heart of "searching and wonder"

These two characteristics belong to a person who is actively growing in spiritual maturity; someone who is different to the person they were a month or year earlier. What are some of the other characteristics whereby one can recognize spiritual leadership and maturity? It is often in contrast to the signs and indicators of success in the consumer playing field: not the one with the most toys is the winner, but rather the one whose heart is most open and expressive (not callused) and who wants to get to know God closer and closer. Maturity or growth of spirit includes ability to use the Spiritual Gifts that have been given; to love one's neighbor and oneself equally; to have well developed habits of the heart (prayer alone and together, reading and thinking/writing/talking) and strategies for facing difficulties and engaging openly; of holding discordant ideas in one's mind at the same time.

paradox, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light”

Perhaps this is an artifact of the human need to discover and impute meaning to all things, or the urge to impose logic and thereby to understand a thing on a human scale, but the first part of this quote, “I am the Way” seems to have at least two meanings that don’t seem to agree from a rational perspective.

    One is as an ends (I am…) that you have arrived at: by following or striving to be Christ-like, you are on the right road, so rest easy and search no further (but do keep treading that road). The other is as a means (the Way) that you need to use in order to get to the place you should strive for, but which you won’t reach in any final way; small moments of realization perhaps, but the playing field is constantly in motion, so it requires constant care and feeding. That equilibrium of aspiring, striving, expressing one’s Spiritual Being is what moves one’s maturity forward to a place closer to God.

    So is the emphasis on I AM the Way, or is the emphasis on I am THE WAY? The answer seems to be both/and. The earthly Jesus was an example to fellow creatures to emulate in form and in intent: actions and intention. There is a small element of feeling that you have arrived at the right place (righteous, but not self-righteous), but that now is when the real work begins, now that you are on the right road; it is a long way.

By keeping one eye on God, much like a compass or firm rudder, once may go to all corners of humanity to act on God's behalf. It is sort of like satellite radio for long-distance drivers. The signal is equally strong anyplace you may go; there is no need to search or to fine tune as the locations change. Wrestling with The Word (bible or engagement with others in study and fellowship) generates richer relationships. But while the teachings are precious, the ink and paper of the book are nothing. Thus the high regard for a Bible is not as object of veneration, power, magic or other idol-like worship, but rather it is because the act of personal connection and engagement convicts your sense of purpose. The words are not mere verbal beauty for bystanders, but instead require embrace and response --action (faith without deeds is empty).

    So, yes, do put faith into action. But action does not always mean movement. It can be commitment made internally upon hearing a Bible passage. It can be forbearing not to interject opinions or advice when another person wants only to be listened to. It can be silent witness or fellowship without elaborate verbal articulation, analysis or rationalization.

    Sales professionals and behavioral economists alike say that decisions are sparked by emotional response and that rationalization comes after the fact to shore up the emotional expression. Just so of God's calling - let your response be sparked by emotion, pure and unmitigated by verbal carrots and sticks. That is the best way to be God's agent in His World. No matter which way the winds blow or the current may run, still you may guide by the unchanging star of your maker's love for you in all seasons of life; times of plenty and when the cupboard is bare.

Defining early Jews and Christians

In the middle years of the first century of the Common Era how did the Jesus followers see themselves? How did the varieties of Jews see the Jesus Movement? First it is worth remembering that temple Jews (the ones in Jerusalem with access or awareness of temple matters) may have seen themselves as different to rural Jews. And there were self-aware differences between Pharisees (learned by training) and Sadducees (status predicated on birth connection to the relevant family lines). And there were Zealots and Essenes, as well. Followers of one rabbi or another may further have drawn distinctions between themselve and other followers. And even with a given tradition or locale, there may have been distinction between those who were more secular and those who were more dedicated to knowing God.

    So when Reb Jesus/jeshua was killed (and rose again) and certain Jews (such as those the book of Jesus' brother James is writing to), along with more general 'God Fearers' and former pagans all gathered to form a tradition of Fulfilled Jews [one wonders how Jews today view such a statement; "Judiasm 2.0"?], then who drew lines that defined Jew and non-Jew? After all if the primitive Christians (so-called by Roman authorities?) embraced the Jewish Bible (Old Testament) and loved the same teachings and Creator God, then would there not be reason to consider all under one large tent in common? As establishment types, the orthodox Jews maintain boundaries and distinctiveness not by downplaying small differences in detail, but instead amplifying the things that set them apart from the others. So perhaps the Jews who turned to The Way considered it all one thing: God's People in common. But those of the orthodox traditions continued to exclude such claims of brother/sisterhood.

    The primitive body of believers had no hierarchy, postal address and prominent, public meeting place for so many generations. In the eyes of Roman occupiers it was all a Yaweh tradition, whatever else the locals might say. And at a given time the Romans scapegoated or hunted down the early Christians in certain places. All that changed with the Roman emperor Constantine making Christianity the State Religion in the beginning of the 4th century: untaxed and publicly promoted, now the tables turned and the Jews were relatively excluded and confined  to a smaller society of themselves. All the trapping of public institutional organizing grew and the pyramid structure of governance emerged in an echo of the rational organizational trees of the Roman Empire.

    Thus in the first few generations perhaps there were those Christians, either Jews or others, who considered themselves to be Jews and God's most loved people, whatever the orthodox Jews may say. And then, either with the public prominence of becoming State Religion or sometime before that unveiling, both sides -- the Jews excluding those students of rabbi Jesus, as well as those Jesus followers who saw absolute and irreconcilable differences between their love of God and the traditions of Jewish neighbors-- dug the trench to separate themselves from their spiritual brothers and sisters ----tied to the same creator God nonetheless.

    For the average, not particularly zealous Catholic or Protestant Christian, it probably comes as a surprise that Jesus was a Jew who never saw what he was doing as a split from what was before. And even more of an eye-opener, these same people might recoil at the fact that all the Abrahamic traditions --Jewish, Christian, Muslim-- share the same Heavenly Father and by extension then are in common for their expressions of love to God and to one another.