An All-Out Wager

Westerners suffer from an identity crisis. For the vast majority this crisis is both severe and prolonged, and most never manage to get beyond this at all. This includes members of religious bodies.

The question of one's identity can never be answered by either logic or culture. These are the two predominating options promoted for establishing one's identity today. Each of these provide identity in the forms of words, and formulas, and logical systems that lay out all possible options for respective adherents. In the case of the former these are couched in individual psychological terms, and in the case of the later they serve as a framework for the expected roles of one's culture. But when it comes to identity formed within a religious context, to have everything decided beforehand in either case is to dictate just how God will act; it reduces the gospel to systems of security.

The vast majority of Christian religious practitioners are unaware of this. In fact, given the research of Howard Gardner on how people acquire and utilize knowledge, they are likely to be simply mentally unable to get beyond either one or the other of these. The Gospel can of course be twisted to rationalize these outcomes in each of these groups; the answers that shore up each of these standpoints can be readily eisegeted from both text and tradition.

Identity - the true self - can only be had by a much deeper and much more mysterious commitment that begins with the acceptance of the centrality of the world, and after that of embracing one's place in it. It begins with a natural system infused with grace, connectedness, and love. And then in order to get beyond these our very existence becomes an experiment, a daring action of immersion and openness, an all-out wager of trust which is simply open to the possibility of God.

This is contemplation.