Welcome to our new blog series! The name of this series is “Yes! Yes You can…in case you were wondering”.  I titled it this for many reasons. The first is maybe symbolic - many times growing up in the church, people have felt the church and the Bible have predominantly said no: no to things they care about, no to desires, no to thinking, no to… many things.

I want to challenge that train of thought by showing you that actually God says yes a lot and God enjoys saying yes.

The second reason I used this title for the blog is because it naturally helps us ask questions. Faith is all about doubt which is all about questions. Jesus answered very few questions but asked a ton. I think this is a sign that we should feel free and encouraged to ask questions about God and our faith. Each blog post topic will be set up as a question, but we will dig deep into what’s behind the question being asked: why are we asking, what for, and how will the answer affect us?

-Rev. Maggie Niles

“Can I be faithful to my beliefs and be in relationship with people who think differently than me?"

Yes! Yes you can…in case you were wondering.

I know, I know - I'm starting off with a bang. Maybe I enjoy a challenge, maybe I'm a masochist. Either way, we are going right for the jugular.

You might be thinking, "Well of course the answer is yes!" and I’m sure most of us would agree that we can. But do we really feel that we can? I agree that we can but to be honest, sometimes trying to stand true to my beliefs and be in a genuine relationship with someone feels impossible. Theologically, I think we can. But socially? Well, it’s much more difficult.

I’ve been in cities where I have been the most conservative by a long shot and I’ve been in cities where I am the most progressive by a long shot. What I learned from both is that when you are so convinced that your way of thinking is the only right way, you begin to isolate people. Being closed minded, even if you think that a certain belief of yours is God-ordained, is in itself not faithful or loving. Instead it means that, from the start, you have isolated someone and have decided they aren’t worthy enough to be understood.

Nowhere in the Bible do we see God telling us not to love other people because of what they believe. We do see “love your neighbor as yourself”, “do not cast the first stone”, “take the log out of your own eye”. The Bible overwhelmingly promotes relationship with each other over letting a belief stand in the way of said relationships.

I think we need to flesh out a couple hurdles some people might have with this argument. When we say “love someone” what does that mean? Can we be in relationship with someone and not love them? Well, it’s certainly possible to not be in love with them. But I don’t think it would considered a relationship (or at least a healthy one) if the people in it weren’t at least trying to treat each other with love. We can take 1 Corinthians 13 (this isn’t just a wedding scripture) as our basis for a biblical understanding of love.

“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

Patient, kind, not insisting on its own way - these things all lend themselves to the idea that no matter what you think, if these things are not in play, then you are missing the mark. We are not talking about agreeing here or trying to be in relationship with people who only think like us, we are talking about how to be in relationship with people who do not think like us. The goal is respect, not sameness or agreement. If you are like me - strong willed, opinionated, passionate, and genuinely believe yourself to be right about almost, well, everything - then this will be a challenge to say the least. This, in my opinion, is America’s cross to bear - at least one of them.

The second hurdle might be realizing that we have to read scripture as an entire book - with a beginning, middle, and end - to understand the biggest take away points. From a bird’s eye view, the Bible is a book about God trying to restore God’s relationship with us: God’s people. All throughout the book we learn what not to do in relationship and what to do in relationship. Most of the stories in the Bible are about relationships and the Trinity is the ultimate relationship.

It is important to keep the main thing, the main thing when it comes to our faith; and the Bible is pretty clear that the main thing is relationship. So above all else we should at least be trying to uphold this as our greatest goal even if that means not letting our beliefs harm our relationships.

 Rev. Maggie Niles is the Associate Pastor for Congregational Life at Covenant Presbyterian Church