My responsibilities as a Pastor are to bring knowledge of God’s existence, develop genuine belief in His existence and create a healthy foundation of faith and love. Once these are completed my role is finished, unless a person wants to further their understanding of God or needs a refresher. After a person achieves this connection they are free to live without further instruction unless they choose to continue to learn more. It is not God’s requirement that we be scholars of spirituality, only genuine participants.

This can be achieve by a variety of avenues, but it is my firm belief that Christianity, if taught properly, is the best way. The problem is that Christian teaching is so varied that a person may not know what they will get from a particular tradition, like Catholicism versus Southern Baptist for example, or what to believe given the varied schools of thought taught from individuals each offering their own takes on the matter (myself being one of them). It may seem that we’re all teaching the same ideas, since we’re all talking about Jesus and sourcing our material from the Bible, but we’re not because the practice of preaching is not a reliably repeatable and shared system, with Catholicism being the exception that comes closet because they train their priests all similarly.

I conclude that the Bible is not nearly enough to gain proper knowledge of God nor facilitate a genuine connection with Him especially in our age of science, and hence we must incorporate knowledge from other sources, like philosophy, psychology, and science, in addition to spiritual ideas from sources other than those of Judeo-Christian origin to create a full-bodied understanding of how all this works. Plainly stated, the Judeo-Christian method can take you only so far, with too many gaps and questions that work counter to convincing the mind that it’s viable and not nonsense.

The mind is the gatekeeper, and if it’s not convinced that any of this is real, you’re going no further than surface knowledge, which is unfortunately useless without entering into genuine states of being, like love and faith. One must enter a state of being that makes God a natural part of you, your understanding of the universe and your place in it.

Christianity is only one vantage point, albeit a very powerful and genuine foundation for properly understanding God, but still only one among many. My position is not a biased hardline in order to keep Christian ideas at the top. Judeo-Christian thought, with Jesus being a logical extension of Jewish understanding, are logically at the top after rigorous scrutiny, with science being its only rival. Except for the dividing argument of whether Jesus was the Messiah or not, the teachings of Jesus cannot be disavowed either spiritually or logically.

Buddhism trails behind Judeo-Christian thought, but genuinely offers insights missed or overlooked by western spiritual development, especially concerning meditation and ideas of energetic states of being. However, Buddhism fails to connect states of being with a living and active God, instead keeping it ‘sorta secular’ in nature, which has its own virtues, but leaves out the most valued part which is an interactive connectivity with God. Also, its lack of simplicity leaves one longing for planer language that gets to the gist of its concepts and how to apply them. It’s unnecessarily mystical.

In all of these systems, language is key. Convoluted concepts get lost in flowery poetry and tradition, instead of rigorous but easy to understand uses of words that ‘get to the point’. It cannot be overstated enough, that if the gatekeeper mind doesn’t get it, you’ll go nowhere, no matter how long you seek understanding. But once you do get it, it’s powerful how fast the changes occur. The key is making sure you get the right ideas into your mind. All schools of spirituality have one purpose and that is to get you connected to God.

Here are the pillars for a proper spiritual life:

• Knowledge That God Exists
• Genuine Belief That God Exists
• Developing a Relationship with God
• Faith in Your Connection to God
• Love as a State of Being
• Faith as a State of Being
• Goodness as a State of Being

The list may grow, but these will always remain true. In short, get connected to God by learning how to become genuine in your beliefs and not just a surface practitioner of any particular religion.

As always…

Get connected. Stay connected. By faith alone. Peace!