Growth Considerations

The driving force is our commitment to God’s glory.

As I moved from traditional organized Christian religion to a more ancient approach to faith, I found it increasingly difficult to share what I was doing. At first I thought my communications skills were lacking and I worked hard on that, but discovered that it made no difference. Eventually all the churches I tried ran me off, largely because I was challenging the system itself, not because of the actual content of my religion. However, those same churches have utterly spoiled any kind of evangelical outreach in our social setting, so I ended up pretty isolated for a very long time.

But silence is not an option, so I explored various ways I could satisfy the urge to share without getting into serious trouble. Even online there are ways you can come under attack from people who find the differences threatening. And sometimes it’s just a simple matter of getting bogged down in pointless chatter, in the sense that people wanted to entrap me in their little social media kingdom only because they had some affinity with superficial elements of my religion. It served only to disembowel the sharing of my faith.

So I decided to simply keep exploring the territory for myself. Eventually I decided to write a book or two and that’s when the influence of my beliefs became more obvious. A part of that was realizing something about the proper target audience and the proper approach for sharing with them. It required ditching a lot of things I thought important, a lot of frame-of-reference issues that required dismantling, and some serious pain in my soul. To be honest, I’m not sure I can characterize the audience or the approach, but I can tell you that it’s working. That is, I can point to a substantial number of lives, people who were blessed by this religion. Some have moved on, but more have joined in and are staying in touch.

Essential to this religion is that I’m still shedding stuff because it’s alive. I admit that I’m a little slow to catch on at times, but it seems you are patient with me, which means this thing is working just fine. I’m a participant, not the thing itself. If I’m more than a fungible part of this, then it’s not real. But I sense this thing is now up and growing on its own, and that’s a source of hope and joy I cannot describe. And even better is the hope that sometime in the near future there will be other voices that can carry this thing beyond the days of my life.

As you know, our shared faith is its own reward. We can talk all day about the wonderful blessings, but those things cannot provide the motivation for very long. If the power of living God’s divine justice is not enough to keep you on the path, then you don’t have it and it doesn’t have you. Jesus is His living embodiment of divine justice — His Law — and I’m joining you to Him, not to me. If His Person cannot absorb you wholly, I’m surely not big enough to do any better.

But as we consider how this faith now seems to be spreading as more people join us, we will surely encounter a lot of folks who are all excited and seriously interested, but for a time at least, they don’t really get it. We must make room for them. This is a critical element of this religion: that we do all we can to bring justice to everyone who will accept it, in whatever measure they can accept it. Along with them will be a bunch of folks who are nothing more than “me-too” types. We make room for them, as well. And most certainly there will be hostile infiltrators; they must also be welcome. They can’t really harm us, so the only time we exclude them is when we sense they are hindering our work and God has better things for us to do.

If our teaching draws us into more thoroughly merging with His divine moral character, that means we are closer to Creation itself. Creation becomes a part of our family and friends, a vast wealth of loving support, but without the problem of being fallen itself. So if Creation tolerates fallen humanity, so should we, but on the same grounds. We keep offering what God has given us and who can say when something inside them will “click” and seize the full gift? We have received a domain as feudal dependents of Heaven. We hold that domain in trust for Him, and a significant point of it all is that we use that domain to heal the moral sickness and injuries for which we are equipped. Each of us is a refuge for some slice of humanity needing to escape the slavery of serving Satan. It’s not up to us to make them actually receive it, only to offer it.

I’m still predicting this teaching will assume a higher public profile, and likely soon. My sense is that this calendar year won’t pass before we come under some wider public notice. If for no other reason, we are in for some social upheaval we’ve never seen before, and that makes people search for an anchor. We have to keep in mind that what we do simply isn’t going to work for everyone, but they may not be able to decide that right away. I’m preparing myself to find ways to simplify how I would introduce my faith to a wider public, but without hiding what really matters. You should be doing the same thing. In whatever way you can, be ready to tell other folks what this is all about. We are the living bridges across a very wide chasm of perception.

The Radix Fidem pamphlet is just about as short as I can make it. Feel free to use it or even rewrite it. I have at least one longer explanation coalescing in my thoughts and I’ll share that in the next few days, an outline of something I might say in an interview, for example.

Pray that God will allow you to see ways you can improve your own readiness. You should share your own faith, not simply parrot what I say about mine. Otherwise, when things change suddenly, you may find yourself searching for an anchor and unable to help anyone else.