 |
| Spanning the Colorado River - near Moab Utah |
Christianity
A Follower of Jesus
Now you might be thinking that for someone who is of the opinion that no truth is absolute given our current intellectual state and everything is relative, my beliefs are pretty well defined and fixed. In reality, they are a developing collection that reflect my chosen paradigm.
Religion is always evolving to meet the needs of people at any given point in history. All the great religions of the past have slowly faded into mythology or even been forgotten all together only to be replaced with something newer and more relevant. Odin and Frigg, Zeus and Hera, and farther back than we have record to recall, once mighty systems of faith fall to the relentless march of social evolution. Allah, God, Buddha, Jesus... all the great religions of today’s world will, at some point, join our pantheon of mythology and be relegated to the history of once practiced and revered faith.
Some of the faithful cling desperately to an imaginary permanence and refuse to see the subtle changes evident even during our own short recorded history. “What is is and will always be” just isn’t.
So if religion isn’t absolute and forever, is there any value in it? Of course there is! There still is a continuity of truth... it’s just much more fluid than many feel comfortable admitting to.
Christianity was given me by my parents. Just like it was given to them by theirs. It shapes my understanding. It colors my perceptions. It molds my thoughts and feelings. It is a vessel of truth and not necessarily the truth itself. It is a philosophy that helps defines the universe in which I live. Its comfortable confines concentrate and focus my perceptions. It is the allegorical model which gives course and direction to my inner spiritual journey.
I strive to uncover and incorporate the ideals and teachings attributed to Jesus of Nazareth as I understand and need them to be. I value the concept of the Christ and am intent on unlocking its gift.
“For it is an indubitable and evident thing that he who is born a Christian, Jew, Pagan, Turk, Infidel, or whatever religion it may be, can arrive at the perfection of this Work or Art and become a Master, but he who hath abandoned his natural Law, and embraced another religion opposed to his own, can never arrive at the summit of this sacred Science.”
~ Rabbi Yaakov Moelin 1365-1427 CE
