Writing your name in dust.

Recently, this past week, after watching "Death of a Pastor's Wife" and talking to several friends, I have come to a conclusion.

If it was not for my own personal walk with Jesus Christ, if my faith was based on any type of church, denomination, or system, I would probably be an atheist right now.

Because when you tie your belief into a system, that system will fail you. I have been around long enough to watch great men I admired and looked up to fall away from the faith, or get exposed for some grievous thing.

An older guy told me something once about the angels of light. He said the funny thing about them is that devils masquerade as angels. And they seem obsessed with sex. Sex perverts. Think about Jeffrey Epstein and the rest of those guys. Insane sexual drives that could not be satisfied. That is not human. That is not natural.

"And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light." 2 Corinthians 11:14

Now, my opposition to the Catholic Church is not personal. A long time ago I went to Catholic school. I had nuns as my instructors. Sweet, dear ladies. Every interaction I have ever had with a nun or a priest has been good.

But there is a huge gap between someone who follows Jesus Christ and someone who follows the Church.

People who follow a system learn to abide by a list. They check it off every single day. And Catholicism presents a very, very nice list. Do these things. Say these prayers. Buy a rosary. Say the rosary. Go to mass.

A preacher I have never met wrote a letter this week. United Pentecostal. Famous in his world. Stood behind their pulpits close to the power. If you know the IFB, you know the world he describes. Preachers who are politicians, with fans. Rules and regulations. Nepotism. Who you know. Money and prestige for the connected.

His heart broke in church. He got out. Divorce. Drugs. Gone for years. Now he is back, Eastern Orthodox, and amazed by the Eucharist. The body and blood of Jesus Christ, he says.

Here is the thing about me and my faith. I am practical and I am biblical. I do not believe a piece of bread becomes flesh. I do not believe Welch's grape juice becomes blood. When Jesus said take of my flesh and eat, take of my blood and drink, he was not inviting Hannibal Lecter. The Jews themselves were confused, because cannibalism is an abomination. Even today a man who chops somebody up and eats them goes to prison, and they make movies about him. It does not become okay in a religious setting.

Jesus settled it himself: "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." John 6:63

I have dear Catholic friends who really reverence the Eucharist. It brings them to a place of meditation. I get it. I am heading to the gym right after this. I listen to certain music to get into the mindset for lifting. My grandson Blake loves the Happy Baby Song. I am not putting that on to push through a set. David Goggins ran with Going the Distance from Rocky on a loop, because a song triggers a memory, the memory triggers a feeling, and the feeling makes you do something.

Iconography does the same thing. A memory that brings a feeling you are trying to chase.

And that is addiction. Chasing a hit. The law of diminishing returns says you need more and more to get the same feeling. That is why an addict goes to rehab, dries out, comes back, takes the same hit he was on before, and ends up in a bathroom with Narcan shoved up his nose.

That is what is happening here. People are leaving the Bible, leaving a personal walk with Jesus, to get a hit from some system or some routine.

And that is what I am against.

A woman I have never met wrote her own letter this week. An atheist first. A feminist, her word, all the way in. Then the gospel. Years as a Baptist. Then a year of reading and prayer, and she walked into Rome. She told nobody. She sat in her car and her soul felt all wrong. Her husband is a man I know. He and I were Baptist together. He helped me learn to write on this app years ago and charged me nothing.

Good people. Both of them. I mean that.

Why do they go? They get turned off by people. Turned off by a system that constantly fails them. They know Jesus is real and they know he is holy, but they are not seeing him in church. So they go to a church that gives them the form of it.

I understand the pull. As a kid we toured the great cathedrals of Europe. Austria. Germany. You walk in and you take your hat off. The stained glass. The quiet. It felt holy. It felt different than outside. Human beings need reverence. The Native Americans had sweat lodges for the same reason. We are built to want awe.

But reverence is a feeling, and a feeling is a hit. The Book is not a feeling.

They did not leave the machine. They traded it for an older one.

The convert blogs call it "coming home." It is not home. It is a bigger machine with older paint.

The roots are not in Rome. They are not in Constantinople either.

They are in the Book on your table.

"Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition." Mark 7:9

"For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." 1 Timothy 2:5

You know the itch. You have sat in a pew and felt the whole thing hum like a business. You have thought, there has to be more than this.

There is. It is in your lap.

You do not need a bishop. You need the Book, and the guts to believe it over every collar, every council, and every man with a title.

I would rather be lonely with the Book than at home in any machine.

They went looking for an older house.

I went looking for an older faith.

The Book holds.

P.S. This part is plain. This work is my livelihood. I do not make a lot of money doing it, and I am not trying to. I do it to get the word of God out, to help people, and to feed my family. If it has held you, help carry it:

https://donate.stripe.com/eVqbJ2bVm8WJ0nKabYcMM2q