Eyre Lines

Dear XXXX,

I received a private communication from you yesterday in which you said that you were bothered about the last line of my “Direction finding with Jesus” post in the light of what I said in “A Letter to my Reader”. You were worried that despite me addressing myself to you as if you were of any religion or none, because I said in “Direction finding” that I pointed to Jesus, you thought the whole idea was to convert you to Christianity by stealth.

Don’t worry, that isn’t the case. Remember that I said at the top that that was a recycled sermon? Well, everyone I was talking to there was a Christian, so I wasn’t bothered about (say) the odd Jew among that audience.

I happen to think that you have to be a really tough nut if you can’t be comfortable with the extremely stripped down concepts I have as to what you actually need in order to be a Christian – these are Faith in God (or at least the desire to get there) and acceptance of a similarly stripped-down Jesus as exemplar. You also need to want to develop your spiritual experience so that you can feel more connection with whatever it is that I call God, but you can call what you like – it’s only a label on a box.

However, as you say you really can’t do that, don’t worry. I’m better at Jesus stuff than I am at anything else, but I can also point you at quite a few other faith systems which might fit you better – Buddhism and Taoism are the most stripped down I know of, for instance. I know quite a lot about some other faiths as well, and either by joining for a while or by close discussion with those who practice them, I can relate my experience to them as well. If you want to write back, I suggest you take the SelectSmart Belief System Selector test, and let me know your results. If you score high for something, chances are that it’s worth looking at. Though I only score 68% for liberal-to-mainline Christianity (though 100% for Liberal Quaker) on my most recent test, so you can get by with something in the mid range fairly OK.

If none of these fit, I will be very surprised. However, it may be that you either need to be a solitary practicioner of spiritual practices (which I can help with as I’ve spent most of my life being one) or that you need to found your own faith. OK, I once nearly did that at the request of a group of people, but the only person in my head who thought that was a good idea was bighead SR (scientific rationalist Chris) and he got outvoted. I don’t recommend it, therefore, but I can probably still give tips.

Keep reading! You never know, you might find something in here even if you disagree with 99% of what I say. This is about my experience and my way of getting my internal GF functioning well; you’re a different person, and different things will probably work for you.

Happy seeking!