Everything That Glitters

Unless you have been living off the grid you have either seen or at least heard about the "Sparkle Creed." I wish I could tell you that it was satire put out by the likes of the Babylon Bee but sadly this is a real creed penned in 2021 by the Rev. Rachel Small-Stokes, Pastor of Immanuel United Church of Christ in Louisville, Kentucky. It has caught fire following the release of a video of Rev. Ann Helgen from the Edina Community Lutheran Church in Edia Minnesota leading her congregation through the Sparkle Creed.

I am here to tell you that Everything That Glitters is not Gold. In fact, this so-called creed is a blasphemous mocking of the Divine triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that the Orthodox church has professed for thousands of years.

The Sparkle Creed reads: I believe in the non-binary God whose pronouns are plural. I believe in Jesus Christ, their child, who wore a fabulous tunic and had two dads and saw everyone as a sibling-child of God. I believe in the rainbow Spirit, who shatters our image of one white light and refracts it into a rainbow of gorgeous diversity. I believe in the church of everyday saints as numerous, creative, and resilient as patches on the AIDS quilt, whose feet are grounded in mud and whose eyes gaze at the stars in wonder. I believe in the call to each of us that love is love is love, so beloved, let us love. I believe, glorious God. Help my unbelief. Amen.

This kind of foolishness is illustrative of the depths to which satan has infiltrated that church and is deceiving her people. This creed leaves us with jaws dropped and a sick feeling in the pit of our stomachs. This should also leave us on our knees that the Lord of the Church would keep this error from spreading, and that His Stong Spirit would blow again over those so deceived that they would be called to repentance, and return to the sound teachings of Scripture.

3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

2 Timothy 4:3-4 (ESV)

Sparkly Creeds and rainbow flags, and all of this wokeness is nothing new, it is man's attempt to justify our sin and to create a god in our image. How did we get here? Well, it began when we lost the truth of creation. When the lie became truth that we all were products of a loud noise and a primordial ooze. That effectively threw out the book of Genesis and with it, the concept of our identity being tied to our creator.

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Genesis 1:26-27 (ESV)

“When Christian denominations reject the word of God … you can end up anywhere,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said. “This is the extreme, but it is the logical conclusion of those who reject God as the Creator, making boys and girls, boys and girls.” He said it was “blasphemous” and “modern idolatry, where we create God in our own image rather than seeking a relationship with the one who created us in his image.”

I could go line by line and try to correct this creed but the reality is there is nothing of Biblical Historic Christianity left in this "creed."

For more on my view of the Sparkle Creed listen to episode 40 of the PonderingGod Podcast, "If my little pony wrote a creed."

For now, let's restore our grounding in the words of the Historic and Biblically-based Apostles Creed.

APOSTLES’ CREED

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,

maker of heaven and earth.

And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord,

who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,

born of the virgin Mary,

suffered under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified, died and was buried.

He descended into hell.

The third day He rose again from the dead.

He ascended into heaven

and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.

From thence He will come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

the holy Christian Church,

the communion of saints,

the forgiveness of sins,

the resurrection of the body,

and the life everlasting. Amen.

<>< Pastor Craig