a few people asked and ive been thinking about all this a lot so gonna update this with i guess what you could call the theological progress ive made since i made this thread 6 months ago
while i enjoyed floating for a while + being super woke centrist, now that i have drawn some conclusions i worry that discussing them will be perceived as disrespectful to people that disagree but guess thats just how it is. miss being neutral in a sense
since i have changed my mind a lot or come to certain things recently and since im still unsure myself its really not like i view people who disagree theologically as idiots or anything and really never want to be that type of person
i no longer view the bible in this way + would never ask this question now. i think a lot of americans have a backwards view of things where the bible is what created a set of traditions that is one aspect of christianity. imo seems like the inverse is tru
something josiah trenham said about, so the apostles who were with jesus are living and teaching and imagine you’re with them, and they’ve told you all this stuff, and then they die, what are you supposed to do with that info? forget it because it’s not in the bible...?
seems like, to me, at this moment, that obviously the bible is a part of the tradition (if u want to call it that, oversimplifying) called christianity and that clearly there are extra biblical aspects to christianity because, seems like, the bible isnt meant to be the only thing
the way i think of it at this moment is that the bible is sufficient in a sense but, its kind of like the way tools are sufficient. you can have the right tools for the job but someone needs to tell you how to use them. a tool can be sufficient but require explanation.
i am not married to this view or pontificating as an authority just speaking casually as a guy trying to figure things out.
i asked a lot of questions like this in that thread. something else josiah trenham said (obviously he made a big impact on me) is that “we know where the holy spirit is, but we dont know where the holy spirit isnt”. [...]
really like that quote because it basically encapsulates that theres a clearly defined church but that the holy spirit operates in a somewhat mysterious capacity so its impossible to say that it isnt acting somewhere or to know exactly how it touches people, or thats how i see it
same deal here, i guess the “balance” to attempting to figure things out imo is recognizing that most people are whatever denomination they are by “historical accident”. imo its naive to not recognize this even if we can say theyre wrong about something
this turned out to not be the case and there is actually an american “branch” (diocese...? idk what to call it. also theres kind of two) of the orthodox church that is american, i did not know this at this time (OCA and antiochan.. forget the full name)
at this moment i do not belong to any particular church. i joke about the schism a lot because honestly i dislike that i have to choose between catholicism and orthodoxy. i have gotten a lot from both and feel a very mom and dad vibe from them as a pair at this time.
i am prone to rash decisions and rushing into things so im just kind of taking it slow, although things like wanting to make my marriage theologically official and wanting to get baptized are pressing the issue.
thats basically it. otherwise i do feel a lot less “floaty” and confused than 6 months ago. i pray every day. i also have been thinking about death a lot, both my own and people around me, plus getting married, has all crammed a lot of spiritual maturing into a tight timeframe.
one of the coolest parts is the fuel being poured into the art and vibe cauldron. i used to worry about running out of ideas or stagnating but going deeper theologically has made me see that im just scratching the surface of the potential that is there.
im also very pleased that clearly i am not an outlier in the ideosphere. it seems like regardless of specific conclusions everyone clearly sees that almost all of the problems we discuss are part of spiritual warfare and the vector towards a theological movement is very strong.
anyway the other day a cashier asked me if my phone background was saint paul so i told him it was st herman of alaska and told him all about him while he was ringing me out. good times. auspicious start to the year? survey says... yes 
