When I was in high school, one of my teachers gave me a Petra CD, and I briefly put aside my Amy Grant collection to go through a Christian rock phase.  My favorite Petra song was "Creed" — an edgy, eerie-sounding adaptation of the Apostle's Creed, set to an explosion of drums and guitars. 

The song moves between various "I believe" statements ("I believe in God the Father, maker of heaven and earth.  And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, I believe in the Virgin Birth") and this emphatic chorus:

This is my creed — the witness I have heard.
The faith that has endured.
This truth is assured.
Through the darkest ages past
Though persecuted, it will last
And I will hold steadfast to this creed.  

For months, I listened to "Creed" at top volume in my bedroom.  If no one was home, I belted out the chorus with Petra's lead vocalist, Peter Shlitt, and prayed to feel the same assurance he apparently felt.  I was hungry for certainty, and the creed seemed to offer just the food I needed.  "This truth is assured."  "I will hold steadfast."  "This is my creed."  "I believe."

 I'm not into Christian rock anymore, but I'm still a creed nerd.  I love the moment in church when we stand to recite the Nicene Creed.  I love its precise, poetic language:  "God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God."  I love leaning into its history, knowing that its wisdom long predates my individual faith.  I love all the rich theology it affirms, and I love the way my spoken affirmation unites me with a worldwide community of believers.

I know that many Christians today struggle with the creeds.  Much of what the Nicene Creed professes defies modern scientific thought, and demands a cognitive surrender which is not easy to make in our secularized world.  A friend of mine once said that she has to cross her fingers behind her back when she recites the Virgin Birth part.  Another said he always skips the "ascended into heaven" bit, because he doesn't believe that heaven is a literal place up in the clouds.  

I have great respect for these intellectual struggles, but they're not mine.  Maybe because I grew up believing so completely in the miraculous, I don't have a hard time with the more supernatural tenets of traditional Christianity.  I'm willing to take a chance on the Virgin Birth, and the Second Coming, and heaven as an actual place.  Or at least, I'm willing to accept the possibility that these things are true in ways I might not comprehend in this lifetime.  For the most part, I can affirm what the Church affirms, even though some of the details remain shrouded in mystery.

My problem with the creeds lies elsewhere, and I'm just starting to understand what it is.  It's not a "Can I believe this?" problem.  It's a "So what?" problem.  Yes, I believe, I believe, I believe. But so what?  What's my belief for?  What difference does it make?

Growing up, I was taught that being a Christian meant believing the right things.  To accept Jesus into my heart, to be "born again," was to affirm a set of doctrines about who Jesus is and what he accomplished through his death and resurrection.  To enter into orthodox faith was to agree that certain theological statements about God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the human condition, the Bible, and the Church, were true.  When we spoke of growing in the faith, what we meant was that we were honing our doctrinal commitments.  To be a mature Christian was to have one's theological ducks all in a row.

 This honing, moreover, was a serious business.  As a teenager, I watched congregations split up over the legitimacy of infant baptism over "believer's" baptism.  I knew Christians who considered speaking in tongues a litmus test for faith.  I heard pastors fight over whether the Communion table should be open (available to all) or closed (reserved for baptized members of a particular church).  I heard others argue vociferously over details concerning the "great tribulation."  Would God take his children to heaven before the suffering of the end times?  Or would they have to hang around and endure the birth pains of a new kingdom, too?

It's tempting to laugh, but for the people involved, none of these differences were funny or peripheral; they were issues at the very heart of what it means to be Christian.

For me, this way of believing — this way of defining faith as an intellectual assent to precisely codified doctrines — has fallen apart.  Not because I can't assent, but because my assenting, in and of itself, has not fostered anything close to the deep personal relationship I desire to have with God.  If anything, the intellectual assent has been my smokescreen for years.  My distraction.  My poor, dissatisfying substitute.

This realization has come as a shock.  How ironic, after growing up in a faith environment where "having  a personal relationship with Jesus" was the number one buzz-phrase, to realize that what I have right now is not a personal relationship with a person, but with a creed.  I'm stunned.  How did this happen?  What does it really mean to believe?

In her 2013 book, Christianity after Religion, historian Diana Butler Bass points out that the English word "believe" comes from the German "belieben" —  the German word for love.  To believe is not to hold an opinion.  To believe is to treasure.  To hold something beloved.  To give my heart over to it without reservation. 

To believe in something is to invest it with my love.

This is true in the ancient languages of the Bible as well.  When the writers of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament wrote of faithfulness, they were not writing about an intellectual surrender to a factual truth.  They were writing about fidelity, trust, and confidence.  As they saw it, to believe in God was to place their full confidence in him.  To throw their whole hearts into his hands.

Now that I'm paying attention, I can't think of any significant human relationships in which doctrine matters more than love.  So why should my relationship with God be any different?  When I ask my husband, my children, or my friends to believe in me, I am not asking them to believe certain facts about me.  I'm not saying: "Affirm without question that I am 5'1, have curly black hair and brown skin, live in California, like mangoes better than apples, and enjoy rigorous hikes."

Rather, I am saying, "Hold onto me.  Take my hand, and know that I will not let it go.  Dare to give me your heart, because I am trustworthy.  Do life with me.  Make memories with me.  Laugh, cry, play, and work with me.  I treasure you.  Please learn to treasure me."

Conversely, when one of my human relationships falls apart, the breakdown is rarely intellectual.  What breaks between me and the other person isn't facts; what breaks is vulnerability, intimacy, and fidelity.  What breaks is the deep, abiding trust that makes genuine love possible.

This way of thinking about belief is so new and so strange, I expect it'll take a long time to sink in.  I might start practicing it with the creed on Sunday morning: "I belove one God, the Father Almighty, the Maker of Heaven and Earth.  I hold close to my heart one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God.  I cherish the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life." 

My second favorite Petra song in high school was called, "Beyond Belief."  I suspect it was prophetic:

"We're content to pitch our tent
Where the glory's evident.
Seldom do we know
The glory came and went.
There's a higher place to go
Beyond belief, beyond belief.
Where we reach the next plateau,
Beyond belief, beyond belief.
And from faith to faith we grow
Towards the center of the flow
Where He beckons us to go
Beyond belief, beyond belief."

Beyond belief and into love.  My new creed.

Image credits: (1) Wikipedia.org.