That’s a great metaphor for learning to be your own spiritual advisor. Literally, learning to see for yourself with your own eyes and not relying on others to see for you.
I was listening to someone on YouTube a few days ago talk about the need for all of us to look for and find the mentor within as a way of saying that we should learn to develop our own ability to see and know the truth for ourselves without depending on any wise teacher to show us the way.
I really like that. In fact, I think it’s perhaps the best way possible to communicate the process of learning to see with our own eyes, especially after we’ve deconstructed our toxic Christian theology and escaped the Evangelical Matrix where pastors, Bible teachers and self-proclaimed Prophets have kept us under their control in our comfortable religious pods all wired up to whatever they wanted us to see and feel and experience.
That’s honestly one of the biggest pitfalls I see when people first Deconstruct their Christian faith. They find out they’ve been lied to about what the Bible is, or what it says about Hell, or the Atonement, or the Rapture, or Women, or Gay people, and they start to question everything they’ve ever been told.
That’s a good thing.
But the mistake most of us make is that we trade in our Conservative Christian Gurus for Progressive Christian Gurus and we plug ourselves right back into another pod where someone else is seeing for us, and thinking for us, and experiencing God for us.
So, we may unplug from the teachings of Driscoll, MacArthur and Chan, but jack right back into the teachings of Enns, Jersak and Zahnd. We trade one set of spiritual gurus for another set of spiritual gurus.
That’s not good.
I mean, it works for a little while. We get to de-tox from all that bad theology of an angry God who hates us and can’t stand to be in our presence. We find out God is love and we learn a lot about what the Bible really has to say about what happens when we die, and why Jesus died on the cross, and what the Second Coming of Christ is all about.
It’s liberating and empowering to find out Jesus was right about the Kingdom of God being something we can experience for ourselves.
But, that’s where it starts to get dicey for some of us. I mean, yes, we discover a better brand of Christianity where God doesn’t hate us and Jesus is more real than ever. However, we have still traded our own individual spiritual autonomy for the carefully curated theology of someone else.
Now, I’m not saying anything bad about Zahnd, Jersak, Young, Enns, or Rohr. Each of them has taught me something profound and helped me re-imagine my Christian faith in ways that I could never have done on my own.
But, I’m pretty sure all of them would agree with me that no one should make them their spiritual guru. In fact, I’m pretty sure they would all say that we should learn how to develop our own personal connection with the Divine without trying to experience God through them.
In other words, please don’t believe something because they do. Believe it because you have personally experienced and verified your faith directly with God for yourself.
I have always tried to emphasize to everyone who reads my books or blogs or takes any of my online courses that “I am not your Guru!” and “Guru Yourself!” is something I have repeated dozens of times to people who send me messages or ask me what I believe about this or that.
That’s why I love the idea of encouraging everyone to find that inner mentor within and learn to listen to that still, small voice that whispers truth to our souls.
The great thing about learning how to do this is that we can’t offload the credit for whatever wisdom we receive to anyone else. Not even ourselves.
Because once you start listening to that inner mentor, you’ll start to realize that this wisdom isn’t coming from YOU. It’s coming directly from the Divine Source that flows within your own soul.
The rivers of living water that Jesus described in the Gospels become real in ways you never imagined.
The Christ within you comes alive. The Kingdom of God comes into focus.
That’s when you realize you never needed anyone else to tell you who God is or what Truth is.
You’ve known them all along.
Your identity is entangled with the Divine.
Your soul resonates with the frequency of Love.
You cannot be separated from the Source of Life.
Truth is higher, and wider, and longer, and deeper than you ever imagined.
This is who you are.
This is who God is.
And you’ll have a hard time finding where one ends and the other begins.
Because there is no separation.
There is no you or me.
There is only us.
So…let me encourage you, if you haven’t already, to look for and discover the mentor within you. Or the Christ, or the God, or the Truth, or the Source, or whatever word you find makes the most sense.
It doesn’t matter what you call it.
It only matters that you find it and learn to listen with your own ears and learn to see with your own eyes.
This where your spiritual life really begins.
I hope you’ll take some time to search for that inner mentor.
You’ll be so glad you did.
**
The newest book from Keith Giles, “The Quantum Sayings of Jesus: Decoding the Lost Gospel of Thomas” is available now on Amazon. Order HERE>
Keith Giles is the best-selling author of the Jesus Un series. He has appeared on CNN, USA Today, BuzzFeed, and John Fugelsang’s “Tell Me Everything.”
He co-hosts The Heretic Happy Hour Podcast and his solo podcast, Second Cup With Keith which are both available on Spotify, Amazon, Apple, Podbean or wherever you find your podcast fix.
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