The search for truth. The hope of acceptance and love. These are pursuits, thoughts, feelings, mind states that I imagine we all experience and have and are. Sometimes there is a clear mingling of the two: The truth is where what I think and feel are accepted and generally agreed with by others. And conversely what I accept and give my energy to is the truth. I like to think that I have the courage and fortitude to pursue the truth wherever it shall lead. Alongside that I have the desire and need to be accepted and heard and loved. Sometimes I feel they oppose each other. Part of me fears that the fellowship I enjoy may be damaged if I pursue the truth to a place, which some would consider dangerous or false then that fellowship would be damaged. So the two needs, desires, pursuits come into conflict and one will curtail the other and the other will break the other (or at least the potential is there for that).
I am thinking about this tension at the moment due to becoming interested in the core beliefs and history of the Quakers. I am in fellowship as part of a church that though liberal in many senses has a evangelical heart/base. I am becoming increasingly aware that some important beliefs that many others in my fellowship hold; and some hold onto tightly, are not things I agree with fundamentally or that they are a small part of a bigger picture ergo that they should be held more loosely. For example I don't believe nor have I ever believed that scripture is our foundation or the thing we should turn to when we are uncertain or we disagree. Surely it is God himself. His voice now, speaking to us, here. But that is based on the belief that God does talk to us and not infrequently and that when someone says that they believe God has told them or shown them something; we trust that person to not be trying or unwittingly to manipulate or sell an ideal or thought that is not from God. The belief is therefore based on trust, discernment and the looking to the inner goodness and the desire for truth of those we fellowship with. If you have not this trust or belief then a dogma and a single interpretation of a single source may seem the safer and wiser course.
This trust comes from a close fellowship and experience of one another. Here vulnerability is the key to the opening flower of our hearts; in the garden we explore together, our hearts to be shared and their fragrance ingested and digested. God speaking to us all and walking with us in the cool of the evening as individuals, and those experiences to be shared gospel like with others who more and more know us and themselves? Know us and our foibles, strengths and weaknesses, beliefs and experiences. Who have different backgrounds and whose journeys may look quite different but who are all honestly pursuing truth and hoping to be all that they were created to be. Each journey is different but not isolated from another's. I believe an isolated journey to actually be impossible but it is up to us to celebrate the ties between us and not hinder our symbiosis - In this our search for truth and the desire to connect and be accepted are met. Because this is an ongoing process of choosing to know and be known we are left with a tension within. I am finding that life is full of these tensions and the trick is not to attempt to dispel or solve the tension but to hold it right and respect it.
We all know in part; including the authors of the bible, bloggers we follow and those in our lives from whom we seek counsel. We all see in part - The humility to accept this of ourselves and of those to whom we look for inspiration and guidance is another key ingredient. It is to be grounded in our real, living relationship with God, which is hopefully comprised of more than an individual intellectual exercise: It is also made-up of experience and feeling shared and individual. No one can objectively ?know? God. Everything we are and have been, our prejudices (which we all have), our learning styles, our liking of the author or speaker, our current emotional state, whether we are in a season of discovery or solidifying what we already hold to be true all instruct how we receive, hear and process the everything we come into contact with. No human can approach God or the idea of truth completely unbiased or neutral. It is not our nature to be such robotic, insensitive beings. The places to which God has led us and the shaping of our hearts; resulting from our experiences, are part of how he loves us ? he does not wish to remove or limit the feelings and sensations which ? if we allow them to ? can impact our lives in richly meaningful ways; for they are not separate from truth.
But there are (at least) two ways to handle this. One is despair that all is coloured with our iniquity and brokenness, which can lead us to become frozen in disbelief and distrust. Or there is the hope that we can pick the good and the true from it all, finding a growing trust that God will guide us into all truth and accept us for who we are, loving all of where we have been and how our journeys have shaped us.
P.s. This post covers a lot of areas in a brief manner and as my dear wife points out could only be covered thoroughly in a book length. Hey you never know, that's where this might lead but for now here we are...