Summarizing Our Virtual Church

I was inspired by Jack’s post to review some things unique to Radix Fidem and our virtual church. Keep in mind that Radix Fidem is not part of the Protestant-Catholic-Orthodox continuum. It’s not about religion itself, but a study of how we approach religion. Then again, the online covenant community with which I participate is based on Radix Fidem, but has gone on to make certain decisions and does constitute a religion of sorts. Radix Fidem is an attempt to be more universal to the human condition today, but our particular religion is not meant to meet every need, only ours. However, that means we remain generally outside that continuum of existing mainstream institutional religions. Radix Fidem is the approach; our virtual community is one specific destination.

Our community is composed mostly of refugees from Protestant Christian religion. Some still attend various brands of Protestant church, and there’s nothing wrong with that. As elder, I would never pretend to own anyone’s religious allegiance. Ours is a wholly voluntary association and is hardly exclusive of any other religious connections. Nothing we do will interfere with your real-world church attendance. But what we teach can get you into big trouble if you share it in some real-world church settings.

We don’t believe that conversion should have to be a crisis. In most people, it takes place rather slowly. That’s the whole point: We hope you are awakened at some point, and then begin the process of committed searching in your heart for where your convictions lead. We aren’t trying to bring you more tightly into our group; we are trying to set you free to follow where God leads you. We aren’t converting you to our virtual church. We know that only a minority of those who are touched by our message will want to get more involved in our community, and even some of those will eventually move on to other things. That’s normal.

And we separate conversion from spiritual birth. Spiritual birth is something God decreed outside of our time-space continuum. For us as individuals, it’s a matter of discovering what God has already done to include us in His eternal family. It’s not a transaction; we simply become aware of it. Because this whole thing is a miracle of grace, there’s really not much we can do about it beyond pointing it out, and discussing what Scripture has to say about it. There’s no particular decision to make on that, except for you to commit yourself to whatever claims it makes on your soul.

Instead, we emphasize that commitment. We talk about it in biblical terms: It is a feudal allegiance to someone who redeemed you from slavery. It is not a logical decision, but one that comes from the heart. You commit yourself; that’s what the word “faith” means. Your brain can convince yourself to do a lot of things, but it can never rise to the level of commitment that defines the meaning of faith. We talk a lot about how the heart is a separate sensory organ with faculties that the mind hardly knows. This is what we mean by the “heart-led way.”

We believe the published Bible is as much the Word of God as any written document can be. It holds a special status above all other human writing, endowed with unique power to change the soul. Yet it remains a human product, and so requires a bit of effort to investigate how it was transmitted from those who composed it to those who print it for us today. God didn’t see fit to preserve the originals, so we should have some concern about the transmission. However, the people who wrote these documents bore an outlook that would reject Western notions of “propositional truth.” Truth is not contained in the words; truth is in the message indicated by the words. Therefore, courtroom precision on transmission and translation isn’t necessary — and that’s a good thing, since it is impossible. We are each obliged to be aware of the issues involved, but we put our faith in the God who inspired the writing.

We are accountable to Him for what is recorded in the Bible. We know He speaks through that written record, but that He could easily speak to us without it. Rather, He has chosen to bind us to the written record, with all the uncertainties about the text and translation. It’s part of the essential business of communion with Him through others. Without a covenant bond between people of faith, there is no way to experience the full range of what God has promised. You see, there is a grand uncertainty about those in our covenant family. In this, the Bible is as close to being a person as any physical object can. It is a presence of the Person of Christ. It’s a central figure in every covenant community, because it is the last common tangible manifestation of our Savior.

Nothing our God offers to His children on this earth takes place outside of the covenant community. Granted, it may be just you and your copy of the Bible at first, but there are no Lone Rangers in faith. Sooner or later it is unavoidable that genuine faith should attract other people who want a part of that. How we then go on to create a community is critical. The Bible portrays it as an extended family household, not of shared DNA, but of a shared covenant identity. It should look and act like a clan — feudal, tribal and held together by a common covenant. A covenant is valid to the degree it reflects the Covenant of Christ, but it’s meant to answer the particular needs of the context.

In our covenant community, we celebrate the blessing of divine revelation. It is the answer to all our questions and needs. We call it Biblical Law (or Law of God) so emphasize that it’s meant to change our human behavior. The power to change a fallen creature is divine, but the indicators of how that behavior should change are pretty well expressed in writing. We are supposed to examine that writing and do our conscientious best to understand how that applies our current situation. A critical element in that endeavor is seeking to reshape our minds and our reasoning to match that of those who wrote those words. We are supposed to think like ancient Hebrew people. The packaging of revelation is part of the gift.

Embracing that gift is its own reward. We could say more bluntly that the Law of God is its own reward. It makes us more like the Son, and nothing else can compare with the richness of that blessing. This defines what is our best interest. It is shalom: peace with God on His terms. All the natural worldly implications of that peace with God are just that; they are not the peace itself. We obey because we really want to, not because of what it might bring into our human existence. When I ritually bless anyone on this earth, I’m really saying that I want for their lives to conform to divine revelation.

So we don’t much care for happiness and goodness as this world defines it by various human reasonings. We don’t listen to the psycho-babble about what humans estimate religion should do for us. The revelation isn’t that hard to obey if you are committed. We are walking away from sin because it’s a trap. We reject any attempts to redefine what “sin” means, but champion the definitions in the Bible. We are not looking to make the world a better place. We are fallen creatures; this life is supposed to suck. This world is slated for destruction; God will wipe away the memory of all that humans have accomplished since departing Eden. That is, He’ll wipe away everything except the scars in His Son’s hands. Those will be there eternally to remind us what an awful thing the Fall was.

So the whole purpose of following Christ in this world is not to chase down spiritual birth for ourselves or anyone else. There is absolutely nothing any human can do to make that happen. Nor do we bind each other under human institutions of religious identity. Rather, we pursue the vision of what God says He can do in our human existence to bring us closer to the ideal of His Son. We expect that to mean small feudal covenant households of faith with highly varied flavorings and features that meet the context in which each household exists. There can be no single human institution that covers all the variety of things God will demand from His children. Yes, theology and practice must of necessity vary between these congregations.

Nothing in this world can ever be so concrete that it answers all questions and concerns. Faith in the heart is the only sure thing. Our fleshly existence is just a world of questions that cannot be answered with any finality. This is why we say we are otherworldly, that we are Christian Mystics, because the only assurance we have is inside our souls. It will never make sense on a human level, because humanity is fallen.