A primer on the difference between those who've come to faith and those who have assumed a faith.
It's interesting the sorts of reactions you get from "spiritual" people when you signal a major pivot in your own personal spiritual journey. The reactions, it seems, can reveal quite a bit about the manner of "spiritual-ness" people actually have.
It’s the ones whose faith is grounded way down in the core of their being that will support your move, if they see you are doing it with deep consideration, contemplation, searching, study, humility, and surrender (to a slow developed, often agonizing, conviction).
These sorts of folk are people who understand their faith through their own process of coming to it, and how it was only by way of trial and searching and testing. As such, they don’t feel threatened by the move you are making, because they “get it.” And even if they would never follow the same path, and may disagree, they respect the heart and passion that placed you in such a long journey and share some level of celebration with you, simply because they themselves respect the process.
It’s the ones whose faith is only as shallow as what they can convince their minds to grasp who will recoil at you. And despite your deep consideration, contemplation, searching, study, humility, and surrender, etc., they will judge your decision simply because it clashes with the certainties they have presupposed and cordoned off from their own questions.
It seems a large number of these folks have not so much “come to” their faith, as much as they have just sort of picked it up and assumed it. As such, they are threatened by the moves you make. They will be the ones quickest to operate from the position of “spiritual superiority” and manipulation, even so far as telling you that your faith is flawed (or far worse). Sometimes they may go as far as taking up the “voice of God” to address you. They will use language of spiritual control, like, “my spirit is grieved to hear this,” or “I will be praying for God to open your eyes,” completely shut off to any possibility God himself may be the gravity behind the pull you’re wrapped up in.
The former understand truth as a pursuit that never really ends. They recognize it as a passion never fully satisfied, because they know God cannot be contained by a single interpretation. These understand that God is Truth, and when one dedicates themselves to pursuing him, God will not fail to be found. Even if his discovery is at the end of a different path from theirs, they know God is quite wondrous enough to be the Light at the end of more than one tunnel.
The latter understand truth as the contents of a vault—static and fixed. They recognize it as something that needs to be defended. So “truths” are siloed into propositions that serve as buttresses, between which the walls of a fortress are built. These folk think God is in their camp alone and if one wanders too far from their particular walls (conveniently enough), they can only fail in finding him elsewhere.
I’ve said it a dozen times before and it keeps bearing out. But this remark by the great theologian Clark Pinnock rings true so often in my experiences: “Nothing infuriates the keeper of a fortress more than the meanderings of a pilgrim.”
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