Grace and Peace to you in the name of Jesus the Christ! 

I thought that for this month, I’d switch things up a bit and share with y’all something fun that we’re doing both in campus ministry and in my Introduction to Theology class. As a big proponent of “working smarter, not harder,” I love it when two of my work areas converge and share major themes. 

This time, that shared theme is all about ownership of our own faith. 

In the Bible study that I’ve been leading, “Wondering with Wes,” we’ve been working slowly and methodically through the Gospel of Mark. When I say slowly, I mean we have met three times for 90 minutes each time, and we’re still in the first chapter! It’s been a joy to walk through each word and nuance of the beginning of this Gospel, sharing with our students some of the truths and complexities embedded in the text. When we (finally!) made it to the call of the first disciples, we stopped to chat about how we, too, have the opportunity to own our faith for ourselves and not have to sit in the boats of our parents’ understanding of faith, our community of origin’s understanding of faith, or even our denomination of origin’s understanding of faith. Instead, we can leave the nets in the boat with the hired hands, follow Jesus, and decide for ourselves how our beliefs and understanding of God do/do not take similar forms. We celebrated that we never really leave our past fully behind us—after Jesus died, Peter and the disciples go fishing, because fishing is what they know!—but we can make our own informed decisions about our faith and own it for ourselves. 

In my intro class, we’ve been asking hard questions about where we draw the line between historical facts and faith truths. For example, do we have to believe in a literal six-day creation for our faith to be valid, or can the story be seen as a cosmological poem about creation springing forth from the love and joy of a God who delights in creating? Did Jonah really get swallowed by a giant fish, or is this book a long-form parable about the depths of God’s grace and humanity’s inability to live into it? These are only a few examples—there are many such in the Bible. The bigger question is, do distinctions such as these change anything in our understanding of the unfolding salvation story of God? 

I have thoroughly enjoyed walking alongside these students as they wrestle with questions like these, and celebrating that moment when they make decisions for themselves about where they draw the line, what they choose to believe, and how those decisions impact their understanding of the work of God in the world. 

Taking ownership of our faith is an important step in moving from adolescence to adulthood, and I get to see our TLU students do it each semester! 

So, what about you? How have you lived into God’s call to test for yourself what you believe? How do you articulate your own ownership of your faith? We’d love to hear you share your story with us!