Last week, we looked at “I believe in God,” yet that statement alone tells us nothing about who this God is or what this God is like. We looked at Acts 17 as a starting point for making sense of the Creed within our own cultural climate: a very spiritual one. We clarified what we meant by “I believe in God.” The Creed’s first description of God is that he is the “Father Almighty.” The language describing God as Father is found throughout the Scripture and most emphatically in the ministry and words of Jesus himself. Yet, the word father evokes various sorts of emotions in our culture, from broken relationships to conversations on masculinity, fatherhood, and gender. The word power evokes emotion because of how often we abuse it in our world, how much we crave it, and how we have come to distrust those with power. In fact, one common belief in a post-everything world is a profound skepticism of power within institutions.


So, as we did last week, let’s explore the cultural tone and move into how believing in God the Father Almighty affects our perception of life with God. Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as in fact there are many gods and many lords— 6 yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.” (1 Cor. 8:5-6 NRSVue).