, or at least persuasions about specific public policy issues. A few months ago, a little “fluff” piece in Parade magazine (the throw-away in your Sunday paper) featured Brad Pitt telling you what he believes in. Turns out he believes in his family. Sweet.

So it seems that people who don’t believe in God or in any beyond-ourselves spiritual force do believe in other finite beings, or things, or issues. Is this the great spirituality of our age. Is this all we have to rely on? Ourselves?

Yet the ancient creeds do not satisfy. This being the Christian “Trinity Sunday” or the Feast of the Holy Trinity (yesterday), I thought it deserves comment. But even here, the doctrine of the Trinity (One God in three “persons”: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit) has never been universally accepted by all Christians. It isn’t that they rejected the New Testament’s voice on this. They just don’t like the formula, the theology, which developed in the next three or four hundred years.

The ancient creeds are all about God. We don’t see ourselves in them, so we don’t relate to them as being statements that tell us about ourselves in relationship to God. In Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass”, the “Credo” consists of a strophe on the Latin mass credo, but the soloist sings in a rock-and-roll style, “[1] I believe in God, but does God believe in me?”

In a previous study of the Nicene Creed, which is the ultimate test of Christian orthodoxy (for example, Mitt Romney does not really qualify as Christian because Mormons do not subscribe to the Nicene Creed), I was startled to realize that even though it describes Jesus as coming from God, being born of the Virgin Mary, being crucified, dead, buried and raised again, it does not bother to explain why Jesus came, why he died, or what he accomplished. The reason these things were not included in the 5^th century statement of belief, I surmise, is that they were not being disputed the way Jesus’ origins, divinity and equality with “the Father” were being disputed.

At any rate, creeds continue to bore even many Christian church-goers, let alone the larger world. What to do? Well, I have written my own, form time to time — my own “This I believe” statement. Here, in part, is what I had to say for this Trinity Sunday:

Early believers simply said, “Jesus is Lord.” They said that because they were deeply moved by his presence, his healing, his word, his grace, his compassion, and his love. And they said to themselves, we have met the God above in Jesus, and he changed our lives!

But then, they took Jesus away and killed him, and his friends scattered with fear, and almost lost all hope, until they began to remember, Jesus promised that he would never desert them, but give them his Spirit to be with them forever. And this living Spirit, moving Spirit, guiding Spirit is with us to this day. The Spirit is not prompting us to get our doctrines all squared away, or to split hairs over market share in the God-business, or to argue with our brothers and sisters about how God could be three different persons at once. The Spirit is calling us to do something far more simple: to share the same compassion and love and grace and healing which his disciples first experienced in Jesus Christ.

In short, I don’t reject the Nicene Creed. Greater minds than mine wrote it, and defended it as the best explanation of God’s own inner mystery. But I don’t believe in the Nicene Creed, I believe in Jesus Christ. I believe that God created me and cares for me like a Father. I believe that the Spirit dwells within me, to encourage me to do Christ’s work for others. Here is my creed: I believe in a living God, not a statement of ideas. I believe God calls me to live as if my life matters, and to use my life to show others that God’s love matters. I believe that– from the inside out–God’s Spirit works on me, and works with me to help bring God’s saving grace to my small corner of the world.

That is my faith, my belief system. Is it yours? If we could all just say “Jesus is Lord, so let us follow his lead,” wouldn’t that be holy enough to unite all Christians and to make new disciples and to save the world?

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles