I did some thinking about LMS' post on Berg's Logic, and decided that lot of what LMS was talking about is something I recognize in myself as a vulnerability to guilt motivation. Berg's Disneyland heaven-from-the-outside-looking-in is about always striving to do better, needing to be better, improve, grow, stand out, win the prize.
I've been thinking a lot about this topic, because I've changed in how much I let that type of grasping at eternity drive me to behave or act in certain ways. Mainly, I am rejecting ways that I image will measure up to a Christian ideal of holiness or an heroic Judeo-Christian ethical standard.
I've concluded that striving for holiness, yearning for Christian heroics, or reaching for a crown of glory is not the best way to live out a humble walk with God. And that's basically my beef with Christianity as s religion I learned and practiced for the better part of my life. I bought that idea before I joined TF, it motivated my decision to join, and I hung on to it after I left and became a depressed, despairing Roman Catholic.
It's a style of Christianity I'm too familiar with not to be a little contemptuous of it. It's a Christianity that inspires a disconcerting level of personal ambition. "Go out and proclaim bold words, change the world, heal the sick, light up the night with a martyr's zeal!"
How about this as one of any number of different ways to live a life of faith in Jesus Christ: Hope to go through life as gracefully as possible. If that's not always possible, hope to survive the knocks and do well by your own measure, whatever that may be. Listen to what people have to say, because it could be the Lord speaking. Listen to your own heart and mind, because it could be the Lord speaking. Find the grace to face suffering and death. Hope for peace. Be open to joy.
So non-believers will ask: Why does it have to be the Lord you're listening for in the voices of others or your own mind and heart? Anyone can follow a path like that without a spiritual teacher.
It's a just the choice I've made. I think I've come to this particular set of conclusions about how to live my life because I love Jesus. It's OK if he turns out to be a figment of my imagination that's based on debatable historic events. Living with the possibility that Christ'story is all a fairytale doesn't change the energy that floats my boat. That's because the energy (Spirit), as I name it, makes the Jesus story real in my own life, if only to me.