When some would make the Spirit an abstract force for goodness in the world rather than a full Person and a full partner with the Father and the Son, it's crucial to me that the Spirit comes from the Father through the Son. I've always wondered why many Christians value the Creeds as early confessional statements, and even agree that they are solidly based on Scripture, but do not include them as regular parts of worship. I believe that Creeds help ensure that our worship is authentically Christian. Saying the Creeds together brings continuity with believers through the ages and engages us with the depths of our Faith. The Creeds challenge much of our modern secular worldview.
Love is sentimentalized, and authority is made abstract and often vested in the state.
With ghosts, angels, and cosmic forces vividly depicted everywhere in the media, I find our confession that the Spirit is Holy, divine, equal with, and given only through the Father and the Son to be a breath of fresh air. Several years ago I was asked to visit a comatose and dying patient in a Toronto hospital. I arrived to discover that the only others present were some of his wife's Roman Catholic relatives. It was a statement, a creed, but also a question asked of me. Instantly there was a deep bond, and we all joined in prayer.