Inquiry

--I think that an objective inquiry into the evolution of the Christian faith is essential to its revitalization. Having been brought up Pentecostal, I struggled with the questions concerning what I'd been taught. And when I reached a particular level of understanding I simply stopped going to church all together. I cut off all ties with the world of my familiar; people, organizations etc. I had always told myself and others that I had simply grown out of Christianity. Because I could find no one in my social circle who could understand this, no Christians who could relate to my place in life, I felt that It was over for me and Jesus. 

   I now understand that it is quite normal and even necessary that this transformation of mine had taken place. I have also found, through the Unity church of practical Christianity that there are many other like minded people in the world. Ken wilber has really offered the Church a gift in The Future of Christianity DVD series to help us remain relevant in the world. 

Michael Ezell

Here's a piece written by Rollie Stanich (ISC Editor) and myself on "what is Integral Christianty?"

 

What is Integral Christianity?

“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.”

 

- Luke 6:27-30

 

These stirring words, spoken by an itinerant Jewish teacher crucified under the Roman Empire in the first century, have echoed through the ages and still resonate today with over two billion Christians in all four corners of the globe.

Jesus’ simple message to “love one another” is the precious and enduring gift of Christianity to the world, and according to one of the worlds most loved living contemplatives Thomas Keating, the source and summit of the Christian life is to mystically take part in the same experience of love that Jesus had of God: as Abba (literally, “Daddy”).

However, in the present day Christianity has an image problem. Recent research into everyday perceptions of 16 to 29-year-old non-Christians reveals that Body of Christ, particularly in America, has undertaken a regressive slide in one of its most important assignments - representing Christ to the world. Using descriptions like “hypocritical,” “insensitive,” “homophobic” and “judgmental,” the majority of young Americans share an impression of Christians that's nothing short of, well... un-Christian.

So while Christianity in the USA today is today increasingly less haunted by the powerful ghost of the Religious Right, the time is now ripe to weave together the fractured footnotes of this rich but exhausted tradition and allow Christians of all stripes and flavors to begin to feel like they’re actually living in the 21st century, while reconnecting with the transformative depths and the rich depositary of their own faith tradition.

So what is Integral Christianity? Integral Christianity is the Christian faith tradition seen and unpacked through the most inclusive map of human nature currently in existence. Commonly known as the Integral (or AQAL) framework—which includes 'all Quadrants, all Levels, all Lines, all States, and all Types' — this map fits the structure of manifest reality better than any other map that we possess at this time — and can therefore ensure the most comprehensive and integrated message of Christianity and its living Gospel. 

 So, to answer the question - the basic contours of an Integral Christianity, would aim to: 

·   Facilitate a deeper, more authentic vision of Christianity for our sophisticated pluralistic culture and provide a mirror in which to see yourself and your faith more clearly 

·   Outline a Universal Catechism of Christianity that looks at each of the 6 major stages of faith development across the 4 irreducible perspectives that are available to all human beings 

·         With a re-constructive science of the further reaches of Christian contemplative practice re-activate the mystical dimensions of the Christianity and gain some insight into the general patterns that the future of Christianity might follow 

·         Help people see Jesus without all the mythic-literal (amber) baggage that surrounds him by presenting a direct insight into his teachings on the Kingdom of God. 

·         Unpack a) the Trinitarian dance of the Three Original Faces of God (1st person “I”, 2nd person “You”, 3rd person “It”) b) the Integral impulse driving the “fully human, fully divine” paradox at the heart of orthodox Christology.

 ·         Help those who have left traditional Christianity to find a deeper relationship to God and other people and become effective agents of spiritual transformation in a world where people are skeptical and even hostile about religion and God

 ·         Increase our capacity to love people, and offer them genuine compassion and hope…

 

 So what does “Integral Christianity” look like?  For starters, one of the most important contributions of an Integral approach is to recognize that there is no one single, pre-given “Christianity”, but rather a number of different “Christianities” that have developed and are enacted through various “world-spaces” across at least 6 major historical shifts or turnings.

From the outset, then, we need to appreciate the fact that there is no single monolithic Christian tradition, but rather a variety of different historical Christianities, with the understanding that it is one’s altitude — or stage of faith development — that plays a significant role in how a given Christian will make meaning in their life.

 In addition to this, an Integral approach will also take into account each of the 4 Quadrants – or primordial perspectives – that are available to any sentient being at each and every stage of development. For another essential ingredient in the Integral approach is to recognize that any single perspective (e.g. interior, exterior, individual or collective) can only highlight one aspect of a situation and, in so doing, casts into the shadows an equally important, though incompatible, aspect.

For example, while it is indeed a travesty for the Religious Right in the USA to spin their hellfire-and-judgment version of Christianity as the one true path to salvation, liberal Christianities adherence to a gentle, meek and mild version of Christ – who wants us all to avoid conflict, make excuses for bad behavior, and just be nice to each other – can be every bit as problematic.

And so where each side of our all too human battle lines claims to possess the One True Way while perpetuating the same fractured insanity it despises in the other, Integral Christianity maintains that the best way to resurrect the Christian faith will be found in flexible, adaptive, or “second-tier” containers where seeming paradoxes (or the irreducible dimensions of human experience) can be complementary elements within larger, more inclusive and dynamic process of growth and development…

With the simple recognition that Christianity has many different dimensions which have to be held together in a sane, balanced and inclusive fashion, in this initiative, not only can the miracles and healing stories of Jesus be contextualized and appreciated, but the forms and structures that preserved the faith through dark ages and catalyzed medieval Europe into a cohesive society will also be honored.  In the same way, an Integral Christianity will also celebrate the achievements of rationality that allowed for a hermeneutical analysis of Scripture and the evolutionary world-view of modern science, while also touching base with the social justice movement, inspired by Christ’s love for the marginalized and oppressed - the “least of my brethren.”

Importantly, an Integral approach to Christianity would stay true to the founding gesture of this rich and multi-faceted tradition by acknowledging that it is the figure of Jesus that has always been decisive for the Christian faith, and that with modern critical-historical methods of inquiry we can begin to dig beneath the mythic dogma of the Church that has been built up for centuries over the earthly existence of the historical Jesus. By uncovering the various layers of tradition through their numerous bends and turns, and tracing them back to their source an Integral approach to Christianity would also be able to turn a spot light to the authentic vision and challenge Jesus and his radical enactment of the Kingdom of God.

While avoiding the temptation to make “the quest for the original Jesus” a retro-romantic compulsion, we can here offer a cutting-edge reconstruction of the structural features of Jesus' own parables and sayings and thereby provide a direct transmission Jesus’ own experience of God while allowing the event that is harbored in the name of Christ to be present in its first, disturbing, immediacy…

Yet another essential piece of the Integral Christianity puzzle is to see that throughout its history Christianity has fostered a flourishing mystical or contemplative tradition – from the Desert Fathers to Meister Eckhart and St. John of the Cross to contemporary Christian mystics such as Thomas Merton and Father Thomas Keating. These later mystics have built on the experience of earlier ones, and the collective realization has shown a definite developmental flowering, a rich and well tested trajectory on whose awe-inspiring shoulders we now stand.

And so while the leading theologian of Vatican II Karl Rahner announced that “the Christian of the future will be a mystic, or not exist at all…” as one’s practice of the presence of God deepens, it is precisely the contemplative heart of Christianity that grows in importance. Indeed, as in the famous parable of Jesus, the contemplative depths of Christianity are a “pearl of great price” buried in a field; the one who discovers this treasure goes with great joy and sells all they have in order to buy the field, and the treasure that lies therein.

Infused with the wisdom of other traditions, as well as the insights of modern science and postmodern philosophy, an Integral Christianity would offer practices that honor the great contemplative heritage of the Church, making them accessible to all, inviting every practitioner to “put on the mind of Christ” and experience God as Jesus did (“Abba”).

Thus, Integral Christianity attempts to view this great tradition and its contemplative practices from the highest possible viewpoint we can take, resulting in a series of mandatory injunctions that can bring one further and deeper into a mystical knowledge of God that is infused with love.

In this way, we must take quite literally the command of Jesus to love one another, holding this as the great gift of the tradition, and Jesus as our exemplar.  One thing Jesus did not tolerate was hypocrisy (especially from religious authorities); we must never be hypocritical about that love, especially for the poorest of the poor. We must share that gift, and share in the giftedness of all people and all traditions.  We must seek the Face of God everywhere:  in all of creation and in all beings, as our own Beloved, and dwelling deeply within our own hearts.  We must acknowledge the miracle of the Incarnation — God becoming human — and embody it, reflect it, live it in and as our own lives.  From an Integral altitude, we can encounter the Word made flesh, fully human and fully divine, and dare to take up the injunction, “Come, follow me….”

And so while confessing that stand on the edge of an abyss, a tremendous precipice where there are no ready-made, or pre-packaged answers – but just a remarkable kaleidoscope of perspectives, practical injunctions and ever-evolving world-views to be enacted and expressed, an Integral approach to Christianity can offer a kinder, gentler and more inclusive approach to the figure of Jesus and the multifarious faith tradition that followed in his name – one that engages people across a spectrum of ‘world-spaces’ with a deeper and more authentic vision of the human face of God that can speak with clarity and confidence to the modern and post-modern world…

Therefore, from the standpoint of Integral awareness, we will open the way to approach each person and every point of view with the wisdom, compassion and the skillful means that comes from the further reaches of humanities spiritual self-understanding. For isn't it true that we all continually show both sides of any of our favorite two-somess: religious and secular, believer and skeptic, saint and heretic, liberal and conservative?  Aren't those of us interested in the Integral Christianity conversation both members of the traditional faith but innovative as to its form and expression?  Aren't we both atheists when it comes to the interventionist God of the literal-fundamentalist and true believers in the transformative heart of the Gospel message?  And are not we all both astonished before the mystery of Christ and demanding of evidence, practical injunctions and critical reflection in order to validate our beliefs—and are we not in continually moved and stirred by the passion of faith because the one side of us is continually questioning the other and because all we can do is take an broader perspective, tolerate ambiguity and move forward with the creative tensions of an integral embrace to live out and express the embodied story of God-in-time?

And so, by re-activating the consciousness that was in Christ and presenting the Christian faith tradition in an entirely new light, Integral Christians are perhaps better able than any who have gone before to understand who we are as Christians, where we’ve been, and where we perhaps might all be going and insure that the living teachings Jesus, the love of God revealed in Christ crucified and the faith tradition that was founded in his name gets the most traction in your life and in today's world… 

“DIVINITY HAS one ultimate secret, which it will also whisper in your ear if your mind becomes quieter than the fog at sunset: the God of this world is found within, and you know it is found within: in those hushed silent times when the mind becomes still, the body relaxes into infinity, the senses expand to become one with the world- in those glistening times, a subtle luminosity, a serene radiance, a brilliantly transparent clarity shimmers as the true nature of all manifestation, erupting every now and then in a compassionate Radiance before whom all idols retreat, a Love so fierce it adoringly embraces both light and dark, both good and evil, both pleasure and pain equally; for "I make the Light to fall on the good and bad alike; I the Lord do all these things"; a passionately embroiling Heat so painful it will melt your bones while you hurl yourself to the ground with awe and supplication and reverence and surrender.”

 

– Ken Wilber “The Simple Feeling of Being”

 

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"Become passers-by" (Jesus of Nazareth)

 

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My hope for the future of Christianity is spaciousness; meaning an increased awareness and understanding within the heart/soul of humanity, and of our oneness pulsating through each of us, and the world we go forth creating with this oneness.For this to happen, I believe, direct experience with this pulsating divine, loving intelligence must happen. Direct experience transforms us from an idea of something to living and breathing that idea into the world. And, of course, the only way to directly experience this is to sit still, and 'know that I am God'. Mediitation and comtemplative prayer starts the process of going within.....then all hell breaks loose.....then the conveyor belt of ascending flight through the levels begins to take us home.

What this will look like depends on us. Our own willingness to take responsibility for this direct experience will take each of us through our shadows and tribulations, in order to break down all the boundaries and barriers resurrected; keeping us from directly knowing we are beautiful souls one with God. Once we directly experience this great spacious awareness we see with the eyes of God, hear with the voice of God and love with the heart of God. Then it becomes impossible to divide ourselves against one another.....

My own relationship with Christianity began in a fundamentalist baptist church in the deep south. I left the church but never left Jesus's teachings. The act of loving one another as ourselves struck a great chord of music within my heart. I struggled with my very unorthodox way of being until I discovered the writings of Ken Wilber, almost thirty years ago....it changed my life...... the work of shadow is not easy but the light illuminated within the shadow is transforming.

We are faced with many challenges today; Christianity being a big one. But I see all of these challenges as one and the same; humanity is stuck within levels of evolution that is dangerous and destructive. Some say we must evolve or die and, sadly, this may be the greatest truth today we are facing.

With love always,

Mary Linda Landauer