At the Center: Christ, Agency, and the Work of Understanding

Each of us sees through a single vantage point.

Life feels central because we cannot stand anywhere else.

Yet the world does not orbit us.

History has its own center, and we move within it.

Reality reminds us of this and makes it crystal clear.

We die. Our souls seek sanctuary from death’s sting.

I did not begin with institutions.

I began with a Person.

My convictions were simple and fierce.

Even if seated on the Throne, Christ stands at the center.

He is not a teacher competing in the marketplace of ideas.

He is the axis on which the world turns.

Everything in me recognized that.

It still does.

Then the ground began to shift.

I cannot name the day.

I remember prayer, and something in me tilted.

One word surfaced in the quiet where truth speaks.

Chaos.

Are you the God of order or of chaos?

My instinct was to protect the purity of Christ’s claim.

I stripped away the scaffolding.

I wandered into places I once avoided.

I kept the encounters direct.

Conscience stirred.

Responsibility settled on the individual before God.

No hiding behind systems.

No outsourcing of faith.

If I would stand, I would stand before Him without shelter.

I wrestled with existence and the nature of reality.

I returned to the ancients.

What I learned began to align with what I already believed about human action and history.

Austrian economics entered the picture.

No central planner can coordinate the full complexity of a market.

No authority can hold total knowledge.

Value is perceived personally.

Action is taken individually.

Responsibility cannot be absorbed by a collective.

So why would faith operate differently?

The wrestling continued. I began to write. Wrestling the Divine came first.

Like Jacob, I did not want certainty borrowed from others.

I wanted the blessing that leaves a mark. A limp.

As I kept walking, something pressed against my framework.

If Christ is truly the center of reality, this is not only my private conviction.

He is the Logos through whom all things were made.

His revelation cannot be reduced to my interpretation.

He entered history, so history must matter.

If He founded something, then that something would carry weight beyond my private grasp.

So how does authority speak among the fallible?

A key tension emerged. I believed truth is objective. I knew my understanding is limited.

Austrian economics had already taught me this humility. Knowledge is dispersed.

No single actor sees the whole. Complex orders form over time through interaction, correction, and refinement.

Why would the unfolding understanding of divine revelation be exempt from this pattern?

The question shifted. Truth does not change. Understanding does.

So how does understanding grow?

A market is not incomplete because prices move. It is alive.

A science is not false because it refines its models. It is maturing.

So if the Church clarifies, defines, and sharpens across centuries, is that corruption or development?

If revelation is complete in essence yet inexhaustible in depth, growth is not contradiction.
It is participation in an unfolding reality.

The oak is contained in the acorn.

The oak fulfills the acorn.

If cut down, it can be shaped into many things still oak, yet divided.

The difference is not essence. It is continuity.

This did not diminish Christ’s sufficiency.

It magnified it.

An infinite center invites centuries of contemplation without exhaustion.

A tradition that never deepens would imply a shallow source.

My suspicion of centralized authority did not vanish.

It changed shape.

My concern was never order itself.

It was the confidence that claims too much.

I began to see an order that does not arise from control.

It emerges from many minds acting within a shared horizon.

Step back, and what once felt intolerable begins to look like an ancient calling.

What if the historical Church is not a central planner but a living organism.

Guarding the deposit, yes, and discovering its depth through councils, saints, heresies, corrections, prayers, and martyrs.

This reframed the problem.

I had assumed development in doctrine signaled deficiency.

Yet in my economic studies, stasis meant death.

In metaphysics, an infinite reality invites endless exploration.

Why would divine truth be the only field forbidden to grow in articulation?

My reflections on nothing and no-thing pushed this further and strengthened the foundation.

God is not a thing among things.

He is Being itself, and no generation can exhaust Him.

Encounters with such a Reality echo across cultures, fracture into myth, form doctrine, and still exceed every expression.

I sensed an ancient resonance in rhythms that appear as repetition and routine.

This realization softened me.

What looked like contradiction across Christian expressions may be emphasis.

One tradition guards immediacy and personal responsibility.

Another guards continuity and memory.

One is wary of institutional reach.

Another is wary of fragmentation.

Both try to confess that Christ is Lord.

If that is true, then neither instinct is entirely wrong.

Both carry coherence.

My path became less about choosing a side and more about tracing the line that holds.

Christ as the Logos is not threatened by time.

If He founded a body, that body would endure.

If He promised guidance into truth, history would bear signs of that promise.

Here the distinction is clear.

Completeness in essence does not prevent development in comprehension.

The sun does not grow brighter as the day unfolds.

Our angle changes.

I still believe in sovereignty and in personal responsibility before God.

I still believe our knowledge is limited and dispersed.

I still reject the idea that any human authority can engineer salvation.

But I am no longer convinced that continuity and authority threaten freedom.
They may be the structure that protects it.

The journey has not ended.

I am careful. I am limping. The arc is clearer.

I began with Christ at the center. I intend to remain on the narrow path.

I have walked through the wilderness of solitude and certainty.

I have confronted the limits of my own knowledge again.

Now I stand before the possibility that a living, historical communion may be the natural expression of an incarnate God.

Not a replacement for personal faith.

Not an escape from responsibility.

A deeper participation in a reality larger than my conclusions.

Christ stepped into history. Therefore history matters.

Truth, as an infinite source, invites an understanding that unfolds.

I am creature and not creator.

Humility is the proper posture for seeking.

That is where I now stand.