2025-01-12 A Meditation on True Religion

“19 Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; 20 for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. 21 Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. 22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. 24 For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. 25 But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. 26 If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. 27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” (James 1:19-27 ESV)

Rocked, the soldier daily meditates on what crutches are imagined, and what progress is possible. We are rocked by the daily preconceived notions around that title called “Christian”. We are fighting within, fears without, against the thought our faith is somehow a weakness. Indeed, our faith is all about submission: to authority, to servant leadership, to morality. But to warm to the hearthstone, it is a daily endeavor to be Strong, unmolested, Courageous, to know that no shame nor humiliation is part of the parcel.

Yes, there are many a compromised soul in any church body, who try daily to make false sacrifices of weaker notions. Who try daily to submit to a framework not found in fact, not found in Scripture. The perceived notions. The preconceptions. The assumption some crutch is needed. That in the end we are fighting only against our own sins: yet we are, only they are sins of pride, of boasting, of self-accreditation. We accredit ourselves “Christian” because of some deeds wrought “in the Spirit”.

The militarized Courage, then, is the analyst in us, the hope-warrior in us, the student-leader in us (a Child shall lead them), who takes it all “for real”: that Man is trapped in sin; that good deeds are not our concern, rather, the atmosphere in which they thrive and self-burgeon. To create this atmosphere, to find it, is to ape the pundits, to make angry the religionists, but proceed we must: we who have the martyr’s calling, the spiritual sacrifices even if Christ taught us not to use the Crucifix on our fellow man or woman. We sacrifice, because we simply cannot—much as we would like—submit to sin. We cannot flatter the self-righteous. We are, most to be pitied, like those consigned to Death. Because of either Vision or Academics. That is, because of our Insight trained on our mother or father’s knee, or our Experience, our Tutelage, our Upbringing: the Academy of real knocks, hard knocks, that give us a daily shot in the arm… of Courage, of Mission, of a Schadenfreude the enemy simply can’t even envision or relate to.

Pity them. The absence of a crutch, this is because we minister Peace and Mercy at large. We minister a Space to grow in, because Man, Woman, already invents morality; we already invent rules of life; we already invent Resolutions; and more, we are eager to abide in the Law when once we’ve been for real Loved. Just tell us, O Lord the Lover of Souls, and we will enact! Such we claim, and such is our daily compass of Faith and Compassion. It leads us. It guides us. We know, too, that strange notions fill our mind precisely when Morality is invoked. We sit and gaze, half afraid to be made over as sinful because of what we see, or what thoughts do come to mind. Those thoughts, too, those errant dreams, too, are a sign of the Coming Morality. We needed some freedom to grow in. We needed some Mercy, so our better angels would spend their time focused on high thoughts of moral compass and compassion. Our time is finite; our dreams are infinite. In this we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.