Introduction

Faith and righteousness are evidenced by the will to do those good things one has adequate reason to do.

Those with mighty faith will be found anxiously engaged in doing good of their own free will and choice.

Those with weak faith will instead be lazy, selfish, dishonest, and driven by the weaknesses of the flesh and the carnal mind—not doing what they inwardly know is best.  Those with weak faith think and act emotionally, not logically.

Those with mighty faith are predominantly cool, calm, and rational. They do what really makes sense. They are honest with themselves and humble about their limitations. And though, like everyone, they are emotional, they think deeply and act rationally. They align their actions with truth and goodness rather than impulse.

Those with mighty faith do not need to be governed by heavy-handed governments, churches, or institutions because they are more than adequately motivated to do all the good they can without institutionally driven negative consequences.

Those with weak faith need to be strong-armed by power structures, institutional mandates, and programs; otherwise, they just atrophy and disintegrate into chaos and self-destruction.

The good news is that one can choose to not be one of weak faith. One can choose to be one of mighty faith, or faith to do good, by believing the gospel, seeking a deeper understanding of the gospel, and by doing what one sincerely believes is best, according to what the scriptures actually teach.

Faith to do good is self-disciplined and motivated by the quality of one’s mind and heart. Those who lack the mental, informational, emotional, and spiritual qualities that motivate continuous, steady goodness will be found doing evil because they are slaves to their foolishness, ignorance, dishonesty, emotional thinking, and immoral tendencies.

Righteous people do not need to be ruled by heavy-handed governments and churches. Wicked people do.

The sad reality is that wicked people need strong laws and strong leaders to prevent them from doing the far greater evil that they would do without such things.

Our goal should be to transition from being wicked people who seem to need institutionalized religion with charismatic leadership to being righteous people, with mighty faith, who can and will follow Jesus Christ directly, alone if necessary.

Why Institutionalized Religion is Appealing

Wicked people seem to need highly institutionalized religious structures to keep them at least semi-moral and God-fearing. These highly institutionalized religious structures usually include charismatic leaders, regular rituals, weekly meetings, a controlled theology, creeds, and protocols that maintain a predictable status quo.

Institutionally mandated beliefs, creeds, and religious practices give people a framework for how to live their lives in outwardly moral and religious ways, maintain an equilibrium in social order, give people the sense that they are good people on a trajectory to heaven, making them feel good about themselves, while still allowing a liberal tolerance for seemingly benign sins.

The problem with institutionalism is that it focuses on the wrong things. Institutionalism places most of the focus on charismatic leadership, ritual participation, institutional obedience, creeds, protocols, and practices.

Institutionalism tends to drift away from sound doctrine, strong reasoning, and individualism because these require much greater effort to teach and exemplify, and because they tend to discredit and undermine the legitimacy of institutions that seek lordship over their followers but do not really emphasize what one might call true repentance or real righteousness.

The true gospel of Jesus Christ requires understanding and adherence to a deep yet simplistic theology that focuses on principles rather than creeds, repentance and obedience rather than ritual, and faith in Jesus Christ rather than unquestioning loyalty to institutional leaders. But most people don’t want that. They prefer institutionalism because it costs so much less and because it appeals in so many ways to the carnal mind.

After all, institutions only dictate what you do part of the time. Institutions only require, at most, perhaps 10-20% of your paycheck. And institutions do not interfere with the small worldly pleasures you indulge in that seem so harmless and benign, but which prevent you from receiving the spiritual outpouring of blessings that living the true gospel brings.

Besides, people crave physical, tangible, and audible role models, teachers, and leaders. They crave leaders they can see, hear, touch, and relate to. For most, a God who seems so distant and unrelatable is not enough; they want to follow and lean on flesh-and-blood leaders who will say and do nice things for them. They want leaders who are their friends, who give them what they want, and who make them feel good.

The Whore Babylon and Institutional Dependence

Institutions are, by nature, whores. Remember, it is the whore who takes your money in return for giving you pleasure in physical, emotional, and illicit ways. This is what religious institutions do. They require your tithing, they provide you with pleasure and ritual release, they make you feel good, and they keep you coming back for more.

People who have developed an appetite for whoring almost never depart from this in favor of all the apparent suffering, loneliness, rejection, and toil that living the true gospel requires. I mean, seriously—how many men do you know would willingly give up being with the women of their dreams in favor of following a carpenter’s son through the valley of the shadow of death on a road that invariably leads to all manner of suffering and sacrifices with the hope of receiving a grand reward one does not even come close to understanding in some future life? This is an apt metaphor for following and whoring after institutionalism.

Institutions keep you focused on the whore. They keep you focused on all the benefits and pleasures the whore provides. And they fill their perishers with fear of what might happen if they leave this life of whoring by following some impossible pipedream that surely (as far as they can tell) involves all manner of suffering. Given this choice, most people will continue their contractual-covenant relationship with the whore even though following the whore invariably results in STDs, disease, and hell every time. But whores not only rob you of virtue, but they also tell lies. (I will explain and expand on the lies whores tell in my next essay.)

The Benefits of Discipleship with Christ

Those who choose Jesus Christ, who become true followers and disciples of Christ, by faith and repentance, are freed from the chains of sin and are filled with that joy and peace that is incomprehensible to all those who have not experienced it. Yes, they are often called to pass through great trials. But they also receive great blessings from heaven that bring great comfort, peace, and joy—nothing like the pleasure that the Whore Babylon provides. Jesus Christ gives His sons and daughters continuous access and communion with Him. They experience His love. And this is infinitely better than anything any whore or institution can provide.

Those who choose to pursue the path of mighty faith, or faith to continuously do good, by always seeking to do what is best, are motivated by belief in Jesus Christ and in His promised outcomes, often called blessings. In other words, those of mighty faith choose to believe and act according to the belief that obedience to the laws, principles, and commandments of the gospel does indeed bring the greatest joy possible, both short-term and long-term. Short-term because experiencing God’s love can be and often is quite immediate; long-term because the promised blessings of the gospel are supernal, eternal, and infinitely greater than anything this world has to offer.

By contrast, those who try to follow the path of institutionalized faith, by membership and activity in an institutionalized church, do so because they lack belief and assurance of a better outcome by following Christ directly, without the apparent benefits of an institutionalized church. In short, they are afraid. They are afraid that without the church, they will be unable to stand against the storm or win the prize for faithfulness that Christ offers. And so, they submit to the church rather than to Christ directly.

Those who are without hope console themselves with whores. This is done in a million ways.

While those with mighty faith invariably experience the exquisite joy of the gospel by their personal relationship with Christ, and with this faith and with this reality, they have absolutely no use for whores.

Developing Mighty Faith

The question, then, arises: “How does one fully transition from hopelessness, where whores are such a severe temptation, to being filled with joy and hope, wherein the temptations of sin utterly lose their luster?

The answer is 3-fold:

1. Faith in Jesus Christ unto Repentance
2. Baptism by Immersion—Baptism in the Name of Christ—Taking Upon Oneself the Name of Christ
3. Receiving the Holy Ghost

In this model, we understand that:

1. Faith is what you do.
2. Baptism is what you are.
3. The Holy Ghost is what you receive.

In practice:

1. Those with faith in Christ always seek to keep His commandments.
2. Those who are baptized in the name of Christ take upon themselves His identity, ways, and purposes.
3. Those who receive the Holy Ghost are continuously led, taught, and improved by revelation from God.

This is a theology based on principles, doctrines, commandments, and promised blessings, rather than on being on the right team and doing the right religious things.

Team Christianity

Since the beginning of Catholicism, most Christians have been adherents of Team Christianity, or Club Christianity. For these, how one is a good Christian is almost entirely a matter of deciding who is right, who has authentic authority, and who has the most correct religious practices.

For these, the big question is: How do I associate with the right church and do the right religious things in ways that will somehow, magically, land me in heaven? For these, the task is to discover and participate in the correct ritual beliefs so that one can feel good about oneself and be reasonably convinced that one is on a trajectory toward heaven rather than hell.

Team Christianity is about being on the winning team.

True Christianity is all about self-improvement, keeping the commandments, serving others, and becoming (in every way possible) just like Christ.

Correctly informed Christians understand that salvation in the Kingdom of God is reserved for those who have become like Him. It is not a matter of belonging to the right church or doing the right religious things.

Team Christianity fails to understand that salvation in the Kingdom of God requires that you actually become like Jesus. It requires that you become a truly good person. Most Christians emphatically assert that such a thing is impossible, while Christ emphatically asserts that His life and mission were entirely for the purpose of making this possible. Traditional Christianity limits what God can do, while true Christianity glorifies God by asserting that God can and will do exactly what He has promised. In fact, He already has, and He will continue to do so for all eternity.

It is time for Christian people everywhere to grow up, shake off the chains by which they are bound, reject the whores in their lives, and stand as independent Christians who follow Christ directly.

Please understand that I am not anti-Church. I am very much pro-Church. I am pro-Christ’s church, composed of all who have truly taken upon themselves the name of Christ through faith, repentance, baptism, and receiving the Holy Ghost. Such as these ought to combine into communities and congregations, with congregationalist structures, that glorify God, comparable to the societies in Heaven. But these structures need to be Christ-serving and Christ-promoting, not self-serving and self-promoting. These are very important distinctions.

Being strong in the faith, with mighty faith, requires that you learn to stand on your own two feet, release the crutches and cut the chains of corrupt institutionalism, and instead walk with Christ in word, in power, and in very deed.

Conclusion

Mighty faith in Jesus Christ is not merely a matter of belief, emotion, ritual participation, religious activity, or institutional loyalty. It is faith to do good—the capacity to consistently govern oneself righteously without external threat or coercion. It is the disciplined will to act on truth consistently, rationally, and voluntarily.

Those with mighty faith do not need to be compelled by heavy-handed governments or churches, because truth, discernment, conscience, and love of God govern them from within. They are anxiously engaged in doing good of their own free will and choice. They subordinate impulse to reason, comfort to truth, and fear to faith.

Weak faith seeks substitutes. It seeks institutions that soothe rather than sanctify, leaders who reassure rather than refine, and systems that manage behavior without transforming character. Such faith is drawn to comfort, safety, and belonging—even when these come at the expense of much-needed repentance and truth. This is why institutionalized religion becomes appealing: it offers peace without holiness and reassurance without change.

Mighty faith chooses Christ directly. It rests on the conviction that obedience to the laws, principles, and commandments of the gospel produces the greatest possible joy—immediately through communion with God and eternally through promised glory. This faith is not shallow or contrived; it is informed trust in divine law.

Most Christians say they love Jesus, desire truth, and are seeking the Kingdom of Heaven, in this life and in the next. If this is true, then we need to have greater courage, humility, honesty, and conviction in seeking the truth and walking the straight and narrow path of righteousness that God has demonstrated we must follow. I pray that we can all do so.

Amen.

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