Intro to Faith Mountain: Is there a God and if so who is He?
Foundational mountain on which all other cultural Mind Molders are built. What do we have faith in and is it worthy of our faith?
The 7 Mind Molding Mountains of Cultural Influence are threaded through every facet of a culture and they influence our minds, behaviors, emotions, desires, expectations, and habits. I conceptualize and order them as:
Faith,
Governance,
Money/Work,
Learning/Education,
Health/Wellness/The Family,
Creativity/The Arts & Entertainment,
Media.
If you haven’t read Intro to the 7 Mountains yet, see that HERE.
Essence
Is there a God and if so who is He? What is His character? If there isn’t a God, what exactly do we have faith in and is it worthy of our faith? If there is a God, is He worthy of our faith?
I place Faith as the first Mountain on the 7 Mountains because no matter what you believe on matters of Faith, it speaks to the heart of the person and that drives all else. The individual heart drives desires, expectations, habits, thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors. And then that heart attracts to itself others’ that believe the same.
The law of attraction is at work all around us. In a nutshell, like attracts like. Obviously that’s a bit simplistic, but it is the essence of the law. So if we apply it to matters of the heart and soul, what is in the individual heart eventually manifests and morphs into the core values, behaviors, and ideals of the household, the household values become the community’s values, the community becomes the city, the city becomes a region, the region becomes the nation. Not to digress, but this principal is precisely why the founders of the United States created a Constitutional Republic (NOT a democracy!) and why states rights are of paramount importance. Each state, within the parameters of the original documents needs to do what is best for their state and constituency. There’s lots to debate here, but that’s for another time…
What one believes about spiritual matters is what I’m calling “Faith.” Others within in the 7 Mountains thinking and research will call it “church” or “religion,” but I call it “faith” because I believe it goes deeper than those two words capture. I believe it’s foundational to the human existence. Because it’s foundational to the human existence, I do not believe you can separate culture from matters of faith. There has been a movement in the United States for many, many years that I believe has become full blown and has moved the nation from a Constitutional Republic to a Democracy—which is a very different form of government. The experiment of a country as a republic has passed in my opinion. The People couldn’t guard and protect it and secular humanism has become the pervading religion that promises “reason” and “freedom for all,” but actually delivers death. More on that later…
I'll attempt to share what I've learned along the way and how I believe matters of faith can help answer some of society's toughest challenges. I’ll also make the case that there is no such thing as separation of church and state because of the way humans are designed. It’s a nice idea that doesn’t work in reality.
Bottom Line: I have spent a lifetime deeply researching religion and asking tons of questions. I have found that all roads lead to Jesus of Nazareth and there have been times in my life where I explicitly did not want that to be true for various reasons. Read on for more color as to how I got there by fighting through the fires of Mordor to get to the other side to live in peace and joy.
More Color
I am a documentary junkie. For me, there's nothing better than a well done documentary. One of my recent favorites is a PBS documentary on ancient cultures. In a nutshell, it demonstrates a fundamental truth: humans are spiritual beings and that is expressed all around them. So much so, we can find the evidence of that truth thousands of years later on walls of caves and in artifacts found in the dirt.
We are a spirit, we have a soul, and we live in a body. Our spirits and our souls are eternal. They are housed or contained in a physical body that will return to the earth, but the true self (the soul) is undying—it just changes form. The spirit is either alive and thriving or dead and asleep. Researchers like Dr. Lisa Miller are teaching us about the neuroscience of spirituality and how spirituality is protective against depression and suicide and there are physical markers of this evidence in the brain. Her research is proving that we are born with innate and physical capacity for spiritual awareness.
Dr. Lisa Miller’s work and the PBS documentary and others like it demonstrate that as far back as anthropologists and other scientists can go, there is evidence that humans have threaded throughout their culture spiritual practices that are expressions of our spiritual nature. This is an unchanging ancient truth because it is embedded in the DNA, genes, and brain of human beings. The soul is the mechanism that allows a human to connect horizontally to other humans and animals. It is the person's personality and temperament. Animals have souls as well. That's clear as day in observing their little personalities. The spirit is the mechanism that humans have to connect spiritually or vertically to their Creator.
Most ancient cultures did not separate their religion or faith practices from their governance or work practices. It was threaded through every facet of their lives and culture. I believe that is a more genuine and authentic way to govern because humans are spiritual beings. The more in tuned to the people a governing body is, the better they can serve and support them. There is a big push in the United States to remove God from all parts of society. The move is into secular humanism and that is a religion. That is a faith, it’s just a faith that is separate from The Living God.
It is my supposition that matters of faith within an individual human sets and shapes the worldview and lens with which that person makes sense of themselves and the world around them.
If you’re an atheist, your “faith” is in the “rational mind.” If you’re agnostic, a secular humanist, a pagan or spiritualist, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Taoist, Shintoist or a combination of them all, whatever your spiritual views are, they shape what you connect to. They shape what you’re interested in, what you believe proper interventions and practices are, and how you choose to live your days. They also shape all other mind molding mountains and how you believe those mountains should be managed and what should comprise them.
While my writings under the Faith Mountain will largely be from my worldview because that’s what I have to offer and the perspective I have to share, I will always work to fold in other perspectives as much as possible. However, I have to genuinely understand them to do so. There are a lot of religious practices I can’t wrap my head around, so if I can’t feel confident in my competence, I’ll likely leave those alone until or if there’s even a modicum of competency in place. At the very least, I’ll attempt to alert readers to my incompetence on a subject!
The Faith Mountain and what a community or nation is willing to stand for in matters of faith determines the pathway and foundations of the other mountains of governance, money/work, learning/education, health/wellness/the family, creativity/the arts & entertainment, and media.
My purpose is not to convert anyone to my way of thinking on matters of Fatih. I can’t make any decisions for you. All I can do is share my experiences and perspective and then you get to decide what you choose to believe. I deeply respect and admire all world religions--I enjoy studying them and learn so much from them. I have found value in every single world religion I’ve studied. I have most certainly found endless value in the people of those nations and religions.
My Worldview
I grew up in a pretty idyllic situation: loving home, affluent, church going, hard-working, service oriented parents on an upward trajectory for life as the world defines it. I have an older sister who loathed my existence because I utterly screwed up the sweet deal she had goin’ on, but even that sorted itself out and today we adore each other.
As idyllic as my world was, for as long as I can remember I battled high anxiety, fear, worry, and even depression, although at the time we didn’t know it. On the outside, often things looked “fine,” but my internal experience was pretty tormented.
How is that possible when the outside world around you is seemingly “perfect” and as good as it gets? Quite literally anything and everything I could ever want was at my fingertips–loving relationships, resources, opportunity, anything. It was all available to me like a buffet. So why was I still wrought with fear, worry, stress, self-sabotage, discontent, indecision, confusion, chaos, and anxiety that was utterly paralyzing?
As I reflect, I believe it was my system recognizing a profound and simple truth that is global, as in across cultures, races, socioeconomic status, etc.: The human soul is endlessly broken and corrupt, no matter how “good” we think we are and no matter what “good” or “bad” we are born into, we are in desperate need of an outside Savior to help and put us on the right path.
Based on my own experience, I believe we are born into death (no matter how good or bad our original home life is) because that soul is yoked and born into a broken world, fraught with all kinds of evil that often masks itself as "good." The harder we try the worse it gets and the more we try to justify ourselves. Each of us is born into a broken system that must be overcome by a choice we as an individual have to make.
Every human is on the same playing field--whether you're born into wealth or poverty. Whether you're born in the bush or the city. Whether you're born into privilege or not. It doesn't matter. There are nuances to this, yes, but at the core, this is a reality. What you choose to do with the life you've been given is what matters. I found myself born into wealth of all kinds and still was in desperate need of help. Privilege couldn't save me. Money couldn't save me. My family couldn't save me. Work or a new job couldn't save me. Marriage couldn't save me. Finally having a child couldn't save me. I had to make a choice and then live it. There were lots of things that could distract me or numb me for a while, but all of those left me worse than before once the distraction wore off. I spent a lot of my life feeling like a victim and buying into a lot of victim type thinking that never actually helped me in anyway. It just kept me trapped as a victim.
I found that my own soul was a black hole—a gravitational force and magnet that could never be filled, satisfied, or at peace. Always seeking more: more stuff, more money, more approval, more success, more career, more knowledge, more degrees, more friends, different friends, different house, more travel, what’s next? Exhausted. Depleted. Lonely. Afraid. Angry. Hopeless. Overwhelmed. The list goes on and on.
I do believe there is a solution to this issue of the fallen world and the black hole of my soul. It's a simple solution that many do not like and I didn't like it either. In fact, I literally tried everything else.
Seeking to find some answers or some relief of some kind, I started a long journey to trying and testing it all. Only one thing ended up truly filling the void and putting an end to the gravitational force of the black hole of my soul.
First stop: Christian Club. I believe there is a big epidemic in this nation: The Christian Club vs. True Followers of The Messiah (Messiah means “Anointed One.” The Greek version of the word “Messiah” is “Christ.”). I would characterize my early days as a “Christian Clubber.” Because of the community and family I grew up in, we did “Christian” type things like going to church, attending Sunday School, being involved in para-church organizations like Young Life and so forth. I checked a lot of boxes and put on all the right appearances, like you do for any club you’re involved in. But I really didn’t find answers to my most pressing questions and pain.
Quite frankly, in my heart of hearts, the whole thing kind of pissed me off. I would read the Bible and want to believe it—but there was such a disconnect for me between what I would read and what I was experiencing in my daily life. There was so much pain and suffering all around me--why would a supposed good God allow all this? It seemed like a neat idea to have a Savior who humbly came and defied and conquered death, but how does all this apply to me today? I would hear a lot of words that I thought were interesting but they didn't tell me which job or husband to choose.
Certain members of my family appeared to really be transformed by reading the Bible, but for me, it was more like a set of morals and groups to be involved in. It was a lot of stories and ideas I wanted to believe but in my heart of hearts I found them pretty impossible to truly believe. I had way more questions than answers. When the $%#& hit the fan in my life, if there was really a Living God, I needed Him to show up. Until then, I’ll keep asking questions and exploring because I couldn't see how the whole Bible thing worked in my daily life in the modern world.
I would say that a large majority of my life has been within what I call “The Christian Club.”
Second Exploration Stop: Humanism. Humanism says that the human soul is basically good and that humans, if we try hard enough can make this planet a better place. It places humans at the center of the universe with the ability to transcend within themselves to new heights.
This had a short lived appeal to my personality because I’m an optimist and really believe in the good in people and this earth. But I always got stuck on one pivotal point: if Humanism really worked, how is it possible that we still have raging and increasing global corruption, famine, wars, abuse beyond measure, crime, lawlessness, fear, depression, and endless discontent? To make it personal–I have good parents and a good family and we still battled divorce, fear, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, addiction, financial instability and yo-yoing–you name it–we dealt with it.
So if Humanism is true and humans are fundamentally good and the true masters of our domain, then I should be able to apply some positive psychology tips and be good to go long term. WRONG. Doesn’t work, not long term–I know because I tried. A million times over I tried. I always came up breathtakingly short on this one. This one pissed me off too because I could not do any of this in my own strength, no matter how hard I tried. I needed help from someone outside of the current system I was stuck in. Plus you have the issue of every baby that is spit out of another human, eventually has to choose the type of person they're going to be and that sort of thing takes years to flesh out. This seems like an endless cycle and left me feeling hopeless. If our only hope is in humans, we’re screwed. Next?
Third Exploration Stop: Several World Religions. Eventually I hit a quick smattering of Buddhism, Islam, and Shintoism. A lot of the tenets of these world religions are seen in America through various psychology outlets. With my background in clinical psychology, that’s largely where I tested some of these approaches and ideas. They have a lot to do with nature and seeking peace through various cognitive tools, meditation, as well as understanding the influence of your ancestors and various narratives. I enjoyed studying each of these and Carl Jung did a lot of work in understanding ancestral influences through his work with the collective unconscious. I still like ideas of the collective unconscious and various tenets of each of these faiths. While I found interesting ideas and concepts in all of these, for me personally, I was still searching for something more. Something BIGGER. Something DEEPER.
Fourth Exploration Stop: Judaism. In my quest for truth and understanding, I always ended up back at the Bible. It seemed to be the most complete and thorough body of work to do my digging. Many anthropologists have found that the dating and history of it have been proven to a certain extent, so it's a great resource. During grad school, I learned a few more research techniques that I could now apply to other areas of my life.
My mom had been using a Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible and showed me how it worked one day. I love words, language, and history so this intrigued me. I got myself one and got to work. Studying the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek of the Bible ultimately led me to the Jewish culture, language, and calendar. I was fascinated and I began to study Judaism. I had one fairly sticky wicket: What do I do with Jesus?
Jesus/Yeshua (Yeshua is His Hebrew name) either is who He says He is or He is the greatest liar the universe has ever encountered. Even the Quran acknowledges He is a prophet and “the Word of God.” The Word of God is one of the most compelling identities of the Creator because He speaks and it is so. John says that the Word of God became flesh and he was the light of the world in referring to Jesus. In Genesis, in the original Hebrew, the intelligent "Word of God" is seen hovering over the chaos of the deep. That was written by Moses over 1300 years before Jesus showed up. Fast forward to Jesus' time and one of his closest friends and disciples who saw him up close and personal called him "The Word of God." But this time it was in the Greek. This is Word of God concept is transcending language and time. Lots of things get lost in time, but this didn't seem to. Now all the sudden the name, "Ancient of Days" used in reference to the eternal God is starting to make a little sense. Then in the only forward looking book in the Bible, Revelation 19, "Word of God" shows up one other time and it's in the picture of Jesus returning in all power and glory for the final battle on earth of good verses evil.
That's pretty cool. It was the depth of Judaism combined with the New Testament that knocked my socks off. Things started to come alive for me in ways I had never experienced before. Through new eyes and a new perspective, things I had read hundreds of times started to make sense.
I found it interesting that in contrast to others over the ages, the way Jesus/Yeshua confirmed His essence was different. He didn’t outright say, “I am the Son of God and you should worship me!” In the course of His everyday life, out walking around, working, living, learning, engaging, and building relationships, others experienced something in Him. THEY were the ones who said, “Wait—you’re kind of amazing, are you the Son of God?” And then His response would be something like, “It is as you say. Now don’t tell anyone.”
Wait, what? Why aren’t you trying to get all the attention? Why don’t you want to tell anyone? Yet the attention seems to just come because there’s something magnetic about you. And you are giving the people what they desperately need and have been crying out for for years—healing, hope, direction, availability, and love. When someone is doing something for themselves, they want the attention and they want to capitalize on something in some way. They want to get the word out and either make some money or gain some power. Someone who is doing something for others and not for personal gain does not do it for the notoriety—in fact, they’d rather not be known. Hmmm. I find this whole situation very interesting.
Because I had studied enough from the Christian perspective, once I hit Judaism, all I could see was Jesus/Yeshua. He was threaded through everything they did. Every feast, every prayer, literally everything pointed toHim--The Coming Messiah. He had come once, meek and lowly, as a servant and He would come again as a great warrior to set up His eternal Kingdom on earth as it already is in Heaven. Their entire culture was breathtaking for me because it answered deep questions that the Western, Christian theology couldn't. My study of Judaism was utterly critical for my personal faith.
Final Answer: Yeshua/Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life and my Doorway to my Father and Creator in Heaven. He is my rest. He is my peace. He is my Salvation. He is the answer to that black hole in my soul. The answer isn’t an idea or way of thinking, it’s a PERSON.
After all my questioning, wrestling, reading the Quran, Torah, searching out tenets of all the others and finally getting genuine with myself and God (if there was one), I was at my wits' end. We were struggling in our marriage, I couldn’t get pregnant, I was having intense physical issues that no doctor seemed to be able to help, I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up and I was in my 30’s (aren’t I grown up?). This sucks! I felt like a total failure—I couldn’t even get pregnant—isn’t that what women do? Basically I was D.O.N.E. I remember one day going into my closet and getting on my knees and hollering out to God and saying, “If you are REAL, puh-leeease show me. I don’t want to believe a fairy tale. I want what is REAL. I want what is TRUE.”
In all my research on the various options for human religion, I began to see a similar thread: most of them were man striving upward to reach God. They were all dependent on me, the human, to “do better,” “be better,” “reach God”—but I can’t. I didn’t need better ideas or to just strive harder. I had tried striving harder—it didn’t ease my pain or rescue me. I liked the idea of forgiveness, but I wasn't very good at giving it and I certainly wasn't good at receiving it.
By this time, I had gotten married and things are a little more simple to Mark's personality and I heard him say to someone one time, “The Christian faith is the only faith where God says, 'You can’t come up to me, I have to come down to you.' All others are man striving to reach God in some way. Jesus is the only God who is the higher being coming down to the lower being and says, ‘You can’t do it on your own. I have to do it for you and then hand the gift to you. All you have to do is receive. I willingly do this for you.'" Something hit me in that moment. Hmmm. I’ve never really thought of it that way. That was a seed that percolated in me for a while.
Fast forward to my particularly trying time in life, you know the one in my closet where the $#%& was hitting the fan and I was crying out to God? In my closet, by myself, I started talking--out loud. I told Him, “Are you really REAL God?! If you are, then you know all the exploring and wrestling I’ve done. You know all the times I’ve pretended you didn’t exist and did exactly what I wanted to do and I have still ended up here, broken, lost, confused, and in pain. What now? Is all this just a silly fairy tale? Am I just talking to myself?! If you are really REAL show yourself to me!”
Something happened in that moment. A great light and presence of Love and Peace and Hope broke into that closet and I had an encounter with the Living God. When I walked out of that closet, I wasn’t the same person. Some sort of transformation had taken place. It’s difficult to put into words, but I was a new creation. I felt different.
By the time this encounter happened, I had taught Bible Study for years, I had been in church more Sundays than not, I had gone on mission trips, I had sat in hours and hours of Bible studies and prayer gatherings and I guarantee you anyone who knew me would have said I was a “Christian.”
Maybe that was true according to a certain definition, but as I reflect, I was a “Christian Clubber,” but I was not a new, transformed spiritual creation with an intimate, flowing. maturing relationship with The Living God. I was a Christian moralist who thought I knew a lot and didn't know squat. I knew a lot about Jesus, but I didn’t know Him. It’s the equivalence of knowing all about a celebrity, but you don’t know them. If you bump into them at the grocery store, you feel like you know them, but they don’t know you.
As a Christian moralist, living life my way with a little bit of Jesus sprinkled in there. I had been reading the Bible and other religious books most of my life on a regular basis, but I surmise that it really was just a “self-help book” not the transforming Presence and Word of God until that closet moment for me.
Before the closet, my internal world was more characterized by selfish ambition, self-righteousness, judgement, criticism, rigidity, and fear, not peace, joy, freedom, hope, and love. I was caught in a list of to-do’s and nice ideas. I didn't even have a decent working definition of love to put into practice. My very worldly definition of love was pretty corrupted and it was blocking the authentic giving and receiving of true love. Love is the currency and mechanism that truly heals all. We all carry lots of blockages.
After my closet experience, it took me some time to sort through some things. I knew something felt different, but I really couldn’t articulate it. What transpired from there was years of training by The Holy Spirit of The Most High Living God in Godly living. It was bumpy and I’m still a work in progress, but for the first time in my life, I started feeling and experiencing true change in my world.
The first thing the Lord my God began teaching me was HIS definition of love. And boy did I have it wrong. He began to show me that love is largely behavioral--it really isn't an emotion. Love is a choice, not chemistry. Love is enduring, faithful, rooted, patient, kind and it’s a pathway we must choose over and over again. I wasn't any of these things and I certainly didn’t feel those things. Love takes time and cultivates things like freedom, hope, and safety. The Lord my God began teaching me what it meant that HE is love. Love is a person and it is tangible--you can take it in with all your senses. This was revolutionary for me.
So is it possible that we can fully live a “Christian life” and at the end of it find out we’re not actually believers in & followers of Jesus/Yeshua? Yes. I believe that’s true. Matthew 7:21-23 speaks to this.
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord!’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, only those who do what my Father in heaven wants. On that Day, many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord! Didn’t we prophesy in your name? Didn’t we expel demons in your name? Didn’t we perform many miracles in your name?’ Then I will tell them to their faces, ‘I never knew you! Get away from me, you workers of lawlessness!'" Again, the equivalence of knowing all about a celebrity, but they don’t know you and you certainly don’t know them. You know about them.
In fact, I was doing a deep dive on Matthew chapters 5-7 because I was teaching it and I could feel myself being put in the balance, as in the scale, and I was coming up lacking.
The answer to my sin, my broken world, and my pain, my separation from my Creator was not positive psychology or myself (they are pieces of the puzzle, but not the puzzle) it was a Person who is outside time, above it because He created it. The answer to all my deepest longings and the answer to my hopelessness, despair, and fear wasn’t more human tactics, it was a PERSON, a Being who actually had the power and authority to shatter all evil and nasty patterns I had created in my life. In fact, He had already done it. It was already finished. All I had to do was receive it and allow for some working out in my daily life.
I had lived all my days as a “Christian” doing “Christian things” and in my 30’s I finally began having a transformative, personal, intimate relationship with The Living God. It was worlds apart from the Christian Club. My husband says I was a Christian that was on the road of sanctification. And maybe that’s true. All I know is that I could have probably lived my whole life in the “Christian Club” trying to figure out why nothing was ever actually changing or growing. In fact, I was lulled to sleep by the rhythms and culture of the American Christian life.
I was not awake until that closet moment. I was building my Kingdom by the means of the various cultural buckets I had grown up in. I was interested in moralism and my own knowledge and understanding of God, according to my own interpretation of it. I was not really into allowing God to actually be who He truly is, apart from all the worldly confines I was comfortable with.
It's uncomfortable to let God be God. He's big and powerful, but gentle and faithful. He is worth losing everything for. His beauty and love know no end. He is the greatest and only answer to satisfy our deepest longings and desires. He is fun, funny, approachable, available, and crazy cool.
The biggest thing I want to leave people with: no matter your background, no matter what you’ve believed or not believed up until this point, ask God to show you who He really is. Not who the world says He is. Not who religion says He is. Not who the culture says He is. Not who your family says He is. Who HE says He is and then be willing to truly hear and receive the answer. If nothing happens, you’ve lost nothing. BUT. IF something happens, maybe you’ll gain absolutely everything.
Faith Mountain Moving Forward
So moving forward, the Faith Mountain will largely be from my Biblical worldview where I will fold in a few things I’ve learned of other faiths. I will often make the distinction between the Christian Club and True Disciple of Jesus. There’ a difference. I define the Christian Club as a set of morals, ideas, and groups that one belongs to. It’s absolutely a worldview, but is very different from a deeply transformed and intimate relationship with the Person of The Living God. A Disciple of Jesus is someone who spends hours of time with Jesus in His Word, through prayer and communion with Him, they wrestle with sin and are in a constant state of humble learning. It’s hard work and there’s a reason the Bible says, “Narrow is the road that leads to life and few find it. Broad is the road that leads to destruction and many enter it.” I can openly say that broad road to destruction is where I have spent the majority of my life so far. And it does NOT look like it's the road to destruction or I would not have been on it. That's the definition of deception: if you're deceived, you don't know it.
You do not have to believe as I do in order to benefit from knowing what I believe & where I come from. Not sure what you think about God? No problem! That takes time and a lot of wrestling. Try this article: Is There a God? This is a great one even if you do believe there is a God!
Or have you once had faith and find yourself questioning everything, including God Himself? No problem! Life and faith ebbs and flows. The idea is to not give up. Never quit asking questions and seeking reliable sources. God is a big God--He can handle whatever you throw at Him. Just be honest with Him and yourself.
Kind of bored in your walk with God and need some exciting new energy around your faith and walk with The Lord? Check out some of the things on my resource page that have inspired me and put me on a fresh path of intimacy with the infinite God that has treasures untold! I assure you He is not boring--we're the ones who get stuck in ruts.
My purpose is not to convert anyone. I can’t make any decisions for you. All I can do is share my experiences and perspective and then you get to decide what you choose to believe. I deeply respect and admire all world religions--I enjoy them and learn so much from them. All I know is that people of all faiths and religions and cultures were drawn to Jesus/Yeshua when He was on this earth because He is a cool dude doing cool things that the people were hungry for. He was available and meeting needs. If I can follow in His footsteps and be a cool gal doing cool things that the people are hungry for and meeting needs, then I’m happy.
For more resources and a Bible Study, please go HERE.