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January 29 - February 18, 2021
I recommend Jim Marion’s Putting on the Mind of Christ and The Death of the Mythic God.
The idea of development or evolution of spiritual understanding and experience is quite different from the traditional idea of “the faith once delivered to the saints.” It recognizes that the Spirit continues to move us along as Jesus predicted.1
Every person has a right to be at any stage, because all stations in life are expressions of the Spirit’s work in taking us along one step at a time.
A simple three-part stage is egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric—from “me” to “us” to “all of us.” Every individual begins as a completely egocentric infant. As we develop, we become aware of others who are close to us, and we begin to think in terms of family. This ethnocentric stage broadens to include others who share some things in common with us such as nation, race, school, church denomination, or political group. If one continues to grow, one begins to think beyond the smaller groupings and see the larger global village, all of humankind, and the earth as an ecosystem—all
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I have taken a more modest approach and, following Steve McIntosh’s categories, focused on six major levels of faith on the spiral of life that seem identifiable and important—tribal, warrior, traditional, modern, postmodern, and integral (post-postmodern) and beyond. All six of these different layers of development are represented in churches today. Most churches tend to have one stage of consciousness as a dominant center with some members at preceding levels and others at following ones.
We are not called to be people inspectors. But we are called to be produce inspectors.
The challenge for the growing Christian is learning to not get angry about people who get angry. It is how to avoid having a warrior consciousness about warrior consciousness. The challenge is to be passionate without persecuting, protective without punishing, and vehement without violence.
An estimated 40–55 percent of the world’s population is at the altitude of traditional consciousness. This means that the great majority, 65–80 percent, of people in the world are at the pre-modern stages of traditional, warrior, or tribal.
The traditional level of church deserves our respect and gratitude. Most of us on the Christian path today got there via this stage.
Jesus warns us not to cling to our group in any way that will keep us from evolving spirituality. Anything that competes with the call of the Spirit to new wineskins is a disaster, no matter how virtuous it may seem.
We cannot see what our worldview will not allow. One cannot use reason to argue someone out of a position they did not arrive at by reason.
Each stage takes into account the value of the previous stage and then adds to it. Nothing of value is lost. Something new is added that increases the new stage’s usefulness by adding expanded perspective, a more integrative consciousness, and greater capacity to love.
Postmodernism understands that reality is not just something objective but that our minds also play a part in constructing what we think of as reality.
Panentheism offers a third way of viewing God with an emphasis on the middle syllable “en.” God is in everything and everything is in God. God is in creation but is also greater than creation. I believe panentheism is the most advanced way of thinking about the Infinite Face of God that is compatible with both postmodernism and integralism.
If you acted today as God is described as acting in the Old Testament, you would be called criminally and pathologically insane and put away. I make this rather severe criticism of the Bible in order to invite Christians to be more faithful to Jesus’ teaching. If Jesus’ words that God is kind and merciful to the wicked are true then these hundreds of passages about divine violence cannot also present a true picture of God for us today.
I left the literal interpretation of the Bible when I decided to follow Jesus instead of a literal Bible. Before
Many followers of Jesus have yet to come to believe that God practices what Jesus preached.
Wow!
This is integralist thinking—include the good from a previous stage and transcend what needs to be left behind.
The integral level is the first level that looks around in the awareness of where people really are and kindly says, “They really don’t know what they are doing. When they attack me, they don’t know what they are doing, so I don’t need to take it personally. When they attack others furiously, I will speak out against those attacks in order to break their hold on the oppressed. But behind it all are people who are simply viewing the world from where they are.” It was from this viewpoint that Jesus recognized the liberating truth that they, indeed, did not know what they were doing.
Here it is in diagram form: These are three different and identifiable states of consciousness which have been experienced by the mystics of many traditions around the world, down through history, and continuing today: Martha’s ordinary awareness of everyday physical reality, Mary’s connecting awareness with non-physical spiritual reality, and Jesus’ being awareness of divine identification. They are called gross, subtle, and causal states by some.7 Or, we might call them ordinary awareness, spiritual awareness, and divine awareness
Being a follower of Jesus came to be defined by what you believed about him and not what you experienced with him.
Hebrews 2:10 says that Jesus was “made perfect through suffering.” The word “perfect” may be more fully translated as whole, complete, mature, or grown-up.3 The Spirit used Jesus’ struggles here and other places to help him evolve into a more “complete” person. The Spirit does the same with us.
God uses whatever alphabet we have at hand to communicate with us.
The earliest Christians defined themselves not as much by a set of doctrines but by what they had experienced.
Wilber says, “A mystic is not one who sees God as an object, but one who is immersed in God as an atmosphere.”8
The point of the Christian life is to have the same kind of relationship with and understanding of God that Jesus had and express it in the world as he did in accordance with our gifts.
Jesus spoke about God, to God, and as God. This nine word sentence is an unparalleled revelation about God as understood and experienced by Jesus.
The Spirit of God manifests itself in 3rd-person Infinite God, 2nd-person Intimate God, and 1st-person Inner God. These are the Three Faces of God.
With theism, God is always separate from the universe. With pantheism, God is the universe and nothing else. With panentheism, God is in the universe, and the universe is in God. Theism sees God as a separate being, separated from everything. Pantheism sees God as everything, and God is limited to the everything of creation. Panentheism sees God both beyond everything and, at the same time, as part of everything.
Paraphrasing what has sometimes been attributed to the American scholar Sam Pascoe, Christianity began in Palestine as an experience; It moved to Greece and became a philosophy; It moved to Italy and became an institution; It moved to Europe and became a culture; It moved to America and became a business!
The traditional church believes that the goal of the spiritual life is to get us into heaven. Integral church believes that the goal is to get heaven into us!
Integral Christianity learns from all levels of churches. It learns from tribal church to settle into the church community with ferocious commitment and loyalty. It learns from warrior church to be passionate about the spiritual life. It learns from traditional church about working together in faithfulness. It learns from modern church to keep thinking. It learns from postmodern church to be sensitive to where each person finds themself, and to be as inclusive as possible.
The goal of integral level church is to create a community where we can accelerate our spiritual growth in both stages and states.
