Growing Pains

Over the pasts few weeks I’ve hit hard on fundamentals. It’s one thing to tell you how humanity has gotten some wrong ideas, but it’s another thing altogether to chase out how those ideas bring us into a wholly different reality. It’s not enough to register in your awareness that your spirit has awakened and crossed over into Eternity. You have to bring that change to life in your bodies here on earth. As Paul noted, we are awakened for a reason (Ephesians 2:10). It’s our destiny in Christ to live as God intended as a message to the world.

Having served in more than one major evangelical denomination as ordained clergy or in similar capacities, and with all the training and education to go with it, I cannot help but see the huge differences. It seems to me I was deceived, and sometimes I know for a fact some fellow in charge knew he was not telling me the truth. It was always because of politics, some imaginary necessity of keeping some system in place because they found the alternatives unthinkable. Despite finding in my soul the scars of abuse from all of this human political maneuvering to distort the gospel message, there is no room for animosity. They have their rewards, and their punishments are coming. I don’t have time to stand around and watch how it turns out, though I’m sure I’ll hear about it later.

It should be easy to see in my writing how I distance myself from the fundamental flaws in their thinking, even while I may well continue using certain applications. This is not your story, except perhaps by accident, but my story of seeking the truth. However, I’ve tried to offer several books that I hope point out what can be common ground, issues I believe are not unique to me. Nobody here is pretending that I am some latter day apostle, founding a whole new religion. I hope simply that we can build some level of teaching and awareness that sets people free around the world. I’m not that interested in someone else’s institutions.

Related to this is the natural implication that folks would stop doing things the mainstream way, perhaps like those I left behind, and do things differently. A critical element in that is doing church differently. Not just individuals here and there casting off from their socio-religious moorings, but establishing a new point of anchorage in this world. We have to find something that holds us together and makes possible concerted action in this faith. Somehow we have to find common ground. This is flatly commanded by Jesus in quite literal terms. We don’t choose to be alienated from the mainstream, but they would not tolerate us long if they knew what we believed. Let them decided the boundaries of cooperation for themselves, but be prepared for those boundaries to rise up and become substantial as you grow in this ancient faith.

This is not some imaginary unspoiled return to every aspect of the ancient ways of the earliest churches. Too much of their context has departed this world. But the teaching here strives to find, by whatever language possible, ways of indicating the character of God in that setting and bringing it to life here and now. We have to seek His face in building what should have been all along, not doubting that much of what we have had didn’t come close. Not because they rejected the truth, but simply didn’t see it. Nor do we pretend to be so much smarter, but I know for myself I cannot keep walking in their narratives. My connection through my heart to the Spirit-spirit communion demands something truly different. Thus, this blog and its teachings.

But it’s not enough to simply set out for your consideration a different set of thoughts. Too much of what Christ demands cannot happen via virtual connections. It’s a start; over the past six years on this blog I’ve developed a growing clarity of vision that seems to have drawn some small audience. There are nearly 500 subscribers, and at least a couple dozen must see something that calls their hearts. We cannot rebuild His church on rejection of someone else. We cannot rebuild His church on their rejection of us. We cannot rebuild His church on things we can discuss and declare that we believe. There has to be genuine redemption.

This is not a silly call for artificially puffing up some long suppressed trauma so that we can all lock together in our collective self-pity. This is not some regimented plan of conditioning based on emotional conversion. However, it is unavoidable that genuine redemption will dig up old ghosts of the past, demanding that we finish unfinished business. Show me a human who does not suffer from the sins of others and I’ll show you a casket of bones. The only folks with no tension in their lives are not alive. We accept the doctrine of the Fall and assume it means there is some mess to clean up in every life.

How do you engage one heart with another across thousands of miles of space? The sensory heart requires a certain amount of proximity to have its full effect. I can tell you that genuine physical contact is also necessary, but that’s not the point. Giving you a literal hug simply ensures that our hearts are physically close enough to entangle their energy fields, which is in turn merely the physical manifestation of spiritual communion, insofar as it possible on this earth. If you aren’t longing to meet with me in meat space, you can’t claim to care about me or my story here. I’m certainly anxious to meet every one of you who read this blog. That’s the way God designed things.

But unless some wealthy sponsor steps forward and enables my travel all over the world to meet each one of you, that ain’t happening. So far as I know, there’s not a single reader subscribed to this blog who is within affordable driving distance of me. (Then again, I don’t know of any way I can access my own subscribers’ list to check under this freebie plan.) This faith should not depend on me in the first place. There ought to be people in every location who rise up as shepherds, but I am not aware of anything like that happening just yet.

Who is there to shepherd when someone stumbles across the inevitable ghost of the past? Who is there to see your life and help you across difficult places where you need another set of spiritual eyes? God is gracious and His power unlimited, but He designed us and commands us to gather in meat space communion. Tell me, dear readers: How do we do that? What is necessary for us to create a fellowship and communion that fulfills all His commands? These are the growing pains of this faith. We need more of us in every place. If we don’t plan for it, we are likely to miss divine opportunities.

This is what my prayer request is all about.