Kris Vallotton, in his book Developing a Supernatural Lifestyle, has shared this list of values he tries to live by. He composed this list wile spending time alone with God on a South Sea Island:
I will serve God first and honor Him always, both in life and in death.
I will be honest, loyal, trustworthy, and a man of my word, no matter what the price.
I will keep my values, no matter how much they cost me and if I fail, I will be quick to repent.
I will treat all people with respect and honor, whether they are friend or foe, as they were created in God’s image.
I will strive to love everyone despite their opinions, attitudes, or persuasions, no matter how they treat me.
I will never act out of fear, fear any man or demon, or make decisions strictly to save my life. I will fear God only.
I will be loyal to my wife both in thought and deed into eternity.
I will live to bless and empower the generations to come and leave a legacy, both in the Spirit and in the natural, to a people yet to be born.
I will never work for money or sell myself at any price. I will only be motivated to do what I believe to be right and receive my substance from God. I vow to be generous under all circumstance.
I will live my life to bring out the best in people and bring them into an encounter with the real and living God.
I will live my life in the supernatural realm, expecting and anticipating God to do the impossible to me, through me, and around me as I follow him.
It is my lifetime ambition to become friends with God in the deepest sense of the word.
I dedicate my strength, my wealth, all that I am, and all that I will ever be to see the course of world history altered until the kingdom of this world becomes the Kingdom of our God.
I have made these principles a part of my spiritual practice, reading them aloud, praying about them, and reflecting on them at least once a week. In addition to deepening my walk with the Spirit, it helps me to gain more profound insight into areas of my walk where I am strong and areas where I am lax and lacking.
I noted here on LifeBrook back in 2009 that I was undertaking the Lenten tradition of giving up something for the season leading up to Easter, albeit with a bit of an intangible bent. That year I vowed to give up something that fed a longstanding stronghold in my life: negative thinking. As I look back on my journals from that period of time, I saw that this was quite a struggle. There were more than a few days that this chronic negativity had a life and a momentum of its own. Yet, at the same time, I did see that there were also more than a few days that I became less prone to negative cognition and even when I did have a pessimistic thought, I immediately became aware of it and was able to, as that wise sage Barney Fife told his friend Sheriff Andy:”Nip it in the bud.”
I mention all this because this year I have once again taken on this anti-negativity challenge as part of my Lenten practice. It is not so much that I have slid back into chronic negative thinking – no – in fact, the Holy Spirit has helped me immensely in this area. It’s just that I realize that this issue is one that has been a powerful force in my life and I want to take yet another step in getting on top of it. I will let you know from time to time how things are going.
I would be most interested in hearing what sort of things you folks are considering dealing with this Lenten season.
Stained glass window 1: Jesus Christ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Mick Turner
As Christians, each follower of Christ is not called to a lukewarm, mediocre walk with God. Instead, if we are to be the best version of ourselves, we are to pay close attention to just what it is Christ is calling us to be. At times, when we truly analyze the claim and responsibility placed on us by Jesus, we might think it anything but an easy yoke. This is especially true when we read between the lines of what Paul is telling us is several of his letters.
Taken singularly, it is easy to perhaps miss the magnitude of the goal of Christian spiritual formation. I think this is one of the reasons that many Christians so often become so complacent in their faith. Each week they get dressed, go to church, sing a few hymns, take part in corporate prayer, listen to a sermon that waters down the gospel message, put their envelope in the collection plate, then speed to their favorite eatery before the waiting line gets too long.
To tell you the truth, somehow I think Jesus and Paul had more than this in mind. What Jesus had in mind was spelled out with clarity in the Sermon on the Mount, sort of a compact distillation of the kingdom principles he brought with him when he left the glories of the heavenly court and came a’callin’ on earth at that stable in Bethlehem. Let’s have a closer look at Paul’s take on what happened as a result of Christ’s mission.
I am certain you are aware of Paul’s idea, repeated in one way or another throughout his correspondence with the fledgling churches, of the relationship between Jesus and God. Paul tells us that all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell in Christ, which meant that God and Jesus were in some mysterious way the same being. In the Jewish culture of his day, Paul was making an incredible claim here. Jews were not supposed to make any image of God and even to speak his name was considered a capital offense. Now, here was Paul echoing Jesus by implying that the great and mighty Jehovah was in essence a loving, cosmic “Daddy” who was not only the Father of Jesus, but was also Jesus himself. And the reverse was true. Jesus was not only a great teacher and a skilled Rabbi; He was not only a great healer and the leader, the Grand Poobah of a band of shady-looking disciples. Jesus, according to Paul, was Jehovah Himself.
Standing alone, that sort of statement was enough to give the High Priest a prize-winning wedgie. Paul, however, wasn’t finished. In fact, he was just getting started. If you take a look at Ephesians 3:19, the Apostle tells the early church members that he prays “that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (NSRV) Here Paul was pulling no punches; instead, he went straight for the knockout. Paul basically was saying that he prayed that, as Christians, the new believers were expected to become like Jesus.
No wonder the religious establishment saw Paul as a dangerous, if not demented, man. Equating Jesus with God was a reach. Saying that a human being could become like Jesus was beyond the pale of acceptability.
In case his readers missed his point, the Apostle repeats this theme in the fourth chapter of Ephesians. In verse 13 he equates Christian maturity with the achieving “the measure of the full stature of Christ.” He then drives home the point two verses later by stating:
Speaking the truthin love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (Ephesians 4:15 NRSV).
In case you might be thinking that this message was somehow only for the believers in Ephesus, think again. Let’s wander over to Corinth and take a look at one of Paul’s letters to this stressed out church. After briefly covering a few topics, Paul tells the Corinthian believers that we “beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness” (2 Cor. 3:18). Aiming his words in a different direction, Paul tells the Philippians to emulate the same manner of being that Jesus had (Phi. 2:5-8).
By now it should be clear that that Paul felt it essential to get this message across. He believed that in order to function as effective Christ-followers in their world, the members of the early church had to work, with the aid of the Holy Spirit, in securing personal change and continually grow toward the full stature of Christ. This was the goal for the early church and it is our goal for today.
The logical question at this point is: How am I supposed to pull this off?
It is here that we are confronted with one of the many paradoxical conundrums of the spiritual life. The first shall be last – the last shall be first – to save your life you must lose it – etc. For the theme we are discussing, we are confronted with the riddle of Christian spiritual formation. There is nothing that we can do to save ourselves or sanctify ourselves; it is all a free gift of grace and we just have to accept it. Still, Paul tells us to “work out our salvation with fear and trembling.” So what gives here?
Some sincere believers will tell you to stay away from spiritual disciplines because they are, at the end of the day, useless. We are powerless to change ourselves; only the Holy Spirit can pull that one off. Some of these Christians will go so far as to tell you that engaging in the classical spiritual disciplines is like sleeping with Satan….all this spiritual formation mumbo jumbo smells like smoke and brimstone.
Other equally sincere Christians will tell you the opposite. Even though personal transformation is a free gift of grace, we have a responsibility as well. We have to place ourselves in a receptive position in order to maximize our potential for change. I confess that I am more in this camp than in the former. I believe that spiritual formation requires a good deal of effort on our parts. God makes it all possible, but we have to appropriate what he has made possible. It’s like the great Quaker mystic Rufus Jones often said:
“The grace of God is like the wind blowing across the lake. If you want to get to the other side, you have to raise your sail.”
Inside of Saint Ananias taken in 2006 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In organic Christianity or this new reformation, the move of God will not simply be at the hand of a person, but all of God’s people. There will be key leaders, but their job is to equip the people to do the work of ministry (see Eph. 4: 11-12). It was God’s intent from the beginning for every believer to do the work of the Kingdom (see Mark 16: 17-18). In this new reformation, God’s people will have their identity in who they are in Christ. They will understand that when they became a new creation, God put within them, by grace, what was necessary to succeed for His Kingdom…..
Apostles’ Creed in the English-Chinese Book of Common Prayer. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Mick Turner
As the contemporary church transitions through this age of changing forms, focus, and mission it become increasingly difficult to discern exactly where the faith is heading. This state of limbo tends to create separate and distinct forms of reaction as some Christians embrace change and new directions as much-needed alterations in a church that is increasingly irrelevant and marginalized. Others welcome this transition about as much as they would a case of poison ivy. Instead of looking for new and vital ways to present the faith to a post-modern world, they retreat into cultural isolation and long for a return to the “good old days,” obviously forgetting that those halcyon days are a product of their imagination and euphoric recall more than anything else.
If you are a frequent visitor to this blog, you are probably aware that I tend to fall more into the former camp than the latter. The Christian faith is in a major time of crisis and unless it undergoes radical transformation, it is going to become a historical relic with virtually little or no cultural impact. That’s why I firmly believe that the Emergent Movement within the church is not something to be feared, but instead, constitutes a long-overdue revitalization of the Christian faith on all fronts.
I am especially pleased that more and more followers of Jesus are coming to see that our faith was originally one where experience took priority over doctrine and “belief” and that trust in the Master and the teachings of the faith was transformational, more so than correct belief.
I mention all this because I have recently been reading Diana Butler Bass’ latest book, entitled Christianity After Religion. I am enjoying the book and learning much from its analysis of how the church arrived at its current dilemma, and future directions that it might take.
This, however, is not a review of this book.
As I mentioned, the Emergent Church movement is trending more toward experience as the true content of the Christian journey and that doctrine, although it serves a purpose, is not the true litmus test of one’s faith.
In a chapter entitled, “Believing,” Bass shares how the Massai people of East Africa, aided by Catholic missionaries, revised the Apostles’ Creed so that if more clearly reflected the realities of their encounter with Jesus. I want to share that revision with you, as I think it is not only relevant to the Massai people, but 21st Century Christians in America as well:
We believe in the one High God, who out of love created the beautiful world and everything good in it. He created Man and wanted Man to be happy in the world. God loves the world and every nation and tribe on the Earth. We have known this High God in darkness, and now we know Him in the light. God promised in the book of His word, the Bible, that He would save the world and all the nations and tribes.
We believe that God made good His promise by sending His Son, Jesus Christ, a man in the flesh, a Jew by tribe, born poor in a little village, who left His home and was always on safari doing good, curing people by the power of God, teaching about God and man, showing the meaning of religion is love. He was rejected by his people, tortured and nailed hands and feet to a cross, and died. He lay buried in the grave, but the hyenas did not touch him, and on the third day, He rose from the grave. He ascended to the skies. He is the Lord.
We believe that all our sins are forgiven through Him. All who have faith in Him must be sorry for their sins, be baptized in the Holy Spirit of God, live the rules of love and share the bread together in love, to announce the Good News to others until Jesus comes again. We are waiting for Him. He is alive. He lives. This we believe. Amen
Personally, I find this version of the creed far more relative and far more transformative than the one composed all those many centuries ago. It contains the same truths, but presents these truths in a different, more personal way. In my mind, it points directly to God’s great story of restoration, healing, and ultimate happiness. Diana Butler Bass, speaking of this version of the creed, states:
The Maasi creed invites us to go on a safari with Jesus. These are not just words about God; rather, these words welcome us into a story of God’s hope for human happiness and healing.
Bass then goes on to share these important nuances of the French ancestry of the word “doctrine”:
Indeed, the word “doctrine,” a word fallen on hard times in contemporary culture, actually means a “healing teaching,” from the French word for “doctor.” The creeds, as doctrinal statements, were intended as healing instruments, life-giving words that would draw God’s people into a deeper engagement with divine things. When creeds become fences to mark the borders of heresy, they lose their spiritual energy. Doctrine is to be the balm of a healing experience of God, not a theological scalpel to wound and exclude people.
I think it is fairly obvious that our creeds, uttered in repetitious, monotone lockstep, have, through centuries of non-reflective recitation, lost all vestiges of spiritual energy. Further, they have been misapplied repeatedly, rather than used as the healing balm as originally intended. Instead, Christian legalists and rigid fundamentalists have appropriated the classic creeds of the faith at “statements of belief” and a litmus test of authentic Christianity.
This has constituted a great loss for the faith as a whole, but it is a loss that can be rectified, as in the case of the Maasi creed cited above. This is an exciting yet challenging time for the church. In order for the faith to not only survive, but thrive, new wineskins are sorely needed – wineskins that are more relevant to the contemporary world encountered by the faithful each and every day.
What we have is not the kingdom. We have churches without funding. We have workers without commitment. We have a mission – to love a world that is lost without the message that only we have. We need people who are committed to the cause of Christ and the commission He has given us. What if we became a church that was truly committed to the cause of Christ? What if every Christian invested in the church for the good of the community and not just their own benefit? Can you imagine how powerful the church could be if godly people united together to accomplish His purpose on earth. . . . . . . . . .There is so much untapped potential in the community of God on the earth. If we worked together in unity with the power of God on our side, there is no obstacle that could stop us, no force that could defeat us, no trial that could overwhelm us, and no wall that could contain us.
The Thinking Man sculpture at Musée Rodin in Paris (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Mick Turner
(continued from Part One)
God did not create you to rest on your laurels. Instead, he hardwired you to keep on moving – keep on growing. So beware of settling in for too long. “But wait a minute,” you might be saying. “We all need to rest. All work and no play makes for a dull boy.” Yes, that’s true. We do, indeed, need to take time off from time to time in order to rest, recuperate, and recharge our spiritual batteries. However, these periods of recuperation were never meant to be a career. No, we have to keep on moving.
Although our comfort zones serve a useful purpose by giving us at least some areas of life that are predictable, nurturing, familiar, and, to some extent, under our direct control, these patterns of habitual behavior, feelings, and thinking can also be a prison. What’s even more baffling about our prisons of comfort, they are all too obvious to those who know us and completely invisible to ourselves. Often, when a friend loves us enough to confront us on our inability to get outside our comfort zones, our response goes something like this:
“I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. No way am I like that.”
The idea here is clearly obvious, our comfort zones not only imprison us; they also create “blind spots.” A blind spot is simply an aspect of our thinking, feeling, behaving, and/or relating that we don’t see. It is also important that we recognize that many of our blind spots related to our zones of comfort are associated with our thinking. Habitual, familiar, and especially treasured ways of thinking are among the most tightly held comfort zones that we have. Unfortunately, they are also some of the most debilitating.
We create our comfort zones and rigidly live within their confines. Any attempt to dislodge us from the walls of this comfort zone meets with great resistance. I know in my own life, the pattern depicted in this epic poem plays out in pretty much the same way. I first begin to feel a bit anxious. After this, a voice within me tells me that if I am to reach my goals I have to get back into the desert, even if it is unpleasant.
Sometimes, I heed the voice and get moving. At other times, I require a divine nudge to get me moving.
So, what is the answer to the dilemma of imprisoning thinking and resistance to out of the box thinking? What can, more than anything else, get us off the dime and into action? What kind of solution, short of a sandstorm of divine origin, can get us back into the game of life?
I am of the belief that the answer(s) to these questions involve a degree of personal specificity. In other words, these answers are individual. What gets one person moving might make another person dig in more deeply. What works for the goose may not work for the gander. With those ideas in mind, however, I believe that something else must take place before we can find the answer that applies to us. What each of us has to do is conduct:
A fearless, thorough, honest, and relentless search for truth.
Within the parameters of this search, we must thoroughly evaluate the answers we arrive at. On a personal level, I admit that such a search can be both intensive and confusing. Still, if we fail to do this, we end up pursuing one of two potential courses of action, neither of which are productive or personally satisfying. Unless we conduct our personal evaluation of the potential answers, we run the risk of:
Letting someone else decide what is true for us or we abandon the process of seeking answers entirely.
Unfortunately, each week church pews are packed with good, decent folks who have opted for either of these empty options. Perhaps this reality again points to the subtle but no less dangerous aspect of the heresy of doctrine. In Christianity, doctrine is to be accepted on faith and not questioned. It is to be swallowed whole, and never masticated. It is easy to see how this sort of thing can lead to a bad case of metaphysical indigestion. There is a solution, but it is going to require a good bit of work on your part.
At various places in my writings, I have mentioned the importance of clarifying one’s world view. The importance of understanding your world view cannot be overstated. By “understanding your world view” I mean basically two things: having a vital and practical insight into the role your world view has in your life; and second, getting down to the brass tacks of defining your world view.
Both of these aspects of your world view are equally important and cannot be ignored. The fact is, your world view is the matrix through which you perceive and explain the world you live in. Additionally, your world view informs your decision making process. Ideally, we make choices and decisions that are in harmony with our internalized values and those values generally flow from our world view, whether we know it or not.
With those things said, I have also stressed the importance of setting aside time on a regular basis in order to check up on your world view. Chances are, over the course of time our perspective might have changed on certain things. We need to take a look at those changes and see how they fit in with the overall schema through which we interpret our world.
I have come to the conclusion that few endeavors in the life of a Christian are as important as the process of “worldview development.” The fact is, many Christians have never given thought to the significance of one’s worldview and, of the few that have taken up the subject, most quickly put it aside in favor of more tangible and practical pursuits.
The reality is, however, there a few items in the life of a Christian that are more tangible and practical than the development and implementation of a biblical worldview. Granted, putting together a workable worldview involves dealing with intellectual abstractions, but even these cognitive pursuits have their base in every day living. For it is our worldview that gives our lives meaning, purpose, and direction. Further, it is our worldview that forms the basis for our decision making process. Few things are more “down to earth” than these issues.
The fact is, we all have a worldview whether we realize it or not. And it is therein the problem arises. Chances are, if we are unaware of the dominant worldview we operate from, then it is a good bet that we are also unaware of how our worldview was formed. Once you realize how vitally important a worldview is, hopefully you will come to see that you can no longer leave this process to chance or random development.
Christian researcher George Barna makes the following observations regarding worldviews:
*Everyone has a worldview. Relatively few have a coherent worldview or are able to articulate it clearly.
*Most people don’t consider their worldview to be a central, defining element of their life, although it is.
*People spend surprisingly little time intentionally considering and developing their worldview. More often than not, their worldview development process is one of unconscious evolution and acceptance. They allow it to evolve and sum it up this way: “Whatever.”
(This article originally appeared in 2008 on both LifeBrook and Wellsprings and Wineskins)
One unfortunate phenomenon I have observed all too frequently is the marked tendency many believers have regarding the content of their thought life. More specifically, it has to do with the fact that too many Christians are confused over what they should or should not believe.
Many genuine, sincere Christians write in to blogs and websites, asking so-called experts whether or not it is acceptable for them to believe this or that. They often say something like:
“When I am honest with myself, I find that I believe (insert belief here).What I am wondering is, should I believe that? Is it ok for a Christian to believe that?”
These questions stem from an even greater problem, I think: religion’s insistence on and illegitimate marriage to the heresy of “correct doctrine.” I call it heresy because the issue of doctrine has evolved into a subtle but deadly form of idolatry. I know that many standard, status-quo church leaders and pillars of the faith will disagree with what I say about this but so be it. In all good conscience, I cannot force myself to agree with something that I think goes deeply against the grain of what Christ clearly taught and reason upholds.
The result of this idolatry of doctrine is the kind of questions many believers now have. Hesitant to trust their own conclusions, they turn to perceived authority figures for the answers. In the end, they still don’t find the answer. Instead, they merely make a decision to trust the authority’s answer more than their own.
I find this a tragedy because these well-meaning, sincere Christ-followers end up dealing a knockout punch to the integrity of their own minds. Emerson once said that the one thing in this world that was most sacred was “the integrity of your own mind.” The Christian who asked the question in the first place now has something like this going on in his or her head.
“I thought about Issue A and came to Conclusion A. However, when I checked with my pastor (the authority on the subject), he told me that a real Christian would never believe conclusion A. So, now I believe Conclusion A, but I am trying not to believe it because it is not what a Christian is supposed to believe. My pastor said I should believe Conclusion B. So I am praying that God will help me drop belief in conclusion A and get to the point where I can accept Conclusion B. I am having a hard time believing Conclusion B because it doesn’t make any sense. Still, now if someone asks me what I believe, I will tell them I believe Conclusion B because that is how I am supposed to think.”
Do you see how integrity goes out the window with a mess like this? What makes it worse is the fact that if this sincere seeker goes back to the pastor and explains that he or she still thinks Conclusion A makes more sense than Conclusion B, they usually hear something like this:
“Well, God’s ways are higher than your ways.” Or, they may get, “Remember, the heart is deceitful above all things,” or, “The Devil is talking to you, watch out!”
What ends up happening is that too many Christians go through life confused or worse, almost brain-dead. Finding out they are incapable of thinking for themselves, they just do what makes sense to them. They stop thinking.
Sometimes it is difficult for Christians to think outside the box. I think this handicap, and that is what it is, has come about for several reasons beyond the process cited above. For some ardent conservatives, to think beyond those parameters defined for us by church leaders both ancient and contemporary, is to invite doctrinal error. Heaven forbid! We would never want to do that now would we?
It is as Mark, a Fundamentalist friend of mine, so cogently put it:
“First you start entertaining thoughts that are unconventional and from there you begin to mull over ideas that are more than non-traditional, they are downright weird. From there, it is a short step to doctrinal error. Fan the flames of doctrinal error just a tad and you end up with a full blown heresy. And from that theological tightrope, it is easy to take the fall into apostasy.”
Sometimes Mark has a way with words, even if he has a major problem with his tightly wound thinking. I would say that it is people who believe as Mark does, that all one needs is the Bible (interpreted in an ultra-literal fashion) and the historic creeds of the church that fear out of the box thinking more than most.
Another factor influencing people’s reluctance to think out of the box is social expectations and the fear of rejection. More than a few believers have both doubts and questions about the faith, but keep these issues under their vest out of fear that others will view them as incomplete Christians. The problem with this situation is the questions will never be answered nor will the doubts be assuaged. Can you imagine, for example, how history would have progressed if Martin Luther had refused to step out of his comfort zone and think out of the box?
The reality is that some questions and/or doubts can only be dealt with by thinking in new ways, and involve the ability to view an issue from more than one perspective. If a sincere Christian believes that others will reject him/her just because they do not meet with the social expectation that such questions should not even be raised, then that genuine believer may well wither on the vine, simply because part of their social definition of what a Christian is supposed to be like does not permit faltering faith or inconsistent belief.
It is this very type of situation that brings to my mind the immortal words of Emerson: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
Yet another issue keeping believers thinking inside the box is very obvious. The stark reality is more than a few of us are intellectually lazy. We don’t want to take the time or expend the mental energy necessary to grapple with the more complex issues of the faith. These are the folks with those bumper stickers that say: “The Bible says it; I believe it; end of story.” These are the folks who frequently nap through sermons and say “Amen” even during the announcements. They are quite content to let others do their thinking for them.
We come to treasure our comfort zones and, as a result, keep our hearts too small for the message of Jesus.
Many of us start out well, accomplish numerous positive things in our lives, and then settle into a pattern of general comfort and complacency. We live not to grow, but to maintain the status quo. This is a tragic mistake.
First page of the Gospel of Mark, by Sargis Pitsak, a Medieval Armenian scribe and miniaturist (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Jesus is like air to the lungs and water to a desert dweller. He is not a religious artifact. He’s not dead. He is alive. He is engaged and engaging. He is here now, changing lives all over this world this very moment. When He walked on earth He changed everything for everyday, for all time. What started then continues today. It can’t be stopped though many have tried. Jesus is the rock of redemption and His church will prevail. He is here in this moment with you, doing what He always does, calling you to a higher place, calling you to break free from convention and stop going to church and start being the church everywhere you go. Let’s be “Jesus people” again. Let’s be men and women whose hearts are captured, redeemed, renewed, enlivened, ignited, set fee! Let’s return to the revolution to be the change we want to see in the world!
When the Master walked this earth, he did so as the prototype of a person who consistently walks in spiritual excellence. Jesus was the optimal version of who and what he was and it is to that goal we all aspire. Granted, we cannot walk as God’s Son walked – scripture tells us Jesus was the only one. However, we can walk as the optimal version of who we are. And when we do that, my friend, we are walking in spiritual excellence.
Jesus gave himself completely to the Father so that he could do the Father’s will completely. And what was the ultimate will of the Father for his Son? The answer is simple: serve others!
Like Christ, we, too, are to give ourselves completely to God so that we can do His will completely. And what is God’s ultimate will for us? It should be obvious by now: we are to serve others.
Our service is the offspring of a heart of compassion, built upon our deep recognition of the pain and suffering inherent in this world and our interconnected unity with all people. You may not know it yet, but every man on this planet is your brother and every woman is your sister. You are made of the same combination of earth and divine breath. When one person suffers, at some level, we all suffer. This is not some New Age airy fairy fantasy; instead, it is scientific fact and theological truth.
From his opening salvo quoting Isaiah about bringing release to the captives and good news to the poor, to his dying plea of, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” Jesus exemplified a compassion far beyond what the world had seen before.
Indeed, it was and is a radical compassion.
Jesus’ stories about the Prodigal, the Good Samaritan, and his treatment of the woman caught in adultery all point to the need for a compassion that transcends the normal boundaries defined by contemporary culture, then and now.
Jesus Christ was not a man of compassion; he was a man of radical compassion. From his voluntary mission to this broken world, to his mysterious ascension back into the heavenly realm, there was no theme he stressed more in both word and deed. From his opening salvo quoting Isaiah about bringing release to the captives and good news to the poor, to his dying plea of, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” Jesus exemplified a compassion far beyond what the world had seen before. Indeed, it was and is a radical compassion.
Jesus’ stories about the Prodigal, the Good Samaritan, and his treatment of the woman caught in adultery all point to the need for a compassion that transcends the normal boundaries defined by contemporary culture, then and now. Indeed, it was and is a radical compassion.
Five-hundred years before Jesus, another prophet of radical compassion graced our world. Gautama Buddha was an example of grace and perfect love incarnate. After finding his awakening under the Bodhi tree, the Buddha went about spreading the truth that he had discovered, a truth that when astutely applied to life, could liberate beings from endless rounds of suffering. Just as with Jesus who would come later, Buddha taught through sermons, informal talks, parables, and above all, his actions.
Radical compassion is compassion with legs; radical compassion is a verb. Just as the Bible tells us in the Letter of James that faith without works is dead, also, compassion without concomitant action is a lifeless phenomenon. Many sincere aspirants have the mistaken notion that the ultimate goal of the spiritual path is enlightenment. Although a sincere desire for motivation is one of our most treasured possessions, it is actually penultimate. The real aim of the spiritual journey is simply this – Sacred Service. All that we do is dedicated to the greatest good of all beings in all the worlds. Our gain is their gain, our loss is their loss, our advancement is their advancement, and it is to this sacred reality that we offer our benedictions at the end of our times of meditation and prayer.
In the Christian faith especially, personal enlightenment takes a back seat to serving others, spiritually and materially. Perhaps no where in the sacred writings of the world is this reality presented so directly as in the 13th Chapter of the Gospel of John.
Imagine for a moment that you are one of Jesus’ twelve disciples and you, your band of rag tag friends, and the Master arrive at the Upper Room after a long, tedious, dusty day going about your business. You sit for a moment to catch your breath and unwind a few moments before you go wash up for the evening meal. You close your eyes for a few minutes, only to feel something or someone taking off your sandals. And to your utter disbelief, kneeling in front of you is the Master Jesus with a basin and a towel. Incredible….
The Master taught his disciples, and all of us who have read of this amazing episode, a clear and concise example of the essence of spirituality: selfless service with a heart of humility. If only more of us, especially those who claim to be followers of Jesus, would take this lesson to heart, our world would have much less pain.
The Kingdom of God is a divine realm of proactive compassion. This is the message that Jesus came to deliver and through his actions as well as his words, he delivered it consistently. In all that he did and he said, Jesus revealed to us the nature of God. This incarnational revelation was hinted at in the Master’s magnificent prayer in John 17. In the 21st verse the Master says:
I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one – as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.
In the Bible’s most well known verse, John 3:16, it is stated that for God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life. (NLT)
Now, to make this even clearer, let’s look at one more verse in John 17. In verse three John records:
And this is the way to have eternal life, to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent to earth. (NLT)
Putting all this together, Jesus gave us a powerful but very real theology in this prayer and his disciple, John, fully caught its significance by saying in 3:16 that God loved the world so much that he sent his Son to save it. On God’s part, this was a perfect example of “proactive compassion” or what we often call “grace.” Motivated by the purest form of love, God was moved to have compassion on we fallen creatures, even in our blind ignorance, and he literally gave that compassion flesh by sending us the Master Jesus.
In order for compassion to become more than just a nice idea or a sentimental feeling, it must flow out of the internalized wisdom of the ages, particularly as related to the reality of “interconnectivity.” The idea of interconnectivity, now confirmed by the field of quantum physics, has been around for many centuries and is at the core of interspiritual mysticism, that one aspect of world religion that seems to transcend culture, time, and especially theology. It is a mystical connectedness that promotes compassion and engaged action to make the world a better place for all who dwell here. In essence, it is a deep wisdom that gives flesh to grace. The great spiritual writer Kahil Gibran spoke of this interconnected reality when he said:
Your neighbor is your other self dwelling behind a wall. In understanding, all walls shall fall down. Who knows but that your neighbor is your better self wearing another body? See that you love him as you would yourself. He too is a manifestation of the Most High.
In India, for example, we have the story of Indra’s Net, which is strung throughout the universe with a precious jewel at the places where the cords of the net intersect. These jewels, in turn, reflect all of the other jewels. Similar to the modern discovery of the hologram, the image of Indra’s Net is filled with symbolic wisdom depicting the interconnectivity of all that is. Gary Zukav, in his groundbreaking book entitled, The Dancing Wu Li Masters tell us:
…the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics is that all things in our universe (including us) that appears to exist independently are actually parts of one all-encompassing organic pattern, and that no parts of that pattern are ever really separate from it or from each other.
In the Christian tradition, the writings of the great mystic teachers echo these same truths, often in symbolic and metaphorical ways. Julian of Norwich especially comes to mind as well as Hildegard of Bingen and Madame Guyon. The writings of Saint Theresa of Avila and the life and work of St. Francis also point to the interconnectivity of all life and the necessity of having a heart of radical compassion.
The great Romantic poets like William Wordsworth and Percy B. Shelley have voices that ring loudly with the sense of the interrelated aspects of the natural world and their American counterparts, the Transcendentalists, in the writings of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, also echo this theme of divine connectivity. And then there is the work of that master of the arcane, William Blake who spoke of the mystic’s ability:
To see a World in a grain of sand,
And Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.
The world that we interact with each day only appears to be solid. In point of fact, it is an intricate dance of sub-atomic waves and particles that obey none of the traditional or expected moves of predictable choreography. At its core level, our apparently solid, material world is less like classical music and more like jazz. Just when we think we have a handle on how things are, these very things change, morphing into something totally unexpected and often totally mysterious. Someone wise, I forget who, once said the life is not a riddle to be solved but a mystery to be lived. How true, and the sooner a person grasps this fundamental truth, the less frustration will appear in his or her life.
It is not my intention to travel too far down this road of quantum physics at this juncture. Suffice to say that contemporary science is increasingly coming to grasp the same fundamental truths that mystics and shamans have voiced for many centuries. Simply put: Everything is interrelated and interdependent and when one part is affected by something, at a very core level, every other part is also impacted.
In teaching about the interrelated aspect of the universe, I often use a simple analogy that explains these principles in a basic way. I use the example of raisin Jell-o. Imagine you have concocted a delicious tub or raisin Jell-o. Choose your favorite flavor if you like. The raisins are the important thing, here. Now, what happens when you take your index finger and thump one of the raisins? All the raisins move. Crude as this metaphor is, it makes the point that all the raisins in the bowl are connected and if one raisin moves, they all move. This is what the mystics, and the quantum physicists, are talking about when they speak of interconnectivity.
Christian writer and teacher Elizabeth Elliot, looking at God’s wondrous creation with both attentiveness and wisdom, grasps the profundity of this theme of interconnectedness and how it illustrates a foundation of commonality between humans and other species in God’s creation:
The closer one comes to the center of things, the better able he is to observe the connections. Everything created is connected, for everything is produced by the same mind, the same love, and is dependent on the same Creator. He who masterminded the universe, the Lord God Omnipotent, is the One who called the stars into being, commanded light, spoke the Word that brought about the existence of time and space and every form of matter: salt and stone, rose and redwood, feather and fur and fin and flesh. The titmouse and the turkey answer to Him. The sheep, the pig, and the finch are His, at His disposal, possessed and known by Him…We too are created, owned, possessed, known.
As the church moves into the second decade of the 21st Century it has already become apparent that great changes are in the wind. I feel some of these changes are connected with an increased understanding of how God’s magnificent creation is put together in this incredible holographic manner in which each part contains the totality of the whole and every aspect of his world exists in an interdependent relationship with every other part. This is no romantic sentimentalism I am speaking of. Instead, it is a living, vibrant reality that, when one takes it to heart, changes everything. For the church, the message of the gospel become less of “let me show you the way,” and more of “What do you need?”
This move toward proactive compassion is a move of grace. Perhaps you are not accustomed to looking at grace that way, but grace is what we are dealing with. As stated earlier, a major part of Christ’s incarnation and our ongoing mission is to give flesh to grace. Caroline Myss makes this cogent observation in her book, Invisible Acts of Power:
What really happens inside you when you respond to someone in need? Why do some people jump out of their seats to help another person, while others look the other way? No doubt, some people have been taught to be kind and others may be naturally thoughtful. But I think something greater than compassion or good manners is at work, something beyond the motivation of the strong to help the weak or the wealthy to help the poor. I think it is the invisible power of grace, moving between the open hearts of give and receiver. The action itself, the lifting of a heavy piece of luggage or the drink of water offered to the thirsty man, may be small. But the energy that is channeled through that action is the high-voltage current of grace. It contains the power to renew someone’s faith in himself. It even has the power to save a life.
It should not be too difficult of an intellectual jump to see why this concept of interrelated reality should lead to a true and radical sense of compassion. What happens to me in the ultimate sense, happens to you and vice versa. When a child dies of hunger or disease in a poverty stricken nation, some part of each of us dies. We may not feel it, understand it, or even recognize it. Still, it is a fundamental spiritual and quantum truth. It is wise to remember the words of the 17th Century poet John Donne as he spoke of the custom of the time which involved ringing the town’s bell whenever someone died:
Any man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind;
Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
Stained glass window of the sacred Heart of Jesus Christ in the former Mosque (Cathedral) of Cordoba, Spain (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
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