**Fair warning, this one gets a little churchy. Buckle up, but keep reading.**

I’ll tell you an interesting thing to observe about this values exercise I do with people.

People often find themselves struggling with a binary. A duo of cards that, for them, represent something so similar so as to be nearly indistinguishable. Or at least inseparable.

How can you have one without the other? How can you choose between these two?

They’re not always the same for everyone, but this card, a spiritual life is one such card. I am delighted to watch people struggle through this exercise-within-an-exercise because that’s how real muscle is formed, right? Tearing of muscle fibers, pain, exhaustion, and finally the growth–the building back of something stronger.

A spiritual life is often, (not nearly always), compared with a card coming down the line, Devoutness: holding to religious faith and belief. That’ll be a weird one to write. One at a time, Nick, one at a time.

I like the descriptor for this card; emphasis on spiritual, not material matters.

My dad used to express that some folks were “so heavenly minded they were no earthly good”. I can see what he’s talking about. I can see what he was saying. Or, at least, I can see what I’d be saying if I were to repeat the phrase, (which I may do).

I have had a long and winding religious road. But as I reflect, I feel like my spiritual life has been a fairly straight line.

I learned early that Christ was the true vine, and we were the branches. And that the one the Lord loves, he prunes. He clips little bits off of us that aren’t helpful or aren’t producing fruit in order that we may grow as an organism, and recognize our connection to the oneness of himself.

I learned that the fruits of the spirit of the living God are as follows: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Gentleness, Faithfulness and Self Control. I further learned that against these things there is no law.

Nine things to look for in my life. Nine things by which to measure my need for pruning, my need to be a part of the long, slow, laborious work of loving the other people I have access to.

I do not worship the way I once did. It all looks and seems so different now. There was a time when Devoutness would be a tippy-top value choice of mine. That would have been a choice made out of obligation, or, more probably, fear.

When I was young I can remember asking Jesus to come into my heart regularly. Weekly. Monthly. I can remember moments alone, in my room or in my woods, dissecting my foul humanity, laying every ill deed out on a stone table to be sacrificed and done away with in order to make room for a holiness that seemed completely out of reach in the best of times and something completely undeserved in the worst.

So many of my young patterns were, I see now, based on a fear that God would smite me. Would strike me down. He was looking for an opportunity to give me what I deserved, and I kept providing them. And I just don’t think that now. My spirituality has—dare I say the word?—evolved.

So much of how I practice my beliefs, so much of how I see my values intersecting with others has changed. And yet… And yet it still feels familiar. What did I ever believe? What did I ever know? What did I ever even hope for in my younger days laden with ecclesiastical burden? How much really has changed?

One thing has changed, and it’s substantial for me, anyway. This is the big reveal: I do not believe in hell. I do not believe in it conceptually in the heart of God—whatever cosmic oneness awaits us, (I hope) after our time here is complete. And what’s more I do not even believe it to be a concept fairly borne out of scripture.

The idea is anathema to what I’ve come to think about God, and as further evidence in my mind, it’s directly on brand for what I’ve come to believe about men. And it’s always men. You will note that women are rarely mentioned in the Bible and none are, (at least credited with being), responsible for its written contents. I believe it to be a tradition of men, heavily influenced by the second-century church and beyond that, by literature—fables and fictions written in the most generous of assumptions to delight or, in the worst, (and sadly more likely) case, to deceive and control.

That may sound heretical to some. To others, it may sound obvious. But for me, letting go of hell changed everything. Without the threat of eternal conscious torment, my faith stopped being about avoiding damnation and started being about pursuing love. It became about allowing love to slowly grow and activate and unlock itself in my life.

The fruits of the spirit aren’t a checklist to escape hell—they’re just... the whole point. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. Against these things there is no law. Not because they save you from fire, but because they are salvation. They are what it means to be fully human, fully alive.

I think I knew the fruit. I think I was born to spot the fruit in others, to draw it out and gather it up and put it by for a time when it’s needed. I think I was born into a knowledge of Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Gentleness, Faithfulness and Self Control. I think I’ve known it since I was young, and I think I know it now and I wonder if I’ve known it as part of a cosmic oneness since before the dawning of time. “Hidden in the heart of God”, we’d have said.

In many of these essays I have shared some specific truth or nugget or anecdote from my life. I fought with my brother. I blew my hand up in a binge of freedom. I stole, I repaired, I learned, I grew somehow.

And so it goes with my spiritual life, so why am I having trouble deciding on or even coming up with an anecdote to make this land? Perhaps it’s that it feels so very raw, so very alive to me just now. It feels so very going, and in-the-process. I am not done being worked out. I reflect on another song from my deep childhood.

He’s still working on me; to make me what I ought to be. It took Him just a week to make the moon and the stars, the sun and the Earth and Jupiter and Mars. How loving and patient he must be; he’s still working on me.

Now, I’m not claiming that tune quite the way I did the last one. The one about the “river of life” flowing out of me.

Still, I do feel that I’m a work in progress, and nowhere is that progression more evident than in my religious beliefs.

I did say, though, that something feels familiar. I see that the familiarity is myself. My inner life, my inner hunger for truth and more than that, love, which in the Bible is called “The greatest”. The greatest of these is love. In fact, it says that God is love. What do you make of that statement? Perhaps I’m interpreting it incorrectly, but I do continue to believe very deeply in Love.

I have shed many shackles. I have done away with some childish things. I have come to grips with some realities of a world which does not often value life or love over profit and gain. And I am still shedding. I am still gaining understanding. May it be so for all the days that I live.

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