Life is a journey. This is almost a cliche these days. But with most cliches, it betrays a well-worn truth. When we move our focus from the path to the destination, we often lose sight of our journey. We also tend to stagnate, to stop forward progress, and settle for less than what’s possible. In that case, we end our journey. This is a problem shared across the religious and secular spectrum. Noted historian, Prof. B. Barry Levy, Professor of History at Amherst writes about his faith, Judaism. “Our greatest challenge today is not Reform, or Reconstructionism, or Conservativism, or Liberal Orthodoxy, or Centrist Orthodoxy, or Hasidism, or ‘Harediism.’  Our greatest collective problem—though it affects different groups in different ways—is Mindless Orthodoxy. This is the uncritical following of a fixed religious life whose most minute details are controlled or invented for us, that avoids rational debate in favor of faithful adherence to rituals.” (2002) 

“Mindless Orthodoxy.” Another way to put this is “inherited faith.” Almost everyone starts out with a received faith, passed on to us by our culture, nation, and family. It’s inevitable. The operative question for them is “What must I believe?” And having supplied answers, they are content. For others who look deeper into their received faith tradition, questions arise that set them out on a journey. We at Energion Publications want to support you on your path of discovery. We invite you to look over our growing list of courses. We, the authors of these courses, don’t believe we have all the answers and will avoid trying to tell you what to believe. But, we will offer you our insights and you can judge the value of them for yourself. We are on a journey, too, and we’d be delighted to have you with us.

Bible scholars are on a journey. What drives us is the search for answers. We are never satisfied with what we find as we know that most answers are works in progress. Just as are the people on a faith journey. Your dissatisfaction with where you are is a nudge from God to keep at it, to keep the journey going, to discover for yourself a vital, wholistic, even hard-won faith. In the end, it will take you where you want to go, deep into the heart of God. Now that’s a journey well worth taking.