The Disciples Of Christ Tradition - 1281 Words

Having grown up United Methodist, it has been compelling to discover how much I have been influenced by Wesleyan theology, without even realizing it. This embedded theology continues to be refined through an ever-deepening understanding of scripture, experience, traditions and with the use of reason. I am most drawn to those theologians who are rooted in this Wesleyan tradition. My mother grew up Disciples of Christ, and her tradition influenced my theology through its broad understanding of faith. This led me toward an openness about the various ways people experience and understand the Divine. The Disciples of Christ tradition also influenced my understanding of baptism, while John Wesley’s Treatise on Baptism helped me affirm a Wesleyan†¦show more content†¦While being both three and one, the Triune God is both accessible to us through relationship and more expansive than we can fathom. Having experienced both God’s nearness and distance in my own life, I am comfortable with the mystery of God. My own relationship with the Divine is sustained through prayer, worship, study, sacrament, vocation, relationships and acts of justice. Throughout my life, especially during more challenging experiences, I felt God nearby, present, and engaged in my life, especially through communion. At other times, God feels more distant, more mysterious, and more unavailable. This ebb and flow in my relationship with God allows me to be comfortable with God being three in one and both immanent and transcendent. I also experience God in moments of tension, when caught between two seemingly distant paradigms. By acknowledging the mystery of God, I am able to have a relationship with God, while God remains infinite and beyond full human comprehension. I believe that God created the world and continues to remain active and responsive to the world as it is. God is, first and foremost, loving. As both Father and Mother, God seeks to be in relationship with the world and calls the church toward a vision of creation that is beautiful, diverse, just, and good. God remains with us, even when we turn away and sin. God’s love is greater than we can ever imagine.