If that 5% is indeed true, Ray, the Church is in serious trouble. Conversion is supposed to produce a metanoia, change of mind (heart).

We see what a profound realization of our mortality can produce by looking at the effects of Near Death Experiences (NDEs).
For the majority, their “whole attitude and outlook upon life” is fundamentally altered to a new and joyous direction in an extremely brief period of time–without effort or intent, without the help of any belief system or ideal, without the instruction from any preacher, guru, or holy book, without any apparent penance or process. All they had to do to “achieve” this wondrous and Dynamic Conversion was to have the good grace to…die.

The Recovery process is, as well, a form of metanoia.

I think it safe to say that we can safely throw out that textbook, at least I pray we can.

Ray, my apologies; my response was rather flippant. About an hour after I posted, I realized I had not given your excellent blog the attention it deserved. And then I got busy and forgot.
For almost thirty years of being in a Recovery Program, witnessing change in worldviews has become matter of fact; opening to change is a basic principle and daily occurrence. Yet your question went deeper than these observations. Once that change has occurred, how open are those people to change again or question how they got where they did?

This topic is not new to me. I have a masters in clinical psychology and more to the point I have been a lifelong student of spiritual paths and philosophies. Obviously, people do not believe in anything they do not take as truth: why abandon these, often hard-won, lessons? Experience, the intimacy of revealed “truth,” takes precedent. The past becomes the textbook. Yet we all have filters, ways of seeing and interpreting events according to old messages. Self-prophecizing. All of us tend to see things as we are rather than as they are (paraphrasing Nin and Buddha and Jesus).
The NEED for certainty is a pathology. Faith demands no proof or supports. Two basic characteristics of true faith are an openness to discovery and the ability to hold ambiguity. The ego likes black and white and surety; it’s survival rests on these things. Image is the life-blood and breath

Image is the life-blood and breath of being, and at direct and ever-lasting enmity against true faith (flesh against spirit).

If I have your intent right, the question is this: How can we be confidant in our understanding of the word as well as being open to changes in that view? Of course, I could say it is not about being right about scripture but about being true to scripture: big difference. How are we true to scripture? The right hermeneutics? Following the thoughts of Luther, Calvin, Wesley, or the Pope?

The basic error is being set in what we believe instead of how we believe. “Turn, and become as little children.” “…BECOME as little children”: this is central to faith. It is a state of being, not a statement of belief, upon which we rest: complete surrender to the Holy Spirit as our teacher in all things. Where is the one place we can find the Holy Spirit? In the moment, for he is a lamp unto our feet: the perfect amount of illumination to light what is before us, past and future in the dark.

Change cannot be approached from the mind, only from the heart.

I officially died twice: once when I, was seven, drowning in the surf of Rockaway, and the second time when I was eighteen, pronounced dead by EMTs from heat exhaustion. Neither experience translates well into words. When I discovered the Mystics at twenty (and I see Buddhism as a starved version of that path), it resonated far better than my Cradle Catholicism. But I was not convinced. Taught by the Jesuits, I questioned everything. I decided on the path of bubbly oblivion and became a drunk.

Like the saint, the addict becomes more and more faithful to the object of their devotion, the revered choice of drink or drug (or wealth or power or fame or other worldly pursuits).
Like the saint, the addict becomes less and less interested and attached to other things in their world. He or she will lose their car, house, teeth, family, and reputation yet never despair of or turn away from this “Beloved.”
Like the saint, when–if–the addict finally reaches a bottom, he or she is almost zenfully clean of worldly trappings, all “fetters.” The addict has found renunciation through over-indulgence, non-attachment through over-dependence: a reverse (even perverse) yet nonetheless saintlike discovery about true freedom.
Yet in one aspect, the saint and the addict are the same: both are self-destructive (only the addict has a more literal interpretation of this vital spiritual practice).

“A living sacrifice”: this is our moment to moment path. To live, we must die. This is where we need to place our greatest emphasis. This is our basic sacrement and ritual. This is to eat and drink of Christ. It is not about what we know but where we are: self-centered or God-centered.

Oops. Ray, I did not get a notice to your response until after my further rants. Once again my apologies; did not mean to talk over you like that. And you will never know how much I appreciate your follow-up comments. If I may be so bold (obnoxious) to comment further.

From the time I was seven, right after I drowned, I loved only Jesus, literally. My religion became everything to me. But I had been twisted by worldiness in the form of a dysfunctional family system: shame was my primary emotion.

That aside for now. At fourteen, I went into the local everything-a-kid-would-want stores in Da Bronx to get the three Cs of life: a coke, candy bar, and a comicbook. I happened to notice a headline in one of the tabloids: “God told me to eat my baby.” For some reason, this shook me to my core; a HS moment. Up until that moment, I thoroughly believed everything the Roman Catholic Church put forth was “the one, true faith.” I left that store unsure, and have been in that place for fifty years.

How can I possibly be certain? Against what or with what can I finally decide? How do I know I am not deluded? How do I prove I am right? And all my readings since then helped to convince me it was impossible. Then what am I left with to live my life?

My conclusions: I cannot know or hold truth; I can only be Its expression. Love is the platform of all things Christian. If I come, through grace, to actually love my neighbor, what is for my ultimate well-being is made manifest. There is endless joy in this place, everytime. It is trust, a full emotional commitment, and not knowledge, a cautious commitment, that turns the tide. Fall into the abyss.

Knowing something about you from your confession, I feel for your ache to know. I finally had to come to that place of letting go figuring it out for the (brutal) place of trust. Everything in me fought agains it.

I wish I had a dollar for every time I have been wrong about something in the Chritian faith.

Thanks be to God that He loves heretics, too!

I do not translate well into Christianity. Jonathan thought my urgings to be as a “little child” was literally about young children. I guess I shuold urge you to think outside the box or simply open to the spirit of what I, or anyone, is saying.