Because Opthē is transformational religion, not behavioral religion.
We're so conditioned by the Christian model that we don't even recognize the difference. In its dominant institutional forms, Christianity operates on behavioral compliance: believe these doctrines, follow these rules, perform these rituals, and membership follows. Someone can walk into a church on Sunday and start being a Christian immediately. Show up, say the creeds, don't murder anyone. External performance signals membership.
Christianity claims transformation too - "born again," "new creation in Christ," "the old has passed away." But here's the critical difference: in its mass, imperial forms, Christianity says transformation happens supernaturally and instantly through belief and grace. The moment someone "accepts Christ," they're transformed by divine action. They join immediately and behavioral compliance becomes the expected evidence of that supernatural transformation.
But this wasn't always true. The earliest Christians understood that transformation requires formation. They required a three-year catechumenate for everyone who wanted to join the community. They knew that transformation technology - the set of practices and structures that actually change consciousness - couldn't simply be handed over and expected to work. The interior change had to be developed over time.
Christianity lowered its standards when it became the religion of the empire. When Constantine made Christianity imperial, and people were born into it - when Christendom emerged - formation was maintained for clergy while lay membership became instant through baptism and behavioral compliance. The two-tier system was born: professionals still need years of formation, but consumers just need to believe and behave.
Lay members can be baptized and confirmed and still operate from tribal consciousness, self-centeredness, dominance drives, and Christianity considers them transformed Christians as long as they believe correctly and behave acceptably. "Transformation" is claimed but not actually assessed.
Imperial Christianity converted transformation into a belief about transformation.
Opthē returns to the earliest Christian insight into how transformation actually works - everyone needs formation - while going further: there are no lay people in Opthē. Everyone is a vocational participant in a single shared work. No two-tier system. No professionals serving consumers. We are an intentional community living in a common reality.
We also have a moment of recognition - when Opthē makes profound sense to someone. Everything clicks. "This is what I've been looking for. Religion as meaning-making technology. Sacralization without supernatural validation. Post-tribal consciousness as a survival necessity. This is coherent." That recognition is real, often quite sudden, genuinely transformative in its clarity.
But that moment of recognition is not the transformation itself. It's receptivity to transformation.
Think of it like someone recognizing they want to be a surgeon. That recognition is real and necessary - it creates the motivation for residency. But the moment of recognition isn't medical competence. The training still must happen. One can't skip residency just because of a profound moment of clarity about vocation.
Formation develops the actual capacities transformation requires:
Post-tribal consciousness - no one can just decide to stop being tribal. That evolutionary self-centeredness runs 300,000 years deep. It takes disciplined practice to transcend it.
Capacity for ambient agape-gratia - not performable sentiment, but actual reorientation of how we experience others and the world.
Vocational commitment vs. casual interest - Opthē is intentional community living a reality, not a service organization providing religious goods. Ministry is overflow, not purpose.
Look at the Focus Rite itself. When we say "We Focus on Those We Perceive as Alien or Different," that requires actual interior capacity. If someone is still operating from tribal us/them consciousness, they're just saying words. The transformation has to be real first.
This is why formation must assess actual transformation:
Formation recognizes when someone holds post-tribal consciousness under stress. Formation recognizes when they do generate ambient agape-gratia in real relationships. Formation recognizes when they do participate in the distributed choir meaningfully.
Not "do they believe this happened to them?" but "do they actually do this?"
Formation doesn't create perfection, but it does create a reliable pattern and shared accountability.
Transformation is a natural process requiring time, discipline, and practice. No supernatural mechanism rushes it. The process can't be shortcut any more than surgery residency or musical mastery can be rushed.
We keep transformation as an actual transformation.
The heart must change first. Then everything else follows.
Hearts change through formation - through the lived experience of community where agape-gratia is ambient, where service to all of Life is held sacred by everyone around us, where transcending tribalism is practiced together daily.
Transformation happens by immersion in that reality, not through belief or instruction.