Inspired by This XKCD comic, I decided to try and write some theology using only the thousand most-used words in the English Language. I took the statement of faith that I wrote for my PIF a few years ago, and rewrote anything that wasn't in those thousand words.
The only words below that are not in the ten-hundred most used words are the proper names "Holy Spirit" and "Jesus Christ" I think this demonstrates how we sometimes overcomplicate what we say about God in order to look smart, rather than to communicate clearly.
I believe in God, who alone is first over all things (4.027). Though God does not need to be close to people to be God, out of love wants to be close to us. God is great and more than the power of humans to approach, and God is also near us in our lives at all times. God is One God (5.015), and God is three persons (5.017): God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
I believe God the Father makes all things. The name of “Father” does not mean that God is a man, but rather a picture of the close hearts of God the Father and God the Son. Mirroring their close hearts, The Father wants to be in close to us as a mother to her baby child (10.3).
I believe Jesus Christ is both whole God and whole Human (3.06). Jesus is the God's Word made into a person (8.11), and is the whole sharing of God to people. Jesus also lives the whole of being a person: he sometimes wanted to do wrong, sometimes he was strong, sometimes he was not as strong, sometimes he was happy, and other times he felt pain (9.08). Jesus is like us in every way except without distance from the Father. Jesus is the one who saves, who won for us against death and distance from the Father, took our place for our distance from the Father, and taught us how to live as people created in the image of God (5.076). Jesus's death was real, not a just words or a half-truth. Just so, Jesus's end-of-death is real, not a picture or a certain point of view. The dead-place is empty, he lives.
I believe The Holy Spirit moved over the waters in the beginning, breathed into the writers of the Book-of-God-and-people, and always teaches the people of God. The Holy Spirit makes it possible for us to use the gifts God has given us to give make God look good. (10.4). The Holy Spirit acts to make us to always grow in our belief and acts. Without this loving push, we would not grow in God's gifts.
The Book-of-God-and-people is the revealed and breathed-into word of God. It is not a History book nor a Fact book (7.003). It is a special and strong story (9.27) about who God is and how he is close to his people, and to the person and work of Jesus Christ. the Book-of-God-and-people is most strong when it is read and with love through the teaching of the Holy Spirit (9.29-9.30).
The Church is the body of Christ (6.054), called both to be clean and right, and to meet people where they are, and that only through God's help can we live into who we are. The Church is both across all-that-is and each special group that believes and acts (3.17), called to be one and to figure out together God's will for each of us and all of us (9.43).
God also reveals himself through the Special Acts, of which there are two: one with water and one with food (6.152). In the Special Act with water, we are made part of the body of Christ, brought close to the Father, and joined in Christ's death and return from the dead (7.275). In the Special Act with food, Christ asks us to sit at table with our God through the power of the Holy Spirit (3.21). The stuff used in the Special Acts wake us up to how close God is to us (5.205). We need the stuff to share in the Special Acts. They are not, however, the main point, which should always be the ways that God is close to us and does stuff in and around us (5.175).
God loves us so much that God will not let us go. On the cross, God in Jesus Christ took on all of human pain (10.2) and went down into hell, whole distance from God (7.139). Out of love for us, God went where God is most far away, and in so doing broke the power of distance-from-God and death and made us for all time as sharing everything with Christ (3.08). Everything we do should show our thanks to God for all that God has done for us (4.032).
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