The Christ Consciousness

Part II

Spiritual power is relational. Live action in the now. This is why the word ‘abide’ is so significant. For a long time it has seemed to me that too many Christians really want the best of both worlds – hence the success of that sadly distorted ‘prosperity’ gospel notion – simply because it appeals to our desire for material comfort. Our world sends us all of these ‘necessity of material comfort’ signals. But true gospel power brings a differentness that the comforts of this material world cannot give. It’s not about doing without. It’s about looking beyond material comfort. Getting it is cool.  Just don’t stay there.  Jesus made that clear enough. What we need to do is to learn through new kinds of experiences. Then we might truly hear God, and not our own thoughts masquerading as something else… But here and there, Saints, esp. in the Catholic tradition, have experienced a differentness. But Jesus was not talking about the occasional person and the occasional experience. He was talking about each one of us being really serious about entering the Kingdom now!  

And those who do, have learned the wisdom of silence. They will not advertise themselves. They are only passing through. They will not get involved. But they will help the true seekers. And they have learned that we must each work out the next phase of salvation, because God has made each one of us able to do this.  The key result of such fine tuning is that you live in God’s will and do everything in Jesus’ name. You cannot do that unless you have reached a new level. And once you are doing this, your requests are always made within the framework of God’s will for you and so everything you ask for is exactly what God wants for you, and it will happen. This is the key goal in the Christian life. Synchronizing both will and desire with God’s intentions – which are nothing more than to be fully human as created, and vastly capable beyond what we can do now. Very SF.

Being a new creation means spiritual freedom. Jesus says ‘If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.’ (Jn 8:36) And part of what it means to be free is to be able to see beyond dominant traditions, fraught with worldly psychology and religious stereotypes. We must each create our own spiritual growth plan and be responsible for it! If you read your Bible with earnest desire for the Kingdom, the Spirit will show you a great many jump points, not starting points, that traditional interpretation has missed. And you will be shown according to your level of readiness. And that depends on your level of demonstrated kindness in how you act towards others. You cannot achieve spiritual growth for the wrong reasons. It will not happen. It has taken me a lifetime to get past all of the learned traditional habits, and all of my training – the terms of discourse of religious life, its distinctions, the human construct that is ‘doctrine’ – all of these work together to tie us down. The ‘believing’ and ‘’having faith’ conditions are but the first step. And the most critical one?

Everything changes in John Chapter 15. John’s gospel does not have the action of Mark, nor the detailed narrative of Matthew and Luke. But it has spiritual value of tremendous significance that requires regular work before you can get into it. It moves from faith and belief into experience. In Hebrew, ‘knowing’ comes by experience. It is never academic. We see the results in all aspects of our lives. Jesus sets us free and unleashes the ‘prototokos’ experience, the true new creation, and it is to Paul’s credit that he sees this and puts a name to it. The church has not picked up where Jesus and then Paul, in following  Jesus, left off. It has talked a lot about it. Forever, it seems.

This, is new creation. Not just saying it. But being it and demonstrating it. Perhaps the precursor of Nietzsche’s ‘ubermensch.’ Scary notion. The forces that be cannot control this new person who has been set free! Free from fear! Free from the ‘sin-guilt-forgiveness’ cycle i.e. no longer committing a crime against ourselves. What crime? Well, when I think that the Lord is everything and I am nothing, then I will always be nothing. I have set myself up. But Jesus turns that notion on its head!  You will do all that I have and more. Reminds me of the closing line from a marvelous movie called ‘The Kingdom of Heaven.’ -  ‘And if God were not with you, how is it that you have been able to do these things?’ No money is needed. Do not cheapen the Kingdom. The notion that we need money to do God’s work is a very insidious deception. To see spiritual experience as nothing more than a matter of feeling is a likewise deception.

True spiritual experience has very little to do with the human range of feeling. It has everything to do with working things out as they should in our lives! If my knowledge and experience of God is based on how I feel, I have seen nothing, heard nothing, experienced nothing. But I have a lot of feelings. 

What happens when the mind encounters temptation? A thought image takes shape in our minds. We begin a conversation with ourselves about it. The image gets stronger and more attractive. A ‘why not?’ option emerges. It holds out a pleasant possibility. That possibility grows stronger and becomes an attractive source of pleasure. This is how dangerous the mind can be if not controlled. We may not possess a thing, yet we are able to create the experience of it in our minds, as we will. And having done so, we can then choose to make it reality, if we so desire. And the more we desire a thing the harder it becomes to deny ourselves of it. Then we declare it acceptable and rationalize it. And we proceed. Depending on what it is, the process can be slow, even insidious. Or it can roll over you.  We may think we didn’t want to do it. Ah, but we did.

Thoughts cause images, and images evoke emotions. The mind allows these emotions to impact the persona. And the human spirit is soon overrun. Hence Jesus words that ‘the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ (Mk 14:38) There is a stream of thought flowing constantly through the mind, carrying a hundred and one images. We know this. It doesn’t stop when we fall asleep. But this thought stream is exactly why the verse ‘be still and know that I am God’ (Ps 46:10) is of critical importance to spiritual growth. To be ‘still’ is not only a matter of controlling physical movement, but also of controlling mental and cognitive process. Even the Greeks said ‘know thyself.’ To control your own mind requires disciplined practice. And you must learn this while being in the world. Can’t run away from it. Must stay in it and overcome. This is why Jesus says ‘Be of good cheer…for I have overcome the world.’ (Jn 16:33) But this is where most of Christian community has taken a different route. We celebrate emotional energy in prayer and worship and engage society through our social work and help. But Jesus said ‘you will always have the poor with you.’ (Mk 14:7) The social problems that exist are the responsibility of our elected officials, for these problems come because of the socio-political inequality of the human condition.

Time to start testing out your spiritual abilities. On what? I don’t know. You must assess what’s going on in your life and how you are challenged in ways that have no clear answer. But start small. And start with yourself. Do something good in a situation that you have not been able to do. Make it happen. It is not faith, or belief, or will, but all of them together and more. This is why Jesus says ‘and you will say to this mountain – move….and it will. He did not say ‘pray about it’. Or earn a Degree in theology. Make a thing happen. You do this every day when you  ‘will’ yourself to get out of bed. But the scale must change. And that is what Jesus is saying is doable. It is scalable. As we walk through the story of salvation and what it can mean for us and our world, you must learn how to put it into practice.

Give yourself time. But as we go, somewhere between the mix where the story of David moves into the fulfilment of Jesus, think of small beginnings. It will take us several months to work through all of this . Where did the 3 wise men from the East come from? What wisdom taught and brought them? How did they know to come at all? And in coming what were they acknowledging about their own belief systems? Where did Jesus disappear to between the ages of 12  and 30? Why, for all of the so called research and academic work, has nothing been done to discover this? Why has Jim Wallis correctly written a work called The False White Gospel, so much so that you realize that evangelical Christianity which has anything to do with Christian nationalism does not follow Jesus at all? and why does Walter Brueggemann speak of interpretive and textual hegemony? Working through these will bring us to just about Christmastide! God is not God of the past. That’s a great but old story. God is of the present, and even more, of the future. I am content to know and decide when I will die so that I am ready. And I want both feet already in the Kingdom when that time comes.

So, in the evenings and/or mornings, start with a short period of time. It will lengthen by itself. We do this because we want to. Find a good lead to get started - like Psalm 5:8ff,  that says ‘Lead me, Lord…’ give thanks for all the good in your life, choose one thing most important for the day and lay that before the Lord; Then close your eyes and sit in silence. Learn how to stop thoughts from running all over the place, from item to item. Focus your mind and say the name of Jesus or sing an Amen quietly to yourself. Breathe slowly and deeply. Do this for a little while and then shift from saying ‘Jesus’ to thinking ‘Jesus’ in your mind. Let this be the start of your experiment and be faithful in doing it. Don’t expect too much, better, don’t expect anything. God will choose how to reach out to you, just as you reach out to God. All aspects must come together. No magic in true spiritual growth, but an across-the-board consistency in living a full and wholesome life. This is an ongoing work in process, for everything you think, say and do impacts your spiritual life, and you have to watch these things everyday. But the Lord your God loves you greatly, so be of good cheer and persist with patience. New things will happen! With every good blessing in Jesus, stay well. G.