Many roads, one destination. How often most of us protect our individual freedom to determine the manner of our faith with lines like this. There are those who preach that only one certain understanding of the teachings of Christ will take us to the place salvation promises, and there are others who are sure by their actions alone their destiny will be fulfilled. There is the straight and narrow path of strict dogma, and the wide and aimless path of individuality. We are a culture starved for religious experience yet vexed by an overwhelming need to protect our individuality. While some are willing to surrender everything to either mainstream or cultic religions, others fight vigorously to make a moral stand based on an inner faith accountable only to themselves. Burned out from all they have heard from the religious right, the later will not necessarily deny the existence of God, but are quick to stand up for their right to establish a personal faith without the scrutiny of a higher power. These folks hold on to one small good deed they might commit much in the same way a rich miser clings to a half-pence, thinking it will add interest to his fortune one day. The former compromise the very gifts God has given them as they hide in an inner circle of religious conformity. Thus faith is relegated to obscurity and exclusivity giving onlookers only one choice--conform or walk away.

Why do we refuse to see what stands in front of us in plain sight? We complicate everything we do with self-importance. Whether it's the need to be seen as a pious practitioner of the faith or as a steadfast individual, we cloud our calling with self-absorption. It's fascinating for me to hear the different approaches people take on faith. It goes anywhere from New Age mysticism to modern day Zen psychology, or just plain secular humanism. But wherever it goes it avoids one key thing--an outright submission to God. The need for a religious experience is as strong in our culture today as it has ever been, but the desire to be accountable to a power that only faith can touch is at an all time low. Eastern concepts have become increasingly popular in western culture, but even at our best, we Westerners can only approach these ancient concepts in a superficial way. I can only laugh when I hear Zen is being applied to someone's business tactics or sports training. We have such a pop culture mentality towards everything we do it's embarrassing. We look to Buddhism for answers, and there we can find an eight-fold path that provides us with the moral basis we need to feel good about ourselves, but in the western mind this is often corrupted with a self-centered view of accomplishment. The faith of an authentic eastern Buddhist is as elusive to the western mind as the Tao itself, but once again in our culture what we're really looking for is something we can call a "faith" without the troublesome aspect of a god.

Angels have become quite popular too. Angels are safe. We can believe all the good stuff about the afterlife and even God as long as we place angels safely between us and God. We have an easier time imagining the graceful works of an angel than those of our own. Besides, they make great refrigerator magnets. We read and write hundreds of books on angels and we love the positive hopefulness they invoke, but the focus seems to shift too far from their real purpose. They are messengers from God. They belong to God. They are about God and God's business. They are not about themselves, and that can make the presence of a real angel a little scary to most people. So we don't focus on that.

The mind-set that we exist in is of ancient origin. Its roots go back to the beginning of civilization. Since the dawn of agriculture in the fertile crescent our insistence to determine for ourselves what is right and wrong or good and evil has suppressed our submission to God. Having turned our back on the Creator we then took creation into our own hands. Hubris was our fall then and it's our fall now. We are still present in that first second of time as God sees it. Our first step towards reconciliation is to own up to who we are.

I AM ADAM. We are Adam. Throughout history we have passed the buck to a historical figure we call Adam. Whether we believe him to be real or representative, we have kept him in the past. When the ancient storytellers spoke of Adam they were speaking of humankind. It was only a matter of time that our linear thinking would place Adam back in history, thus removing his present day meaning which holds us all accountable for his actions. When we--Adam--ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, we chose to no longer depend on God for our well being. It was said by doing this Adam would die. Many people have argued over why Adam did not instantly die (according to scripture) at that moment. Some have called it a spiritual death, some have said it was a loss of eternal life or immortality. I contend that it was just what God said it was--a literal, physical death. Adam is dying. We have always had two choices, but we have always chosen poorly. Each one of us has the opportunity to choose from the tree of life or of certain death. But our fate is well illustrated in the duality of Adam: With the death of Able at the hands of Cain our future, which is now our present, was set into motion. We are living in the land of Nod. We now dwell in the house of Cain, and we suffer the legacy of Lamech. What we have grown to worship as knowledge is actually hubris most of the time.

I may not be a smart man, but I know what love is.
- Forrest Gump

It is a simple faith. One all the books, theologians and preachers in the world combined cannot quantify. Jesus himself summarized everything in Matthew 22:36-40:

He said to him,"'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." (NRSV)

As we can see pure knowledge or rather wisdom is not the sin of Humankind, but the assumption of knowledge according to our standards is. Most often it is our preconceptions as to what's right that separates us from others. Thus there are two great heresies: preoccupation with the affairs of others and preoccupation with our own agenda. Both of these heresies isolate us from others. When we feed the hungry we feed ourselves; when we heal the sick, we heal ourselves; and when we embrace the marginalized we come to terms with what it means to have integrity. If we cannot love even the most outcast among us we can never learn what it means to love ourselves. It's been said when looking upon the destitute: There but for fortune go you or I, but I say: No fortune separates us, rather it is I.

So when I'm asked, are there many paths leading to one faith? I can only say--NO. There is but one path, and it belongs to God. You are on it, or you are not. You can try all the self help, possibility thinking, or empowerment books you want, but you will get nowhere unless you surrender that "self" to the will of God. All the genius in the world cannot measure up to the pure heart. God is Love, and to love is to know God. The pure in heart will see God, and I have no doubt when I watch my child, or look into my wife's eyes, God is there looking back.