What I believe – 2023

I deeply love all people. Full stop.

I work hard to have some kind of relationship with most people. I naturally like most people.

Relationship requires some level of transparency. The deeper the relationship, the more transparency is required. And more risk is required when we are more fully known. And that’s never easy.

Many people, people with whom I desire relationship, want to know “what I believe.” Even though I’m finally moving past a “need to know what *you* believe” place in my life…

I wish to honor, in full transparency, others’ desire to know what I believe, especially in “religion and politics.”

I don’t try to convert others.

I’m unqualified in so many ways to try to convert anyone, to anything, anymore. Full stop.

I do like to share my personal journey. A lot. I do it in hopes that someone who is suffering or struggling may find in me that beautiful moment that C.S. Lewis described:

Friendship… is born at the moment when one man says to another ‘What! You too? I thought that no one but myself.’

C.S. Lewis

My operational beliefs

I recently wrote a Facebook post, which will eventually be published here, called Operational Realities. My post here is an expansion of that, and could be titled, Operational Beliefs.

What I mean by the word “Operational” is that I cannot empirically defend anything that follows. It’s based upon personal experience, personal observation, personal conscience, the experiences of others, the Christian Scriptures, the written scholarship of old and new authors, and the writings of the early church.

None of my beliefs are empirically “provable.“

I will not spend any energy defending or debating them. But that sentence does not come from a place of arrogant certainty. Quite the opposite. I feel less “certain” about anything the older I get.

I will not defend them because I’m old, tired, broken… and the only energy I have left is to love and be loved. To enjoy beauty.

So here we go, starting with the most important belief I hold to.

1. God’s fundamental disposition: “God always and only looks at everyone with tender eyes.” I heard this in my brain in 2011. It felt like the voice of God. My life lived over the next six years affirmed that God had worked such a beautiful change in my life, miraculous many said, that I’m convinced it was from God, for those very words saved my life, and the lives of others. Much later, I discovered an affirmation from the prophet Jeremiah, in Lamentations 3:33, that he had heard this too.
2. The Gospel: Gospel is most succinctly summarized in the first (chronologically) book of the New Testament, written by Paul, just 30-ish years after the crucifixion of Jesus. In 1 Corinthians, Paul wrote… “Christ [“God with us”] died for our sins according to the scriptures… was raised again… was seen by witnesses.” This story, adopted in the earliest decades of the church as true history, is the most beautiful story I’ve ever heard. It rings in my inner mind as so compelling, that I must believe it. I fully hold to the Nicene Creed 381.
3. The atonement: After six books, and dozens of blog articles, I’m more confused than ever. I do hold to this a) Christ had to die “for our sins.” b) Penal Substitutionary Atonement as I was taught it (God was pissed at us, and took his rage out on Jesus and killed him, so now he can like us)… this view… according to NT Wright in The Day the Revolution Began, is pagan and splits the Trinity. I agree with him. c) I experientially rest in the most emphasized view by the early church until Anselm in 1100 AD… ransom theory. Now referred to as “Christus Viktor.” That’s what I experienced in 2011… rescue from sin, death, and the devil.
4. The Scriptures: After a lifetime holding to the 1978 Chicago Statement on Inerrancy, I no longer hold to that. It’s a modern document, created by old white American men, with almost no other input from outside that echo chamber. I have read voraciously, and recommend, Five Views of Inerrancy by Zondervan, for academics to begin with if interested. I view the Chicago Statement as a ditch that would have shocked early church fathers, including Augustine. BUT, I view the modern reaction to it among ex-evangelicals, to be an equally unpleasant ditch for me. The view that, in particular, the Hebrew Scriptures are without value, and Paul should be mocked… these views don’t reconcile with my heart that feels the breath of God through all 66 books.
5. Hermeneutics: I think that the Chicago Statement is more about hermeneutics than it is about “is the Bible true?” I now hold to a “Jesus Hermeneutic” when reading scripture. You can find an intro to that by googling “Interpretation of Sacred Texts by Brad Jersak. It’s a 90 minute video to his seminary students. In short, I do not believe that God was the “first agent” of the violence in the Old Testament. If Jesus didn’t do it, or command it to be done, God the Father did not either. Early church fathers debated this, and many, including Augustine, held to this view. As to the New Testament, the early church for centuries, from the “get-go,” held to the historical truth of the Gospels and Acts. Good enough for me. And I read Paul at two levels… there are clear “third heaven” truths, and I believe ought to be believed. And there are clear directions to “his” churches of the day… slaves obey your masters, women wear head coverings, among others. We don’t read these anymore as applicable to all churches of all time. Neither do I.
6. Patristic Universal Restoration, aka, Patristic Universalism: My heart believed in 2011 that God would not torture anyone forever. It took two years of extensive study in 2020 and 2021 for my brain to catch up to my heart. And for me to go public with it. I believe in “hell” and judgment. Metaphorical fire that is restorative, not retributive. That it will be painful when we face Christ, and there is nowhere to run. And that the purifying “fire” in ages to come will not last forever. That no one will be able to resist the love of God forever. But ALL should be warned… flee from the wrath to come, and, today is the day of salvation. Search on this blog for “hell” to find my two part series on this.
7. Transgender and affirming gay marriage: I’ve written a short “coming out” post on this in 2019. Google “gay marriage ken hood” or search on this blog for “gay marriage.” I believe my trans and gay friends are not “living in sin” when in monogamous committed relationships. I fully affirm them.
8. Complimentarianism: I no longer hold to this doctrine. It’s less about interpretation or exegesis. It’s much more about “bad fruit” all over the place.
9. Calvinism/Arminianism: Since I came to believe in Patristic Universalism, I find both of these extremes to be above my pay grade, and the result of systematic theology being elevated over simply accepting the mystery of tensions in the scriptures.
10. Politics: I don’t vote any longer. It’s harmful to my mental health. I don’t pick sides anymore. I just can’t. I feel so strongly that it’s almost a belief… the modern Christian focus on state and federal politics is so harmful at so many levels to the bringing of the true Kingdom of Heaven to this earth. This applies equally to the focus of Christians in both parties. The Red/Blue civil war has birthed hate in the hearts of people who claim to follow the Prince of Peace. I especially eschew “Christian Nationalism” as the worst thing to ever happen to the church since Constantine.

Here’s where I hope we meet:

I hope we can walk together over the “greatest of these”: LOVE.

Love for each other, love for others.

Love looks like, to me, the Golden Rule: Love God, Love others.

1 Corinthians 13, and Galatians 5, gives me some expansion of how that looks where “the hoof meets the pavement.”

My operative word, the single word that guides my daily interactions, is this: tenderness.

I hope we can walk in tenderness.