Some thoughts…
As always, I support DIY religion. Nothing binds you to my teaching and certainly none of my calling. When I write, I assume you at least have an interest in what I have to say, if not some limited commitment to the message.
Aside from using threads of historical Christian scholarship and some of the language for talking about faith, we take almost nothing from the mainstream Christian religion. It’s not as if we have no overlap at all with what they teach, but we start from an entirely different place. They say they start with Christ on the Cross, but they first wade through the Enlightenment assumptions before they get there. Existing organizations that were born before the Enlightenment still reflect entirely too much that philosophical influence. We pointedly reject the Enlightenment and try to find a much earlier starting place from which to approach the Cross. Our message is really very different from theirs.
So my blog posts assume an acquaintance with all of that stuff, and with the resulting teachings that I offer here and in my books. When I talk about the mission, I’m talking about my mission. If you embrace anything at all here, I assume some of this will apply to you.
It’s beyond comprehension at times. Mainstream Christians talk about how they haven’t quite gotten the gospel message to every corner of the world just yet. So they keep pushing, sending missionaries, etc. Some have gotten seriously sidetracked, but you probably recognize at least the verbiage of taking the gospel to all the world. Here we come behind them trying to take this more ancient gospel to all the world, too, but we have to reach the Christians, as well. Our job is much larger.
Nothing about this pretends to correct Christianity, as if what I offer is a better, purer version. Instead, my focus is on how rich is this faith that drives me, and how all those folks out there don’t have their share. I walk around here during hours of darkness praying about this mission, and my heart reaches out to the trees and beyond them to the stars. I am at one with all Creation. I hear all of nature singing of Our Father’s glory. This isn’t literary; it’s about as literal as can be. My sensory heart has been awakened to the song of Creation. My mind struggles to capture even a single note of that song.
While I do encounter a few folks who can talk or write like that, I have not met more than a precious handful who actually live it. After I post this I’m going out in the woods near here and work on yet another trail loop in the northern woods section. While I’m there cutting, the plants I remove talk to me. The stuff I should cut to make a path will remind me, “Don’t forget me!” They know that I operate according to the Father’s purpose, so they volunteer for whatever it takes to make Him glorious. Do you think this is silly? In something so pitifully unimportant in the scale of things as humans view it, God still has a moral standard.
I wander around in the woods because I can’t think of anything else to do right now. I cut a path so I can be out there in prayerful solitude, whether others use it or not. Yes, I see a proliferation of deer tracks afterward wherever I clear a path, so it’s obvious I’m not the only creature using the trails. I do this waiting for Him to say, “Come; it is time.” I keep saying how I have been for some years now an arrow in the quiver. Having tried several times according to the traditions of my Protestant Christian elders, the ministry kept falling on its face. It wasn’t time yet.
We cannot simply ape the methods and structures of the past. We cannot do what the other religious groups have done. Somehow our different message must speak through different ways of doing religion. There has to be a fundamental difference in our mission conduct just as there is a fundamental difference in the message and underlying faith itself. Some overlap, yes, but still fundamentally different. The delay is that God has warned me He won’t launch this arrow until the battle comes. It ain’t here yet. The battle comes when He moves to crush the sin of rebellion. I can’t tell you much about that, but I have no doubt I’ll know it when I see it. I suspect some of you will, too.
There’s a tension building in that song of Creation. I can hear it. Do you?
