This implies two things. First, to be a Christian is to be Christian, and this is only through an experiential testing of spiritual principles in daily life, not through beliefs. Second, the witness to any truth claims of the historical church is chiefly through the practice of the faith, not seeking to convert persons through beliefs. Beliefs are important, but are subordinate to experience.

6. I believe in Jesus Christ.

This is to say I trust in and seek to live out the Presence of Jesus Christ. I trust God's revelation of Love in Jesus, in the 1st Century, is the principal revelation of the Divine in our history. I do not separate Jesus and Christ. Yet, again, I see the transcendent Christ - the Word- , within which is the history of Jesus, in many ways not seen as specially of the Christian faith. Jesus is a manifestation of the Word, but the Word is a spiritual reality: that is, the Incarnation is part of the history of the "Son of God" - the Christ, Logos. This does not make Jesus any less real to me, rather, I have fallen more in love with Jesus Christ through growth in this experience of the Word, Logos.

Therefore, let it be known, this writer and writing takes Jesus seriously. Yet, that does not mean I have to take Jesus according to some definition of orthodoxy, a Jesus that fits in a faith-box guarded by those in-the-know.

Peculiar to Christianity is that at the heart of everything there is not a text, or a single commandment, or even a new Torah - but rather flesh and bones and breath and the remarkable response of Jesus' followers to both his brief public ministry and his brutal execution.

*Robin R. Meyer's. Saving Jesus from the Church.

With devotion to Jesus, I know Christianity has at its center a real Presence that sets the standard for me in any understanding of the experience of Faith. Consequently, I do not see Jesus Christ as just one great, enlightened Teacher among many other ones.

About that time, serious trouble developed in Ephesus concerning the Way.

*Acts 19.23 (NLT)

A story from the Desert Fathers tells of St. Antony posing a question to followers. He quoted a difficult scripture from the Bible. He asked each follower, “What does this mean?” From youngest to oldest, the men gave intellectual, subtle responses; each thought this would evidence learning and devotion to the spiritual life. The last to respond was a monk named Joseph. He said: “I do not know.” St. Antony told the disciples, “Only Joseph knows the way.”

In Almost Catholic, Jon M. Sweeny writes of faith in Christ as based in experience, not agreeing to a set of beliefs. Of modernity (ca. 1450-1950), he writes: “Modernity is based on the idea that faith will always succumb to reason, but of course, it doesn't.” He gives a helpful critique of faith today, in contrast to during modernity: “Many of us today acknowledge that we live in a new era – some call it postmodernity - in which propositional truth, certainty, and even papal infallibility play the same sort of smaller role in a spiritual life that they played in the premodern worldview. We decide what is true in different ways.”

Brian McClaren, a leader in the emergent church movement, says of this experiential, pragmatic faith: “First, you engage in spiritual practices like prayer, Bible reading, forgiveness, and service. Then you see what happens; you remain open to experience. Finally, you report your experience to others in the field of spirituality for their discernment, to see if they confirm your findings or not” (A Generous Orthodoxy). The latter arises in varied ways: membership or active sharing in a faith group, small accountability groups, among friends, with a Spiritual Director, ...

When Edith Stein read St. Teresa of Avila's autobiography, she stayed up all night, engrossed. This was the first time Stein experienced God as real. Afterward, she sensed the divine Presence so strongly that she felt compelled to become a Christian and Roman Catholic. Later, she became a nun.

*Jon M. Sweeny. Almost Catholic.

Contemplative Christianity teaches us the greater knowing is in what we do not know. Sadly, and to the harm of the Church's vitality and witness, we created believers. This fit the emphasis of modernity, while the Church prioritized faith as intellectual agreement over faith as personal and communal experience. Now, we have churches filled with persons professing a faith, yet who have not had a vital experience of the central principles or Christ of the Gospels. They will argue about morality and doctrine, but have not the vital Flow of divinity animating their lives and leading them to burn with Love for others.

Faith as assent to doctrine is dying out. And thankfully. This does not mean what we believe, or think, is not important. Yet, experience is the foundation of faith, not belief.

This distinction is clear in the Gospel. A case in point is faith in - believing in - Christ. In the New Testament this faith is an action, an experience, a believing in, into; the Old Testament counterpart means to “lean on.” Over time, this dynamic view of faith became a stale, inert intellectual agreement about metaphysical teachings, or doctrine, about Christ. Faith means for many agreement with certain teachings: like a physical resurrection of Jesus, a literal virgin birth, a literal return of Jesus in the sky. Many of these persons, then, exclude from the Christian way anyone who does not agree with their propositional, literal reading of the Scripture. Their way they identify with the Way, but no one way can be the Way.

Now, let us get to the Gospel here. Where in the Gospel is there such a view of faith as assent to doctrines? Where did Jesus give a litmus test of dogma before he made a person whole? Where did he give a metaphysical teaching of his being as a code to get access to the Christian experience?

Sweeny, reflecting my own journey of faith from assent to experience, writes well of the pragmatic Path being rediscovered in the postmodern era – we are returning to biblical faith, not what came to be called orthodox faith. The focus is becoming orthodox experience, as many laity and clergy are rediscovering the spiritual practices that emerged from the premodern Church and were largely forgotten, except principally among the monastic sects and some clerics, until the mid-20th Century. In this, we are living in a new Reformation era, one that diverges from both Catholicism and Protestantism. The emergent church movement is one case of this focus, as well as the renewed focus on the monastic traditions and contemplative forms of faith.

For me, qualities such as hoping, desiring, and reconciling have taken on bigger roles in my life as the energy I used to pour into believing has moved more and more into the background. Hope is not [mere] optimism. Love is not [mere] affection. To feel or show optimism and affection is pretty simple, but to hope and love takes time, practice, and self-examination. Capacities such as hope are to be learned and strengthened – and I find them recommended in the scriptures more often than belief. Even when Jesus praises belief, as in the case of the woman who anointed his feet with tears and alabaster (and “who had a bad name in town”), he praises her desire and love, not the sort of propositional belief that we have come to understand today. “I tell you that her sins, many as they are, have been forgiven her, because she has shown such great love” (Luke 7.36-47).

Thankfully, we can allow ourselves to know little of certainty and still love Christ with a certainty of His Presence to us. We can know salvation apart from a creed or confession of faith. We can rejoice in experience of the Sacred, free of an imposed, obligatory definition of “Christian.” We may, indeed, show great love without feeling any need to be seen as orthodox, and we may be well content with some persons saying we are not a Christian. Possibly, the shift from identifying ourselves first as “a Christian” and focusing on “being Christian” is where we are moving now, and even as we find the Christ Path cannot be held within the Christian religion, but may be known by persons of varied faith traditions, and no organized, institutional identity at all.

Jesus, thankfully, is being freed from the greedy grasp of institutional religion, and even the “ownership” of only one religion, or faith path. The Christian way is becoming a witness to the Way, for it witnesses to something it cannot claim as its own - its "way."

I am sure that many of the “institutional church” were disturbed by those who fled to the deserts in the early Centuries of the Christian era. Should we be surprised that many persons of the “institutional church” would see the new movement of postmodern Christian faith a threat to the church – yes, it is a threat, to what had become “orthodox” and which men had set up to indoctrinate laity in, and often – maybe, usually – apart from the guidance on truly knowing Christ in a growing experience of Sacredness.

I do not mean here to speak harshly of clerics. I do mean to point out a vision of a Church led by clerics who have returned to the experiential basis of Christian faith.

On the point of Christian interspirituality – I mean by this that the experience of Christ, embodied and taught by Jesus, cannot be confined in any one movement of faith -, we need to recall that Jesus did not create a religion, nor did he form a movement separate from Judaism. Christian faith as a movement emerged after Jesus, not by Jesus. And the term Christian was coined by “non-Christians” as a negative remark about Jesus' followers.

I am not advocating, as I do not the relativism of belief or the functional equality of all religions, that having a Christian faith, or Christian religion, is wrong. I am saying that to go back to Jesus is to release our belief in Jesus as belonging to any one faith movement. Then, we can honor the Jesus Way as a means outward to connect with the world, including diverse faiths, including all graceful means of faith, hope, and love. We, then, are freed to experience the Divine in ways we would have not been prepared to; we are able better to love our neighbor by honoring his or her means of Divine blessing, rather than seeing the other as an object to be converted to our faith path – our belief. We can hold different ideas – beliefs – and experience the same Way, Truth, and Life. Amen.

1.Distinguish between faith as belief and faith as experience. Which of these most characterizes your way of relating with the Sacred? Explain.

2.In what ways are belief and experience mutually supportive? How might belief or experience go awry without the other?

3.Have you experienced the Sacred through an appreciation of another faith path other than your own? Explain.

4.How did you truly come to know the Sacred in a personal way? In what ways are you keeping that personal relationship alive and growing?

5.What would you say to a person who said, “I'm not interested in being known as an orthodox Christian, I only what to be known as Christian”?

6.What is meant in the fact that Christian faith is principally a pragmatic path, a way of be-ing, not an intellectual path, or way of believing?

7.How might one see others experiencing the Way, Truth, and Life, yet within other faith traditions? How would this differ form “orthodox” and “evangelical” Christianity?

8.Does the faith group you belong to encourage openness to see God in varied faiths, or not? Explain.

9.Do you have a personal relationship with Christ – or divine Presence? If not, how might you proceed to explore such a relationship?

*OneLife Ministries is a ministry of Brian Kenneth Wilcox, SW Florida. Brian lives a vowed life and with his two dogs, Bandit Ty and St. Francis, with friends and under a vow of simplicity. Brian is an ecumenical-interspiritual leader, who chooses not to identify with any group, and renounces all titles of sacredness that some would apply to him, but seeks to be open to how Christ manifests in the diversity of Christian denominations and varied religious-spiritual traditions. He affirms that all spiritual paths lead ultimately back to Jesus Christ. He is Senior Chaplain for the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office, Punta Gorda, FL.

*Brian welcomes responses to his writings or submission of prayer requests at briankwilcox@yahoo.com . Also, Brian is on Facebook: search Brian Kenneth Wilcox.

*Contact the above email to book Brian for preaching, Spiritual Direction, retreats, workshops, animal blessing services, house blessings, or other spiritual requests. You can order his book An Ache for Union from major booksellers.