Where and Who We Are

Let’s get real: Radix Fidem is unlikely to grow much until one or more things happen.

One: If one or more people with a high public exposure adopt Radix Fidem and promote it, we will get a lot more attention. Advertising won’t work; this has to be something people promote because they love it and live it. It has to catch the public eye as genuine.

Two: If a substantial number of mainstream religious institutions break down rather quickly, we would find at least a more receptive audience for our current subtle approach. What keeps us from growing is the huge number of people who are quite comfortable where they are, and have a set of defensive arguments in their minds to protect what they have. Other Christians aren’t likely to be receptive to our message unless they are individually feeling very displaced and vulnerable.

Three: If there is a rather sudden loss of the broader social and cultural comfort zone most people cling to, we are more likely to find a receptive audience among those who don’t do much church. This is the analog to number two above, but affects generally unchurched folks. If we are able to live by a strong and secure faith in the midst of turmoil, people will notice.

And in all cases, we are waiting on a miracle of God. What we do in Radix Fidem is such a long way outside the mainstream, and rests so very much on faith itself, that the normal human path to change is simply not there to draw people to us. We are not elite, but rare.

Granted, I believe Two and Three above are inevitable. But we still have to live and grow our faith in the meantime. It’s not as if we wish to keep people away; we cannot avoid that effect when we do this with genuine faith. The issue is not our peculiar religious habits; we aren’t calling people to that. Those are just the individual outworking of a radical commitment to Christ. We are calling people to a redefinition of how to do religion. It’s not the destination, but the path. It’s not the product but the process.

You aren’t supposed to like all my answers, my choices in belief and practice. I would be frankly very uncomfortable if you told me you did buy into my personal answers. It would indicate to me you didn’t go through the process of searching for answers yourself. What I do hope for is that you would find yourself nodding your head and saying that you can deal with my answers for the sake of fellowship. And when it’s your turn to stand up and lead, I should be able to reciprocate.

Biblical Mysticism is hard work; it demands we get comfortable with ranging uncertainties in the mind. People in the West in particular are looking for something concrete. They don’t like the hard work of honoring differences without conflict. They aren’t comfortable having to keep a living and vivid connection to the Holy Spirit, moment by moment deciding what really matters in a given context. The flesh prefers to be in charge, and the flesh likes to automate and simplify routine operations. The tension of always having to pray and sense with the heart is too much work.

But that hard work of mental uncertainty is the whole point of being guided by faith and conviction. We trust God, not our human capabilities. So the real issue in growing a fellowship, whether literal or virtual, isn’t just embracing the Radix Fidem Covenant as written, but of discovering a community of people who stand in relative comfort with each other’s varying expressions of faith. Do we overlap enough to work together?

Do not try to nail down more definitions for Radix Fidem. It’s not that the outline is written in stone, but that it must remain an outline. It is supposed to supply just enough framework to coexist in a community aimed at growing faith. We have no pretense of limiting future generations, trying to prevent them from making adjustments in that framework to better fit the context of their lives. This is simply where we are for now.

And right now we are a relatively small group, thinly scattered across the world. If you can recall how you stumbled across this community, you might get some idea of just how little exposure we have. We can’t call it zero growth, but it is very small and quite slow. And it will remain small and slow until God sees fit to change the situation.

This is where we are, and who we are.