Hey, Pilgrim!
I’m sorry it’s taken me two days to get back to you. We were at church Tuesday until nearly midnight, then yesterday my boss was hanging over my shoulder all day. Last night, it was back to church for a meeting with our outgoing pastor, then a study group on “Grace”. I was home by 8:45, but just too wiped out to attempt anything deep.
Yes, I stand by my assertion that it’s all about the journey, or as I write here, it’s all about the dance. How each of us finds God is an individual thing. In all of us, God resides at a deep inner place. Finding and communing with God In Us is the journey we are on; how we find that place is not important, as long as we find it. Finding God In Us is the only task we, as humans, undertake that matters.
Jesus told us, according to John 14:6ff, “I am the Way and the Truth and the life. No one comes to the Parent except through me.” Now, it’s not my intention to use scripture as clobber text to “keep you from making a mistake”. Rather I use this text first as a jumping off place. You’ve been devoutly Christian most of your life, with a few periods when you felt alienated, either from God or the church. Perhaps at times, you’ve felt that it was one and the same thing. I obviously don’t know this, it is just what I have perceived from your blog entries.
As one who has had a close walk with God as a Christian, how do you feel about losing/giving up your beliefs in Jesus in order to convert to Judaism? How about Eucharist? How will it’s loss effect you? You’ve expressed at least once how you MISSED Eucharist in the past couple of months. Are you able to forego it? No matter how much I’ve tried to find other truths, other ways to God, I come back to Christ mainly because Jesus’s love for me has drawn me inexorably.
Christianity has many faults. We live more by the breaking of the teachings of that faith than by the following. Our churches are rife with false understanding of Jesus’ teachings. I think all religions, however, can say the same thing, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, etc. All fall short of their core teachings.
What does Christianity offer that the others don’t? Anything? And I ask this, not from how Christianity is currently lived, but from the perspective of the core teachings of the faith, uncluttered (to whatever degree possible) by the detrita of millenia of addition by humanity. In other words, if I go back to the Gospels themselves, what does Jesus offer me that all the others don’t?
I think that is the core belief that all of us, all of humanity, are flawed and basically hopelessly selfish, and YET… and yet, God Loves us anyway. There’s nothing we can do to deserve anything from God, and yet God gives us everything. It’s the concept of Grace, Pilgrim, that I believe to be the unique factor of Christianity. There’s nothing we have to do to make ourselves worthy of God. We can’t, Jesus did.
Having said that, and going back to John 14, Jesus is the way the truth and the life. But the next verses are even MORE of a key to unlocking Jesus than that phrase, a phrase by the way used by Christians to condemn all non-Christian peoples. The next verses say: “If you really knew me, you’d know my parent as well. In fact, from now on, since you do know me, you DO know my parent, you’ve SEEN my parent.”
What I understand from that statement is this. Jesus is saying “I AM the parent. I, the PARENT, am the only way to the Parent, I, the parent, am the only truth, the only life. There’s no other way to Me, than THROUGH Me.” In other words, John 14:6 is not a clobber text for the non-Christian; it’s a simple statement of truth.
God is the way to God. Turn to God, and God will bring you to God’s self. However you do that, turn to God. If that means you find God in Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, and any of the faiths I’ve left out, then that is how you find God.
Finding God, the Journey We All Must Undertake, is the only thing that matters. Finding God at the end of the Journey or at the beginning, or at any place in between is the only goal that counts.
To me, this means that there are many roads to follow on this journey. All will get you to your destination, God. But only if you pay attention.
Good luck on your path, my friend. I look forward to whatever time I can spend walking it with you. Even vicariously.
Your Fellow Pilgrim
On The Road II 