The text of my book Heart of Faith is essentially complete, but I’m not going to finalize it for publication until I’ve serialized the entire draft here. Meanwhile, I have time on my hands to pray and contemplate other things.
My special heart-mind gift shows up in my voluminous writing. As you know, it’s not a question of pretending to apostleship and writing Scripture. But there remains an awful lot of stuff in my head, and more coming into every day, and I yet struggle a bit to make sure the heart remains in the overwatch position. I’m not necessarily writing truth for you, but sharing what my heart tells me is true for me. So while others connect to nature and health far more strongly than I ever could, my heart is very busy helping my mind organize and process stuff I need to say. It really does offer a superior logic.
On the one hand, we simply cannot repeat the mistakes of the past. What drove me out of organized Christian religion was not bad people, but a bad system to which people cling because they just aren’t ready for anything else. Sorry for them, but I’m not waiting. I won’t wade through dream analysis here, but in my visions of the night, God told me I’ll never be at home in any part of that system again. I’ll always welcome church folks who want to talk, but the chasm between us is not small.
On the other hand, we cannot simply ape the trappings of the ancient past. Too much of their specifics were based on the context, and we are obliged to see past all that to they underlying moral requirements. We have to rebuild the life of following Christ for our own age, but with fear and trembling over how easy it is to stop listening to God when the human noise gets loud. But build we must.
This thing keeps growing in my soul. I’m praying for a vision of what I can do with that calling.
Here’s what I have so far. As you know, the current book — Heart of Faith — attempts to nail down the one essential element that drives all of my work. We have to grasp the full meaning of putting our hearts in charge over our minds. In a sense, that is the core objective. That’s because everything else is a matter of implications from that core position.
It implies you will strive to understand the moral fabric of reality — AKA: God’s moral character or divine revelation or biblical law. We understand that Jesus Christ was the ultimate expression of that reality, the Living Law of God. We might not really understand spiritual birth, because that’s as ineffable as the God who grants it, but we can just about grasp the notion of a heart-led pursuit of the character of Jesus.
We don’t dare subject this thing to the kind of organization most humans currently imagine is necessary. We have to find a way to do this so that hijacking is simply too difficult. (Granted that we understand the task never ends because eventually human scheming will figure out an attack and we have to starve the Beast again.) So a heart-led religion means we remove all the reasons people give for organizing as they do now. Current organized Christian religion has all kinds of objectives that are frankly not derived from the heart, but from the head.
Obviously, if the whole purpose is for everyone to develop their own heart-led existence, we don’t need any of the physical trappings. We don’t need much organization at all. We need only a way to build a connection to each other for regular fellowship and growth with the least possible formalities. For now, that’s pretty easy, since this whole thing is currently virtual. We would eventually hope to experience heart-field proximity with similar heart-led souls, but it has to build on what works at the minimal level.
In other words, it remains dynamic and voluntary all the way through. My leadership is only in your minds, for example. If you don’t follow, I’m not your leader in any way. But this leader demands you not follow too closely in the first place. Envision someone exploring the same territory, not exactly on the same path, but just a step or two closer to the next horizon. It’s like sheep scattered across the terrain and moving more or less along behind their shepherd, just keeping sight of him. If I don’t drop off the face of the earth, you can safely assume your path doesn’t lead to a cliff, either.
It’s very much like an ancient family household in terms of how we get along. If the whole thing isn’t founded on that heart of sacrificial love, it ain’t happening. If you can’t sense that kind of love from me, I’m not your elder; don’t watch me for clues. Sense a need to be a leader yourself? Take off on your path and see if anyone else wants to follow. If not, God is the only ear for your complaints. If you don’t already know how to lead like that, you can’t be a leader, anyway. You don’t get it.
Plus, unlike a shepherd I would never own the flock. The sheep are free to associate at will and at random. If the pastures I wander smell yummy, then come with us for as long as you get fed. In human terms, neither of us owes anything to the other. In moral terms, we owe it to God to be open and honest before Him, and to care with His care for each other. Care does not equate to mandatory association.
By now, we have so completely changed the meaning of religion that we would struggle to use the word “church” for what I propose we do. We can insist all we like that this fulfills the commands of the New Testament, and claim it is by the far the most accurate application of them, but it won’t change what the words mean for the rest of the world. I’m not sure what to call it.
I am quite sure it calls me.
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