“[Jhn 20:30-31 NASB20] 30 So then, many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that by believing you may have life in His name.”

A pair of apologists debate another pair of detractors, who have doubts about the quality and intent of the Gospels. They’re dissatisfied with the historical requisites they would hope to expect from a truly historical record, as a sort of ancient Roman biography. But that totally misses the forest for the trees. They’re looking for all of the wrong features, and not finding them because what the Gospels are is not a series of biographical documents strictly, but are instead, very blatantly Evangelical, in the most technical sense of the term. This is not merely a dry recording of some facts for later generations to read, and obtain some level of satisfaction from. The Gospels are a project directly addressed to every human who will contemplate its subject matter, with the desired result being, as stated by the author of John’s Gospel, after having processed the material, is to convince the reader, or the hearer, to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, for which the reward of such a believer will have life in His name.

The oldest Roman Literature, going back to the 5th Century B.C. is the Twelve Tables. A brass plate engraved with these laws. There is very little recorded there, but concerning religious are two points:

X. 4 “Women must not tear cheeks or hold chorus of `Alas!’ on account of a funeral.”

X. 6a “Anointing by slaves is abolished, and every kind of drinking bout….there shall be no costly sprinking, no long garlands, no incense boxes.”

As frustrating as it might be for some people, there things that are set as a standard in the universe as it exists, that are inescapable. We might call it nature, and call the principles laws of nature, but in all cases, whatever they may be, there’s one word that captures all of it under it’s umbrella, and it’s the word “Truth”. It’s a very appealing to entertain a certain pithy slogan such as, “your truth is your truth, my truth is my truth”. It’s an asinine sentiment, and renders the use of the word in the English language useless. It serves only to entertain a person’s delusions, and in no way excuses them from their ignorance of the meaning of the word in actuality. Because once the truth is known, there is no denying the sense there is in it, and to act in opposition to it is futility in the fullest sense of the term. To act incongruous to the truth, whether knowingly or unknowingly, will render us at the mercies of the effects of our words in deeds, once they avail themselves within the framework of reality. So, rather than entertain the debate over this issue, moving forward, we will treat these notions of relative truth with disdain, and dismissal, for the intellectual laziness that we might be tempted to give more credibility than is worth.

This is the beginning of a process for me that may turn in to some publications/books where I delve in to my views on Christianity, Spirituality, the signs of the times, and where the world is going. There are plenty of things that put me in the more conservative spectrum, and by and large, my values are shared by most of middle America. I’m a capitalist, I believe in hard work, and loving your family more than government, and I believe in God, and put Him first in everything. However, there are also plenty of things that put me on a different page when it comes to ideals, and values in terms of lifestyle, and that’s what I want to address in this post. Not as just a simple confessional, to make this about me, but as a means of wrestling with and engaging presumptions and misconceptions about traditional values. Before I get in to the nitty gritty with that, I want to get out ahead of some of those assertions by saying that I understand, while many may not, that there is an agenda, managed by an elite class of a secret global cabal, to manipulate and distort the social order of nations across the planet for the sake of a global control. These people worship Satan, which is the based animal man inside the minds of individuals. They are also against the notion of God, and who or what He is. They don’t want to know, and they want to erase the inclination to do so. This makes it very difficult to navigate when you have an opposing agenda, which is from God, that is in the process of bringing all of creation in to a harmonious order with His Will and purpose on the planet, “as in the heavens”. So, in order to be concise with this post, rather than break down ideas, and their antithesis, point by point, I want to just insist, declare and confess that I am not for Satan, I am against Satan, his will, his works, his pomp and vanity. I am in every way for the coming Kingdom of God, under the throne of His Son, Jesus of Nazareth, who rules with God the Father at His right hand, and shares His authority with those of us who have received His Grace and Forgiveness for His Glory, Goodwill, and Pleasure. With that being said, I want to chew on some Bible verses that are my guide of logic that outline exactly how I view my life as a Believer and Follower of Jesus Christ, and how those views then guide how I model my life. In order to do that, first, I need to lay out some assumptions, so you understand how I come to the conclusions that I do. First - The Word of God is the person of Jesus Christ, who sends His Holy Spirit to guide and teach Believers in all Truth. Therefore, it is the Holy Spirit of Truth which is the pinnacle cornerstone of all things that are to be decided as being True, with regards to doctrine, theology, and interpretation. This requires a very intuitive sense about who we are in relationship to God. The quality of God’s Grace, how it effects the mind and heart of the believer, and how that sets the standard for how we are to relate to the traditions of various church bodies throughout history. Because of this, I do not share the dogma, as it were, of many Protestant Christians, that the Bible is the “Word of God”. Now, there are some caveats surrounding this idea, but just for the sake of clarity, I want to outline just a distinct position on this, so that there’s no confusion. It hinges on one central fact, which is that wherever the phrase, “Word of God”, appears in scripture, it is not contextually referring to scripture, but to the person of Jesus Christ Himself. So I’m taking the text itself at its own word on what it the word of god is, instead of interjecting traditional and cultural suppositions. So, thten, the order of priority is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ which takes priority and is the authority over the text of the scriptures, being that it is the Holy Spirit who is the author of the text, and is our guide with regards to what it means when it says that we should “rightly divide” the word of Truth. With this as our foundation, I accept the authority of the scriptures to outline matters of doctrine, teaching, correction, and with regards to history and historicity, we’re relying only on what we can confirm from the position we find ourselves in, being 2000 years removed from the events, and the record. That whole realm of study can be seemingly bottomless, so I’ll just leave you to find your own breadcrumbs there, and avoid getting in to the weeds there to press on to the more weighty issue at hand, which is to answer a question that I may not have been asked, but begs to be asked in light of a decision that I’ve made in my life that has had very profound consequences, which is to explain why my wife and I have embraced a form of plural relationships, more often than not described by the word polyamory. While by and large, people are and have been pretty understanding, there are many in the body of believing Christians, even here in very liberal Oregon, who hold to very conservative views, that take a great issue with this choice, and lifestyle, and are aghast and offended by it. My simpathies, truly, are with them. I understand, if this is you, why you feel this way, and exactly the points that has rooted your concern. I too had the very same concerns and had to find sufficient answers to them in order to have a clear defense on which to stand on when it came to how I was going to move forward in my life, and the trajectory I was going to take. Rather than do what a lot of people do, which is to abandon their faith, for the sake of just being copacetic, that was impossible for me to do, because my experience of salvation, and receiving the love and grace of the Holy Spirit coming in to my life, was far too real, and tangible. And the boundless riches of the wisdom of the scriptures, and their teaching, in particular the Gospel, was far too great for me to deny. So, supposedly, in theory, I was at a dichotomy, where either I err on the side of the prevailing opinions and wisdom of the general American, Western, conservative Christian culture, which would mean destroying any connection in my family as I had built it, getting a divorce, and moving on on my own, but be embraced by the community. The other side would be to abandon the Church, abandon the faith, and just do whatever I thought was right according to my own passions and desires. This is where my experiences in prayer, and study overwhelmed me to guide me toward a third path, and see that the dichotomy was an illusion. Because I knew on the one side, of the prevailing thought in conservative Christianity, had duped and deceived itself in to accepting all kinds of ideas that were counterintuitive to what they proported to believe and teach. To the point where they could justify all kinds of actions as being an act of love, but could be excused away because “we’re not perfect, God forgives me, and will sort everything out in the end”, like fighting meaningless wars, and declaring them to be holy, or burning innocent people at the sake for being witches, without evidence, which has all amounted to a reputation being built around the notion of hypocrisy, to the point where churches are losing numbers in droves, at least across the Christian West. Likewise, on the other side, the secular world of relativism has resulted in mindless and whimsicle concepts of truth, which is really a syptom of cynical nihilism. I understood and I understand now, that this state of mind is fuel for degradation, and the collapse of society, and the rule of law. So, not good. This forced me to ask myself, what can I know for sure to be True? What is the most powerful force, that can neither be shaken on earth or in the heavens? This was the question that I stood on in order to develop my thought process and my views, and by extention, my choices. While I’d like to keep writing, and expounding on things in this one post, I’ll hold off on that now, with the intent to turn this in to several posts, over the course of time as motivation arises, but I’ll tell you now where this will go, with this sort of dissertation on a certain theory, and we’ll use that term theory for now, as it’s not the pervasive opinion, and requires some observation, and testing in order to determine the reliability of the ideas. And that brings me back to a third assumption, or rather assertion which, relies heavily on a few teachings centered on a discipline known as hesychasm, as well as the canons of the Fifth Council of Constantinople, and the doctrine of Gregory Palamas, known as Palamism. In summation, this doctrine centers on the true unity of the beleiver, with the triune God in three persons, of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The issue of the trinity comes very clearly in to focus here, as they dealt with the heresy of the filioque which separated the Roman West, from the Constantinopolitan East. This is a huge element for what makes the Eastern Church so powerfully pursuasive in its defense of what it calls Orthodoxy, because it lands on a very essential element that goes largely unnoticed, and glossed over in both the Catholic and Protestant West, which is the unity of the believer, as well as the Church as a whole, with the Person of Jesus Christ, and therefore the trinity. We can break this down on a scriptural basis later, and I’ll allow the reader to do their own research until future posts can be made, but just to button things up, allow me to state my position in a final paragraph.