A Progressive Christian Belief Statement: A Healthier Alternative to Fundamentalism

The Simple Revelation is not a progressive Christian movement. It is a simple truth that can be understood and practiced within Christianity, outside of Christianity, or without religion at all. However, I do believe that progressive Christianity is a much healthier alternative to fundamentalist Christianity. I would much rather see people embrace a healthier version of Christianity than remain trapped in dogmatic traditions that can be toxic, harmful, and filled with fear.

This belief statement is something I wrote while I was still a progressive Christian. Although it does not perfectly represent everything I believe today, I still believe it could help many people. It helped me during my own transition from traditional Christianity to the Simple Revelation. For people who are not ready to leave Christianity—or who may never want to leave it—progressive Christianity can provide a way to keep their faith while developing a healthier understanding of God, the Bible, Jesus, sin, and other people. They can still believe in and practice the Simple Revelation through Christianity, especially through a progressive form of Christianity.

The following is my Progressive Christian Belief Statement as I originally wrote it, with only minor corrections for clarity.

God

Although we do not believe in God as a man in the sky, we do believe in a higher power or source consciousness that is much bigger than any one religion, holy book, or even the human mind can fully comprehend. What we do comprehend is love, and we believe that God, however you define him/her/it, is ultimately love.

Christianity

We reject fundamentalism and many of the beliefs and practices of the Christian church, but most of us were raised in Christendom so we like a flavor of Christianity that is more progressive, liberal, inclusive, tolerant, egalitarian, and rational. We have found that this progressive Christianity is a good way to relate to God, others, and ourselves.

Jesus

Although we may have doubts about the historical Jesus, we believe in the Cosmic Christ that is written about in the New Testament writings, especially the book of John. The Jesus that we read about in the New Testament is a beautiful representation of what God is like and what humans are like when we live up to our higher nature (our Christ nature). Again, ultimately that is love.

The Bible

We do believe that the Bible was inspired by God, but we do not believe that the Bible is infallible or inerrant. We recognize that it was written by many flawed men over many centuries. First we treat it as the historical library that it is, and then we seek to understand the spiritual meanings that help us to relate to God, ourselves, others, and the world around us. Ultimately, our hermeneutic is love and reason. That leads us to reject the literalism of many passages. Some may call this cherry-picking, but we are choosing not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. In other words, even though the Bible has some flaws, we believe that it is still beneficial to us spiritually when we read it spiritualize and we draw upon it metaphorically rather than literally.

The Gospel

The gospel is the good news that God is like Jesus, i.e. God is love. God is not condemning, he is not hurling thunderbolts, he’s not waiting for you to mess up so that he can punish you. God is love. God/love is patient, God/love is kind. God/love does not envy, God/love does not boast, God/love is not proud. God/love is not rude, God/love is not self-seeking, God/love is not easily angered, God/love keeps no record of wrongs. God/love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. God/love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. God/love never fails.

The gospel is the good news that we are all like Jesus in our truest nature, i.e. Christ is our true identity. The gospel is the good news that everyone is in God/Christ and that God/Christ is in everyone. The gospel is the good news that nothing can ever separate any of us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

The gospel is the good news that justice is restorative, not punitive. The gospel is the good news that no one is beyond redemption, there is no us vs. them, we are all loved and we are all love incarnate.

Our Purpose

Our purpose is to be loved by God, love God, love people, and love ourselves. We desire to help people to have their own relationship with God, to see God, to know God, to experience God’s love. It is our calling to see Christ in everyone and to help everyone lean toward their better Christ-like nature, as opposed to their carnal beast-like nature.

It is our calling to love our neighbor and to ease the suffering of the human condition. Whether it is as small as a smile to brighten someone’s mood or building a hospital to help the sick. Although good can come from suffering, Jesus ultimately showed us that suffering is the adversary of humanity and it is God’s will that it should be alleviated. The more we alleviate suffering, the more we bring God’s kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven. This is the goal of progressive Christianity. It is not merely to get to heaven when we die, it is to make our earthly home more like heaven in the here and now.

The Problem of Evil

We reject the idea that God created evil and we reject the idea that it is God’s will that bad things happen. We realize that it is nearly impossible, if not completely impossible to reconcile the problem of evil with the belief in a personal God. Our best answers to this problem are as follows:

1. There is no logical reason that can be given as to why evil exists because evil itself is illogical. Trying to give a reason for something illogical is itself illogical. God/Christ is the logos in the book of John, therefore the more we apply logic to the solving of the world’s problems, the more we bring God’s kingdom into the world as it is in heaven.
2. Most people think of God as all-powerful and all-knowing but we reject that idea. We believe that God is all love. As love, God is not able to know everything. That would be a violation of our free will. As love, God is not all-powerful. He cannot force us to do anything and he cannot force himself upon us because that would be a violation of our free will. “If God is love, then God is omnipresent, but is neither omnipotent nor omniscient. Because, if God is love, we have choices – and that makes our behavior unpredictable. We might follow the light of divine love and do right, or we might ignore it and do wrong (Jim Burklo).” This doesn’t explain away natural evil like earthquakes, but it does account for human-caused evil.
3. Suffering is not a sign that God has abandoned you. Christ on the cross shows us that God is with us when we suffer and God is suffering with us. We can be comforted by the fact that God knows how we feel, God has compassion on us, God will help us to persevere through the suffering, and God will help us find a solution to our suffering.
4. We have the choice to blame God, get bitter, and reject God’s help, or we can stop asking why, realize that suffering is not God’s will, and receive God’s help to overcome and/or endure the suffering.

Morality and Sin

Many of the things that Christians believe to be sins are not really sins. Jesus redefined sin when he made the New Covenant. I can prove scripturally that there are only two commandments in the New Covenant—love one another and believe in Jesus. Paul said that if we love our neighbor then we won’t do them any harm. If we love our neighbor then we won’t kill them, steal from them, cheat them, rape them, talk badly about them, etc. Therefore, Jesus’ command to love people is basically the Golden Rule: “treat other people like you want to be treated.” Living righteously is as simple as that. We all fall short on this, most of us daily. We get in a bad mood and we act ugly and impatient with people, but the point of the matter is, try not to be an asshole. When you do wrong, know that God is not holding it against you, but you need to ask the person for forgiveness and make it right somehow.

Some matters that Christians think are sins are not sins, such as:

Having Evil Thoughts

Thoughts are just thoughts. There’s nothing wrong with them unless we act on them. Random, silly, and yes, even evil thoughts arise from our subconscious. We cannot help this, but we don’t have to condemn ourselves for thinking about evil things. As long as we don’t dwell on these thoughts and desires and let them take root in our hearts, we are fine. What writers call these are mental habits. There’s no need to have endless mind battles like many Christians do about having evil thoughts.

Looking With Lust

So many Christians condemn themselves because of the verse in the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus says that looking with lust at someone is just as bad as committing sexual sin with them. First of all, Jesus was just trying to point out the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, who went around condemning everyone for their sexual sins while harboring the desire to have sex with women deep in their hearts. It was all about the heart. This has caused many Christians, especially men, to practically want to pluck out their eyes because they can’t stop lusting after women. To find women sexy and to enjoy looking at sexy women is a natural biological inclination, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it as long as you remember to respect the woman that you are looking at. Don’t just turn women into sex objects, even though they’re sexy. Remember that they are human, that they are valuable, and that they have fragile hearts like the rest of us. If you do this, there’s nothing wrong with appreciating beauty where you see it.

Consensual Sex Outside of a Monogamous Marriage

There is nothing wrong with sex. Sex is as natural as eating, breathing, and sleeping, but rape is definitely a sin. The only time sex becomes sinful is when it involves rape, molestation, or if someone develops some type of sexual addiction that keeps them from living a normal, healthy life.

Other examples include:

• divorce (it’s not always bad. Sometimes it is necessary)
• cussing (as long as you are not cussing to hurt someone)
• drinking, smoking, doing drugs (as long as you are being responsible)
• Piercings, tattoos, jewelry, etc.
• listening to secular music, enjoying “worldly” things, etc.

All of these things and more are not actually morally wrong because they don’t actually hurt people. Whether or not you are hurting yourself and/or someone else is the heart of the matter. Basically the guideline is don’t do anything to hurt other people or yourself. If something passes that test then it’s fine. There is no need to get lawyer-like about this. You don’t have to scrutinize every little detail. We all have common sense to know what this means. Realize that nobody is perfect and that we’re all going through stuff. Just try not to be an asshole. Try to be kind. Try to be patient with people. Don’t do anything crazy. Try to live a healthy balanced life.

If something you’re doing actually causes yourself and/or other people harm, then maybe we can label that sin. But don’t worry, God will and already has forgiven you. God is love and love keeps no record of wrongs. There is no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus! But don’t use that as an excuse to keep living a destructive life. Give it all all over to God and let him help you get free from your addictions and destructive behavior. You’re smart enough to know that. No one wants to be toxic or live a toxic life. It benefits no one especially yourself. All things may be lawful unto you, but not all things are beneficial (1 Cor 10:23). Stick with what is beneficial – Loving yourself and others – doing no harm unto either.

The Afterlife

First of all, we vehemently reject the idea of eternal conscious torment, as it is the most insane idea ever conceived. There is no point in anyone suffering for trillions of years without end. On the other side, even eternity in Heaven sounds exhausting, and maybe that’s why we chose to come to earth in the first place.

No one knows what happens after we die, but I would like to believe that everyone has an experience with God like the main character in the book/movie “The Shack” had. That means that they meet with God and work out all their past hurts and traumas. Then they are healed and ready to enter paradise.

I also recommend another book called God Took My Clothes. The author summarizes his thoughts after hearing from over 600 people of all faiths about their near-death experiences. He says that most people (even homosexuals, atheists, and people of non-Christian faiths) describe a pleasant experience that makes them want to be a more loving person when they return. The only people that describe bad hellish experiences are people that lived a life harmful to themselves and others or people that lived under religious condemnation/guilt. But even those people don’t stay in their hellish existence. Eventually, even those people are saved. He also describes an interesting process where someone reviews their life and feels all of the feelings that they made other people feel whether good or bad. I thought that was interesting. Ultimately, we do not know if these experiences are real, or if they were just dreams/hallucinations that people experienced during brain death when all of the chemicals in your brain pour into your dream center as if you took 500 hits of acid.

I like another view of death that describes our existence like a wave in the ocean. We are the wave and God or the universe is the ocean. We are here for a short time and then we fade back into God or the universe.

Satan and Demons

One does not have to do much thinking to realize that a literal Satan and demons do not exist. If they did, then why would God not just destroy them or lock them up? Jude 6 and 2 Peter 2:4 says that God could lock them up. Why would he let a psycho murderer like Satan roam free? It makes no sense. In the past, people did not have the knowledge about the brain and mental illness the way that we do now. They thought that mental illnesses and even physical illnesses were caused by demons. Today, we know more about malfunctions in the body and brain that cause these illnesses. They have nothing to do with demons, and the belief in Satan/demons only makes these problems worse. Additionally, it only takes a little bit of research to find out that the word Satan simply means adversary. Any adversary can be a satan. God even calls himself a satan/adversary to Israel in 2nd Chronicles.

Therefore, we reject the idea that a literal fallen angel named Satan exists. We also reject the idea that literal demons exist. The only value that these ideas have is metaphorical. Someone can say that they are battling their demons when they’re talking about their struggles with addiction, depression, anger, negative thoughts, etc. Satan can represent the inclination within humans to do evil.

Ultimately, the good news of the Gospel is that Satan (the inclination to do evil) is defeated by the power of the cross (self-sacrificial love). We can overcome the fleshly beastly part of ourselves by realizing our identity in Christ. With God’s help we can overcome our demons and gain victory over our struggles. The negative thoughts in our heads of shame, fear, guilt, etc. do not have to torment us. We can live in peace and have peace of mind knowing that we are always fully loved.

Conclusion

I no longer identify as a progressive Christian, and the Simple Revelation is not another form of Christianity. It is much simpler and more universal than that: love is the highest truth, and we should build our lives around reducing suffering, treating people with compassion, and recognizing our shared humanity.

Still, I remain grateful for progressive Christianity and for the role it played in my journey. It gave me room to question beliefs that were hurting me without feeling that I had to abandon everything at once. It allowed me to rethink ideas about God, hell, sin, the Bible, and other people through the lens of love instead of fear. For a time, that was exactly what I needed.

I believe many other people may need that same kind of bridge. Not everyone is ready to leave Christianity, and not everyone needs to. If Christianity continues to give someone meaning, hope, community, or a connection with God, I would rather see that person embrace a loving, rational, inclusive, and healthy form of it than remain trapped in fear, shame, judgment, and toxic dogma.

You do not have to agree with every statement in this manifesto. I do not even hold every idea in exactly the same way today. What matters most is the direction in which it points: away from fear and toward love, away from condemnation and toward restoration, away from division and toward our shared humanity. A person can follow that direction as a progressive Christian, through another spiritual tradition, or without religion at all. Wherever we begin, the Simple Revelation remains the same: we are all human beings, we are all connected, and love is the way forward.