Kiln of the Soul virtual parish is a concept, nothing more. It becomes little more than a label on my willingness to act as pastor to anyone wandering by this blog. Parish membership is just an artifact of your own mind — and that’s good enough. We need no concrete reality to build faith. Faith is the starting point. Religion is merely your internal response to bring that faith to reality.
Yes, I do claim to follow Christ. While it began as a cultural reality into which I was born, I have had plenty of time to test and reshape that until it is now my own personal reality. You can be sure I studied plenty of other stuff along the way. In the end, I went with that internal voice that comes from far above my own soul. More real than my own sense of identity is this powerful call to claim Christ as my Savior and Lord.
The basis for my pastoral ministry is simply sharing with you my personal experience. Take only what you can use. If you don’t have some reservations, then you really don’t understand my story. God forbid you should attempt to treat me as an authority figure, all the more so since this is all virtual. If we were gathered in meat-space, it would be a different story. However, even there you would discover I expect you to be yourself, not a clone of me. My best friend and the love of my life — my wife — has her own mind on some things, and that is as it should be. In a sense, uniformity is of the Devil.
The soul of religion here is first and foremost voluntary, every moment, every step of the way. The nature of this religion is demonstration. I express my response to faith; perhaps some my response will help you make up your mind about your own sense of calling. If you have no personal sense of calling, then we have to have an entirely different discussion. For that case, we have God’s Law Covenants. You still have to understand their nature and abstract what applies to you, but at least it is universal in the sense that God put it where every living soul could reach it.
Nothing I teach here is aimed at helping you find or obtain eternal salvation. God, and God alone, can do that, and He has revealed that it comes entirely at His discretion and on His initiative. I don’t pretend to understand how that works. What I do pretend to understand is what you can do with it once you discover that it has you. I do try to help people discern it, but neither of us can do anything here on this level to change it. Thus, you need not prove anything at all, nor even affirm it in any form of communication to me or any other person on this earth. Indeed, you could not prove it. You can, at best, indicate it.
Faith is not about proof. Nothing of any real importance can be proved to another. It can be indicated, and Jesus made it fairly plain that only a limited portion of any audience will ever really get it because that’s how faith works. The ultimate truth can be expressed only in parables, in symbolic language that helps only those whose spirits are fully alive. There is a certain amount of literary meaning that can be extracted on the conscious moral level, because (I believe) the heart can be awakened for any human. The Bible indicates that’s not true of our eternal spirits, that some will never come to spiritual life for reasons we cannot possibly grasp, but that everyone could theoretically have a fully conscious sensory heart.
So the heart and it’s mastery of moral awareness is the thing I aim at for the most part. I use the background of Hebrew culture (insofar as I can grasp it) to understand the Hebrew Scriptures (the New Testament is still essentially Hebraic) and work hard to set aside the Hellenized or Westernized intellectual approach. If, from your other personal religious background, you discover some parallels and useful indicators for your own faith, there’s no reason we can’t fellowship on those grounds. If you have no religion at all but simply like what I write, there’s no reason we can’t be friends. I’ll still be your pastor any way you like it.
There is little real distinction between God and His revelation for us. All truth is His truth, and is merely an expression of His character. Ultimate truth is His Person, and He cuts His own path through human souls. I’m just along for the ride. All I can do here on this blog is tell you about my experiences. If you don’t experience your own faith, mine will hardly be any use to you. Build your own religion. Your spiritual identity is written in a higher realm of existence, and merely read here on earth by your own faith.
