The Driving Assurance

I am utterly certain that I am on the right path. Often I’ll stop and review what I’ve written in recent weeks, and the same burning conviction that wrote them still drives me. I don’t regret any of it.

Let me tell you a secret: Every day my memories hound me, calling me to look back over the years of my life. All the stupid things I’ve said and done fill me with regret. I can look back and see that I often acted against my conscience. I can recall realizing immediately even in those moments how wrong I was. I carry a burden of guilt, and I’d give almost anything to go back and make things right. On rare occasions I get to try, but for most things that haunt me, there is no realistic hope of dressing those wounds on my soul. Now, at last, I’m quite certain that I am following my convictions. That burden of regret now steels me for acting with a clear conscience.

One of the nagging temptations I still carry with me to this day is the false vision of spreading this Radix Fidem teaching, like something more virulent than what officials claim is happening with COVID-19. Working too long in conventional Christian ministry has burned into me the urge to capture a billion souls with the message. While that might sound like a good thing, it cannot be done without tainting the message. Indeed, the message was shaped in part by the failures of those traditions.

Spreading faith is a divine miracle. The only thing we can do on the human side of things is something very distinctly in Biblical Law as law: the heart-led way. Whether someone invests their heart-led commitment in Christ is God’s doing alone; it is for His Chosen. But the necessity of having a heart-led consciousness is a divine necessity for the whole human race. We don’t have something so simple as, “Thou shalt be heart-led.” Rather, it’s woven into the whole image of divine revelation itself.

The problem is that it is only ever clearly stated as a requirement in the context of other commands: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart.” And what makes that a problem is how Western lore has hijacked the meaning of those words to indicate something else. Thus, our biggest battle is often getting people to realize that “heart” is not the seat of sentiment, but of conviction. We have to show that faith is not mere sentiment.

In other words, a critical element in our mission is convincing folks that they should live by their convictions, regardless of what they might find written there. There’s that nagging temptation to believe that what we find in our own convictions somehow represents a universal truth for all mankind. We have to see for ourselves, and help other people to see, that it is largely individual and unique. Most people have a false expectation of conscience being constrained by human logic.

Of course, it never works out like that. Most people suffer from a high degree of social conditioning that masquerades as conscience. A part of our burden is pointing out to folks how they have been herded. We have to encourage them to think individually and shed social conditioning.

So our evangelism, in seeking to address the cultural context in which we live, is to emphasize that people should live by their own individual conscience. Of course, we dress it up with the label “Christian Mysticism” so that it signals more than just a momentary quick glance at the conscience. We hope to convince them that their conscience is not their convictions, but that the conscience is merely the initial awareness of conviction. It’s a fallible transmitter of conviction. We hope to encourage introspection and taking time to meditate on what is really buried down there in the foundation of the soul.

If they don’t get that part, there’s no hope they can go any farther. But this much is within reach of every human alive, in part because it is the only doorway to faith. There’s just enough lore of such things out there that, while the core of Western culture militates against genuine faith, we still have this one useful anchor to slow their rush down to Hell. There are precious few out there so badly damaged that they have no conscience.

This is the part of Radix Fidem that can be universal. But it won’t take much searching to find that it’s hardly unique to us. Still, it’s not a bad starting point to begin sharing the gospel delivered to us. “Take time to stop and review your conscience about what you’ve done and what you will do.” If that does them any good, and they want to hear more, then we can look at pressing ahead with talk of convictions and eventually what it means to be heart-led. That is the foundation on which to build faith. That’s the gateway on the path to Eden.

What I know I can wish for the whole world is that they discover the sense of assurance I have now, regardless where it drives them.