Contents of this Study

A Personal Statement of Faith

I am continually trying to understand my life, but the natural processes of life always seem to be in a state of uncontrolled flux. With the focus of my day-to-day activities being in constant transition, efforts to bring long-term meaning and cohesion into my life are challenging, to say the least. The one area of my life that I can hold onto with some degree of consistency is my personal religious faith. This faith sees beyond that which my eyes perceive - it brings about a comprehensible insight that my mind alone fails to attain. This faith is firmly grounded in my personal experience of God as a loving Father. It speaks to my soul. Its reassuring growth has been so steady and gradual that I consider it the most stable and enduring aspect of my mortal being.

My faith has been inspired primarily by my personal experiences of living in the Father's love. It has been little influenced by church dogma or formal religious training. As my spiritual Father and I have concertedly worked together in establishing better communion through my prayer and worship, and as I have striven with ever greater effort to understand and act in accordance with my Father's will, I have come to better recognize him and his loving personal nature. I have also been greatly influence by the many life-enhancing graces that he has brought into my life, so much so that I have developed an unshakeable trust in his ever present beneficence.

My faith represents who I am, and even who I am becoming. Its growth gives shape to my truer self. It is so very personal and so intimately connected with my gradually evolving being that it establishes itself as a stabilizing balance for this slow-growth transformation of personal identity. For me, faith is vibrant and living - it energizes the quality of my personal experiences, providing as it does profound insights into the goodness and joy of both the inner and outer life. It also helps to unify and make more cohesively comprehensible my many developing belief systems. I find that the comprehensible truths provided by my faith enhance my life-reality viewpoint.

My personal faith provides a common ground that brings greater meaning and value to all of my life experiences. This kind of living faith brings about a state of being that can be felt and experienced, even if such a faith is difficult to describe. As each of us is supremely unique as individual persons, our personalized faiths are equally unique and individualized. Because of this, I find it difficult to effectively verbalize my faith, though I believe there is great value in attempting to give testimony of one's faith to one's fellows. In spite of the daunting challenge and the obvious limitations that entail giving voice to my personal faith, I am courageously compelled to give voice to the inexpressible, to express that which cannot be given words, to give a testimony to "my articles of faith";

Loving Purpose

As I perceive it, life is purposed. Against all contrary appearances, I see the panorama of God's creation as being guided by supreme intelligence and as being imbued with a benign and loving spirit. The created universe is, for me, ultimately sane and friendly, and at its very heart beats the exquisitely profound and driving power of love. Although I recognize that there is great pain and suffering in the world, I still find it exceedingly more satisfying to accept the idea that creation is divinely designed and lovingly directed than to try to rationalize an otherwise haphazard and accidental universe where bad things automatically happen.

My sometime great difficulty in coming to terms with such apparent discrepancies against this positive view of life is, I believe, due in large part to my presently imperfect, though hopefully perfecting, finite nature. My grasp of ideas and my search for ideals are conditioned by my relatively short allotted life span, so I can see things with a viewpoint that is only as expansive as the pathway on which I have traveled. If I could but transcend this finite and mortal frame, I am sure that I would begin to understand that which my imperfect and mortal mind cannot currently comprehend. I am increasingly confident that all of today's confusion, pain, and suffering will sometime be seen in a new light, a divine light that will give forth to a new comprehension. I courageously trust that the divine wisdom behind the true purpose and plan of creation will surely be worthy of my greatest praise, joy, and appreciation.

The Vicissitudes of Life

I am witness to many mindless acts of anger and hatred, and I cannot understand the apathetic indifference of some of my brothers and sisters to heartless cruelty and wanton immorality. We have all suffered. We have all experienced what we thought to be unbearable pain. We have all at one time or another fallen victim to seemingly overwhelming difficulties and obstacles. Yet, these experiences are becoming increasingly constrained in their painful impact on my sensibilities. The soothing passage of time brings spiritual healing and renewed hope. As I grow in age and wisdom, as I develop a more courageous and tenacious faith, I become witness to the diminishing effects that these events of human misfortune and injustice have on my growing appreciation for life - I maintain a stronger trust in the goodness of the overall scheme of things. Most human misfortunes and disappointments are transient afflictions. Life is filled with struggle and hardship, but it is from these circumstances of life that such virtues as wisdom and courage arise. Even with their many rippling repercussions in the ongoing flow of human events, these unfortunate acts of time and circumstance appear to be rooted in the transient unreal - they do not seem of themselves to be capable of surviving very long with the full permanency of their original impact. They seem to go counterflow against the "cosmic stream" of time. Increasingly, I find that many of the fruits of their circumstance such as discovered courage and renewed faith are laying a growing foundation for a more hopeful future. 

Progressive Goodness

The inconsistencies and imperfections that I perceive in this purposed world are an essential part of the human life experience. The pathway of life is beset with overwhelming challenges and obstacles, and each of us is a part of the "dance". No one is excluded. Our lives provide manifold opportunities for comforting the suffering and healing the affirmed, for inspiring the renewal of hope and exhibiting courageous resolve. I realize that the life experience offers an ideal arena for personal growth. The apparent inconsistencies and imperfections of this often all-too-real world serve only to bolster the unfolding and progressive goodness in this divinely willed creation. I have been given the freewill choice to participate in making the progression of goodness a supreme reality. My efforts in this regard effect reciprocal changes in both myself and in the world around me.

Life Affirmation

My faith leads me to trust in those meanings and values that I have learned to hold dear in my life. These life-affirming realities are surely destined to flourish, whereas those "un-realities" that I revile are, I am finding, vacuous and fleeting - they are ultimately unworthy of survival and permanence. I am discovering that they are slowly and surely losing their depth of impact on my innermost sensibilities. I place my trust in the victory of divine goodness and light over the soul-deadening darkness of evil.

The Creative Father

Behind this veil of creation, I perceive a true and personal Creator, a loving God and Father. For me, this trustworthy Creator displays the attributes of both purposive will and loving personality. This personal God is the primal source of all those realities that I am continuously finding as having a major impact on every experiencing moment of my life. As I continually harmonize the essence of my own evolving personal identity, I perceive spiritual goodness, intelligible truth, and harmonious beauty with ever-greater acuity. I am beginning to see that I am personally real only by virtue of my being centered in the original personality of the eternal being of God, the beneficent Creator of infinitely free and loving will. He desires that I become perfect even as he is perfect.

The Love of the Father

I have great hope and expectation that this Creator is dearly and intimately concerned with my life - with me! As a true parent loves the child, I have trusting faith that I am also loved and cherished by this personal God. His love utterly transcends and outshines even the very best of any humanly parental love. I do not see how even mortal death could ever possibly put an end to this relationship between the Creator and myself.

Who can possibly have the power to interfere with this relationship, when it is the Father himself who reaches out for me! I take increasing comfort in my faith that death is transitory and not final. Human mortality is showing itself to be merely a scaffold to some next stage in the revealing of God's love for me. The hope and promise for continuing opportunities to grow in God's love overwhelms and inspires me.

The Love for One Another

The love that I am experiencing more and more in my life seems to know of no limits or qualifications. This boundless love unfailingly shines from within with increasing clarity and power. As I increasingly recognize and identify with this divine love, I am led to better understand the true connection of my life with all other God seeking individuals.

I am not only experiencing this God of love from within, but I am also discovering with continued and dedicated application this same God of love within all other God seeking individuals. As I am motivated in life by the assurance of the Fatherhood of God, I am equally inspired by the recognition of the true Brotherhood of Man.

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