I’ve been thinking about values, creeds, confessions, statements. Our world is flooded with these types of things. Verbose, many of them. Generalities, most of them. Or, ridiculously specific which might be worse.
Let’s try something different. How about we only make distinctions when it is different from mainstream or different from the standard.
For example, a comprehensive written statement of faith was disdained by most of the fundamental Church for most of history. Magistrates regularly said of Christians, ‘we asked them for their written materials, their catechisms, their teaching books and they confessed to having none except the Bible, and the Zion’s Harp as their hymnal.’
On the other end of the spectrum is the Catholic Church with its exhausting “Sacred Tradition” writings, the Jewish rabbinical writings, and the good old US of A’s 300,000 laws and regulations.
How about we say, “we follow Jesus as found in the New Testament, and if you desire a summary of why we follow him, it can be found in the Apostles Creed and the Schliethiem Confession? That all, by the way, easily fits on one, double-spaced page.
Getting more personal….we developed a family creed:
Be God’s Bridge to Human Flourishing~Reverse the Curse
I will be like Jesus