Clarity, Certainty, Authenticity, Truth, Mysticism, Hermiting.

The Gospel is summed up in John 3.16: "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life." (from memory)

I believe that the Bible supports this statement in its entirety. It indicates that Jesus is one member of the Godhead (the Trinity), that He was fully human and fully God, that He literally physically died and rose again, and that His sacrifice paid our debt. That debt is a result of our sin, and in order to benefit from that payment, we have to accept the gift He offers. Accepting that gift means believing the Gospel.

I have written plenty about my concept of The Becoming, that it is how we are working out our faith and transforming, little by little, into that which we were created to be. I want to clarify here that this is not some weird thing where we are becoming our "true selves" or something. Rather, The Becoming is the process by which we are refined and learn more about ourselves and our faith. It is how we learn to walk that narrow road more faithfully, how we get to know God and truly love Him with everything we are.

While I do think that hermiting (as I have conceived it here) can be important to our spiritual formation, it is vital to our faith and to The Becoming that we spend regular time among fellow Christians, worshipping together and engaging in the Sacraments. Our faith is personal and individual, because we have a personal God; however, there are things (like the Gospel) that we must not stray from, and the best way to remain on that narrow road is to travel it with others who are doing the same, and to follow in the footsteps of those who have walked it before us.

Because of my concepts of The Becoming and of hermiting, I call myself a Mystic. But I test my ideas against scripture as best I can, because if something doesn't match up then it is wrong and I have been deceived.

One of the reasons I want to study liturgy is that I feel like it's not serving us properly anymore. But I don't know that this is an issue with the liturgy itself; it could be a problem with humanity. (It probably is.) I also want to help others understand liturgy better.

But there is more in all of this. One of the problems in the Church today is that there is not a lot of focus on spiritual formation. Just as general education has been given over to schools, the home is rarely a place where children are educated about scripture. They hear about Jesus on Sundays in Sunday school, and that's it. The Gospel is presented as a story, not interpreted and explained as a real historical event. Jesus is not a real person we can have a relationship with in the here and now.

Christians don't know what the Bible actually says, and they don't know how to interpret what they read. This makes us all more susceptible to deception.

We need to return to the three foundations of our faith: Scripture, reason, and tradition. These interact with each other, informing our lives and our relationship with God. Read Scripture. Interpret it with your intellect (reason) and tradition (the long tradition of teachings of the Church).

 As always, more to come, I'm sure.

Peace & Blessings.