We are called out of the world to seek the very narrow path. Few find it. Salvation. What is it we need to be saved from? God's wrath? Our Heavenly Father is holy and is love. There is no darkness in him per Jesus. So.......yup. I had to relearn everything I learned in church. I focused on the teachings of Christ (what we have available) and not Paul and certainly not the Old Testament (there is a reason Christ was considered a heretic). I prayed and asked for guidance in understanding the spiritual truth of his teachings. My life took a serious turn and what I have always felt inside while growing up going to church suddenly made sense. I was always uncomfortable in church and didn't understand most of the doctrine and why people said and did what they did.
We are literally called out of "the world". There is a price for that and as time goes by that price increases with a type of inflation if you will. Jesus talked about "the world" many times. In his time on Earth "the world" was the same corrupt distorted control system we have now.
I am not pushing the Christian viewpoint in this comment. It's the direction from which I am viewing the topic.
The narrow gate is single file so yeah my friend. We stand alone against Goliath.
Thank you for your thoughtful comment my friend.
I've had very similar experiences to yourself, the church of my youth felt cold - and often its practitioners came across as hypocrites - turning up once a week to claim their ticket to heaven. Yet over the last few years I've felt a profound and humbling calling, to the degree that I could no longer ignore it - and once I stopped trying to push it to the back of my mind and carry on regardless - everything began to make sense and I have begun to feel a sense of clarity and connection that had previously (despite thinking I had all the answers) eluded me. .
I'm certainly not proclaiming I've always been perfect - and like most of us I'm still a work in progress. :) With many years studying occultism/esotericism I've taken a long and convoluted path back home and towards the simple truths that Jesus spoke of. But every success and failure, good and bad decision, strength and weakness, and hour trawling through manuscripts or hunched over my computer, has led me to this moment in time - and in order to elucidate a broader picture and speak to those with the ears that are ready to listen - I'm going to incorporate these elements into future articles and the book I'm writing. Hence, its all been entirely valid - and maybe at some level it was always going to be this way. As for judgement? That is where my years of study, and documenting the belief systems of our would be demi-gods have helped me understand what is happening - I'll try to explain that statement in later posts.
Indeed, the price most certainly increases - to the degree that as you push back against the direction this world is taking and do what you know to be right, that price may one day be your very life. Once you begin to open your eyes you can discern that there really is "nothing new under the sun" the deceptions that seek to bind and beguile us have simply had a shiny new makeover. Thanks again my friend. :)