The war on the spiritual journey

Many Christians have developed a compulsion to skip or otherwise take shortcuts through the spiritual journey. The root of this tendency is highly damaging.

It is no wonder we are compelled to skip or shortcut the spiritual journey, going along with such compulsions is highly rewarded in the modern Christian landscape. Furthermore, resisting such compulsions is shamed and in some cases punished. 

Often I ask strangers how they can be so sure the Bible is fully endorsed by God, or how they can be so sure the spirit guiding them is the Holy Spirit, or how they can be so sure the god they encountered was actually God. Almost every time I am answered with an insistence that the right thing is to believe first and ask questions later; this is supposedly how we trust God. 

There is a journey to be had to potentially reach those conclusions, but the expectation is that you will adopt a conclusion before you have taken the journey to reach it. 

Additionally the new Christian who proclaims conclusions about the Bible’s inspiration/inerrancy/infallibility, Jesus’s divinity, the existence of the trinity, a literal six day creation, the existence of hell, and everything else with such high charisma and yet has not studied them, often is treated as a more mature Christian then the one who does not proclaim those things and yet has studied the Bible for years or decades (many may even invalidate the latter's choice to identify as a Christian). 

Throw in the fear of hellfire for not professing the "correct" conclusions and most Christians will proclaim conclusions about God and the Bible while their Christianity is still in its infancy, or while they themselves are still children, and once you have made these proclamations, God forbid if you ever backpedal. Potentially world shaking and relationship ending is the grief you will be met with if you come to realize that you made these proclamations before you had good reason to do so. 

How tempting it can be to avoid having to go back and take that journey when you can instead turn to your spiritual experiences as assurances that your assumptions were correct and need not be reassessed. 

How tempting it is to hang onto those conclusions you assumed when you go back such that you can curate your spiritual journey to lead you back to the same “correct” conclusions and not to wherever else it might have taken you.

It's the “wherever else” that I think is the driving factor behind all of these compulsions to skip, shortcut, and peer pressure. Christians fear a spiritual journey where no conclusions are assumed or favored because they fear that journey may lead them or others to unacceptable conclusions.

Ironically, it is in our attempts to trust God that I find the real lack of trust in God comes in. Christians don’t trust God to guide their spiritual journey to the “correct” place. So we feel the need to establish conclusions before we reach them, proclaim certain tenants as absolute no matter how little you know about them, and pressure other people to do the same.

We are not allowed to be uncertain. We are not allowed to refrain from proclaiming conclusions before we have reached them (proclaiming conclusions, or “truths”, as they are called in church, as a congregation is a common practice way to pressure people into skipping/shortcutting the journey). We are not allowed to reach different conclusions from the denomination of the church we have grown socially dependent upon. There is an expectation to assume certain conclusions and a mentality that you are not a “real” Christian worthy of a position of influence within a church until you have. This all needs to change. 

The mentality of fear that many Christians have towards an authentic, thorough, and unbiased spiritual journey is highly damaging and unacceptable.

I write this in part from personal experience but mostly in light of all I have learned speaking with thousands of theists and atheists over the last eleven years.

I am one who had skipped and shortcut much of my spiritual journey. My recognition as to the extent to which I had done this has been an incremental process over a long period of time and is ongoing. 

Apart from those who seek out my content on this blog and other platforms, I have explicitly shared a portion of the reality that I am dropping many of the conclusions I once assumed and arriving at other conclusions with very few people. 

To the credit of those few with whom I have explicitly shared my journey, while there was initial turbulence, most of them have explicitly expressed that they have come to trust that God will guide me on my journey. 

My thanks to those who made space for my journey instead of driving me away. I would love nothing more than to see this space made in the heart of every Christian in addition to overcoming the fear of things like uncertainty, skepticism, and a diversity of conclusions in recognition that we are all limited and flawed beings each on a unique spiritual journey. 

False Teachers

As my wife and I continue the enriching journey of spiritual rediscovery, we are finding that our beliefs are frequently changing and growing. Oftentimes these changes are exciting and comforting as they enlighten our understanding of the human condition and the hope we can have in spite of our world’s bleak fate. Other times these changes are scary and uncomfortable as they shift us away from some beliefs that we once thought of as highly important. 

It is these ladder changes that lead to a recent conversation with my wife. She expressed a fear of hers. She feared that we might lead people away from the truth by unwittingly teaching falsehoods. I could relate having wrestled with this fear various times in the past. Though interestingly, I no longer felt that same fear, and I knew why. 

There are two things I know for certain about my understanding of God. First, seeing that what is limited cannot fully comprehend what is unlimited, my understanding is incomplete. Second, seeing that God is goodness and my sin keeps me from knowing good from bad in every situation, my understanding is flawed. Furthermore, unless anyone should be without limit or be morally perfect, I assume that these two things are true about everyone’s understanding of God. 

The thing about an incomplete understanding is that you cannot know in what capacity your understanding is incomplete; same goes for a flawed understanding. Therefore, you can never be certain of the extent of the limits and flaws corrupting any lesson taught by a human. Furthermore, you cannot account for the effect of a student’s own limits and flaws on interpreting the message. In other words, there is no teaching about God without corruption through limited and flawed understanding. 

What then separates a false teacher from a righteous one? On these premises you could make a valid argument that there is no difference and then fully embrace agnosticism. Personally, I find little to no hope in doing that. What hope is there in a belief in God who is closed to relationship with His creation, not permitting an extent of Himself to be known and not correcting the misunderstandings of those who will accept correction? 

As many atheists like to ask, “What is the difference between a disengaged God and no God at all?” In asking this it is assumed that there is no good answer. I don’t have one, so I’m not about to argue with the point. 

There is, on the other hand, a hope to be found in an engaged God, and it is in such a God that I value hope for. What then separates a false teacher from righteous ones? Here are the traits I believe qualify a false teacher:

• Someone who teaches what they believe to be false as though they believed it to be true.

• Deceivers

• Someone who is willfully ignorant, refusing to question the validity of their beliefs; they do not recognize the limits and faults of their understanding and do not seek correction.

• Idolaters of limited and faulty understanding.

How this relates to me personally. I have been trusted as a Sunday school teacher in the Wesleyan church yet I have come to hold beliefs contrary to the beliefs of the Wesleyan church. For those who may be concerned by this, be assured, I recognize that Sunday school in this case is meant to be a time to teach/learn about the Wesleyan beliefs, not a time to teach my personal beliefs. 

I have no issue teaching the Wesleyan beliefs so long as I have the freedom to make known when I disagree, of course without going into details about my personal beliefs in class. Should I teach on a Wesleyan belief that I don’t necessarily believe, I will teach saying, “Though I personally disagree with the Wesleyan church on this point, traditionally in the Wesleyan church it is believed that…” meanwhile reserving my own opinion for time not dedicated to the study of the Wesleyan beliefs.

If anyone would like to suggest a different approach to how I should handle my teaching situation I would be happy to discuss it. Thank you all for your contributions.