You Must Believe: Part 3- Speak No Evil

"Your blog is a journey of you trying to understand and seek God. In many of the posts you have made, and things you have said, I see a lot of my previous 'secular' thinking in it,...what I see is that you are getting confused by other religions, and you are letting them sway and corrupt your own beliefs and journey." An excerpt from a dialog on Christianity I held with Ben at Discovering God's Holy Plan.

In my journey these past few years in seeking the Divine there is one thing I'm certain about: one may hear and see things that challenges the church, but when you speak about them openly you risk being exiled among the "unbelievers". What then do you do if your beliefs have changed: do you keep them bottled up inside, seek counseling from your local pastor to help with your 'lack of faith', or do you speak and dialog with those around you? How can we grow if we don't allow ourselves to seek, to question, to yearn? Where do we run to if our new discoveries challenge the very fabric of our beliefs?

A part of us yearns and reaches out for the Unnameable, yet we have placed warning signs that keep us on the established trail.

"Stay on the Trail. Do not cross. Do not Explore."

We feel there is more to discover, to experience, to love. So why is it taboo to seek? I propose that we should question everything, always, and learn to live with the mystery of the Divine, the Unnameable, the Infinite. The difficulty lies in the fact that we are mortal, fallible creatures who fear everything. So why not explore the known, why not begin, with baby steps, delving into what has already been discovered? In the above quote, Ben, from Discovering God's Holy Plan, expressed a very real fear in many Christians, the fear of being eternally disconnected from the Divine. And for many Christians, fear, not love, keeps the faithful on the established trail. We should not let fear control or even guide us, pulling us by the nose. We should boldly question, fearlessly seek, and plunge ourselves into the Unknown. As Christians, if Christ is within us why should we fear associating ourselves with other God-seekers regardless of where they're at in their own spiritual journey? Let's take it one step forward and ask why should we fear associating with non-God seekers? Is this the will of God, to erect borders to keep the unbelievers out? God doesn't want us to congregate in a church once a week worshiping him, we are to go out live, love, and embrace each other.

Is it blasphemous to ask questions, to seek, to learn from non-Christian sources? And if we have these questions how do we handle them within a community which might ignore them altogether? I believe that our connection between the Divine and our fellow man is based on love, and if we want that connection/relationship to flourish the individual is responsible for nurturing that connection even if the community leans toward another direction. I am not attempting to justify my beliefs but rather to question the concept of exclusive truth and avoidance of challenging questions. How can we discover more about the Divine if we are told there are certain doors we are never to open, certain people and cultures we are never to embrace? Let us seek to move beyond limited learning and loving and into the fields of Universal Love.