Finding Rhythm

Here is a continuation of the excerpt from Ken Wilber’s Grace and Grit that I cited in Part 1 of this series on the differences between exoteric and esoteric religion:

Interviewer: But meditation is private.

Ken Wilber: Not really. Not any more so than, say, mathematics. There is no external proof, for example, that negative one squared equals one; there is no sensory or empirical proof for that. That happens to be true, but it is proven to be true only by an internal logic. You can’t find negative one in the external world; you find it only in your mind. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true, that doesn’t mean it is only private knowledge that can’t be publicly validated. That only means that its truth is validated by a community of trained mathematicians, by those who know how to internally run the logical experiment that will decide whether it is true or not. Just so, meditative knowledge is internal knowledge, but knowledge that can be publicly validated by a community of trained meditators, those who know the internal logic of the contemplative experience. We don’t let anybody vote on the truth of the Pythagorean theorem; we let trained mathematicians vote on that truth. Likewise, meditative spirituality makes certain claims–for example, that inward sense of self is, if you look at it closely, one with the feeling of the external world–but that is a truth to be checked experimentally and experientially by you and anybody else who cares to try the experiment. And after something like six thousand years of this experiment, we are perfectly justified in making certain conclusions, making certain spiritual theorems, as it were. And those spiritual theorems are the core of the perennial wisdom traditions.

The struggle for many Christians today is to find a religious framework that, to put it simply, makes sense. We’ve attempted our experiments with exoteric Christianity and the experiment has yielded mostly negative results. Not that everything about Christian fundamentalism is bad but taken as a whole, it does not sit well with our souls. But rather than leaving our tradition all together, we seek a new direction that relies on the saints that have gone before us and the Spirit’s calling us forward. This is why I really appreciate writers like McLaren because he is doing his part in developing an alternate vision that doesn’t do away with the past, but embraces it in a new way. After all, it is more than obvious that for a growing number of folks, the conventional Christian perspective does not invite their souls, but repels them. We must find a spirituality that makes sense because, in the end, isn’t that what we all do? For the fundamentalist, fundamentalism makes sense. For the Calvinist, Calvinism makes sense. No one can invest in a religious experiment with a full and open heart unless it makes sense. The growing problem with the exoteric Christian perspective is that more and more who’ve attempted it’s experiment are checking out. The world looks at Christianity and the transformation Christianity offers has somehow failed to bear witness to the world. If exoteric Christianity brings transformation, then why is this transformation not overwhelmingly evident? Or to put it more simply, the proof’s not in the pudding. Esoteric spirituality isn’t interested in dogmas because dogmas, when emphasized, have had a very difficult time yielding transformation. Esoteric spirituality is primarily interested in transformation and leaves room for belief in so far as it guides our experience and fosters transformation. The dogmas and doctrines are not the point. Being in a relationship with God and allowing that relationship to transform is all that matters.

For anyone who is interested in digging in to this kind of material with a Christian emphasis, check out Father Thomas Keating’s writing on centering prayer, Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation and the writings of Father Richard Rohr.

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
“Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?”
“Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay him?”
For from him and through him and to him are all things.

To him be the glory forever! Amen.

– Romans 11:33-36

“Through Jesus, we all have to face the embarrassing truth that we ourselves are our primary problem. It is we who must die, he teaches, not others! Our greatest temptation is to try to change other people instead of ourselves. Jesus allowed himself to be transformed and thus transformed others. That is the meaning of the necessary death of Jesus.”

– Richard Rohr, Things Hidden

I’m currently traveling in Australia have spent a lot of time with Brian McLaren’s newest book, A New Kind of Christianity. I’m really enjoying the book and I think many will look back on it as an important read for those interesting in the landscape of Christianity in the West. Whether or not you agree with McLaren’s direction, it is a very well written and accurate decleration of where many are headed and that might be useful information for anyone concerned with fading vital signs of Christianity in Europe and North America.

I’ll most likely blog more about the book but before I do, I’ve been interested in the response this book has received so far. After some online browsing, what I’ve found isn’t all that surprising. Obviously, those who are more devoted to the more conventional Christian perspective are not enthused by the book. This was not a surprise at all but it reminded me of a few religious distinctions that Ken Wilber makes in his book Grace and Grit. An interviewer asks Wilber about the different ways the world “religion” is used. Wilber responds that before a conversation about religion begins, we must identify what is meant by the word “religion.” He basically puts the various definitions of religion into two separate categories–exoteric and esoteric:

Ken Wilber: “We really can’t talk about science and religion or psychotherapy and religion or philosophy and religion until we decide just what it is we mean by the word religion. And for our purposes right now I think we must at least distinguish between what is known as exoteric religion and exoteric religion. Exoteric or “outer” religion is mythic religion, religion that is terribly concrete and literal, that really believes, for example, that Moses parted the Red Sea, that Christ was born from a virgin, that the world was created in six days, that manna once literally rained down from heaven, and so on. Exoteric religions the world over consist of those types of beliefs. The Hindus believe that the earth, since it needs to be supported, is sitting on an elephant which, since it needs to be supported, is sitting on a tortoise which in turn is sitting on a serpent. Lao Tzu was nine hundred years old when he was born, Krishna made love to four thousand cow maidens, Brahma was born from a crack in a cosmic egg, and so on. That’s exoteric religion, a series of belief structures that attempt to explain the mysteries of the world in mythic terms rather than direct experiential or evidential terms.

Interviewer: So exoteric or outer religion is basically a matter of belief, not evidence.

KW: Yes. If you believe all the myths, you are saved; if not, you go to Hell–no discussion. Now you find that type of religion the world over–fundamentalism. I have no quarrel with that; it’s just that that type of religion , exoteric religion, has little to do with mystical religion or spirituality that I’m most interested in.

Interviewer: Esoteric means what?

KW: Inner or hidden. The reason that exoteric or mystical relgion is hidden is not that is is secret or anything, but that it is a matter of direct experience and personal awareness. Esoteric religion asks you to believe nothing on faith or obediently swallow any dogma. Rather, esoteric religion is a set of personal experiments that you conduct scientifically in the laboratory of your own awareness. Like all good science, it is based on direct experience, no mere belief or wish, and it is publicly checked or validated by a peer group of those who have also performed the experiment. The experiment is meditation.”

I’ll be blogging more about this distinction between exoteric and esoteric religion as I believe it accurately depicts the main rift between traditional and emerging Christianity and sheds light on the tensions this book will bring to the surface between the two perspectives. These are two totally different modes of operating religiously and it’s important to recognize this if we are to build any understanding between the two perspectives.

Deny’s spiritual exercise took the form of a dialectical process, consisting of three phases. First we must affirm what God is: God is a rock; God is One; God is good; God exists. But when we listen carefully to ourselves, we fall silent, felled by the weight of absurdity in such God talk. In the second phase, we deny each one of these attributes. But the “way of denial” is just as inaccurate as the “way of affirmation.” Because we do not know what God is, we cannot know what God is not, so we must then deny the denials: God is therefore not placeless, mindless, lifeless, or nonexistent. In the course of this exercise, we learn that God transcends the capability of human speech and “is beyond every assertion” and “beyond every denial.” It is as inaccurate to say that God is “darkeness” as to say that God is “light;” to say that God “exists” as to say that God does “not exist,” because what we call God falls “neither within the predicate of existence or non-existence.” But what can this mean? The exercise leads us to apophasis, the breakdown of speech, which cracks and disintegrates before the absolute unknowability of what we call God.

– Karen Armstrong in her book, The Case for God, writing about Denys the Areopagite.

“What we believe emanates from who we are.” Brilliant.

This is a very surprising poll result, to say the least. You can read the full study here. I wonder if the shift among conservatives has less to do with their views on same-sex equality and more to do with their views on foreign policy. That would be one obvious explanation, right? After all, many correlate the size and strength of their military to their immediate well-being. The assertion that “They are over there fighting so we don’t have to fight them here at home,” comes to mind. When it’s a perceived matter of life and death, maybe for conservatives in this case, pragmatism seems to trump ideology.

If I’m wrong and this is not the case, than this is just another harbinger of things to come which is good news for those who support true equality for our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. Let’s hope I’m wrong.

Also worth mentioning is that every group polled in both studies grew in favor of gays openly serving in the military except for those with a high school education or less.

There seems to be a lot of chatter around town about the end the term “Emerging”/”Emergent” Church. Folks are claiming these categories are no longer relevant to what’s happening today in American Christianity. To be honest, I’ve always had a hard time with calling myself “emergent” but I’ve always felt compelled to be friendly with all the participants. Over the course of the last 8 years or so I’ve been lucky enough to meet or befriend a lot of folks in and around emerging Christianity. These folks come from a substantially diverse spectrum and getting to know them and to hear their perspective has enriched my faith greatly.

In a way, I can truly relate to those who are find the descriptor “emerging” to be troublesome. In Jimmy Eat World, we’ve always struggled with the word “emo.” While we’ve never once called ourselves “emo” and have always loathed the term, we have continually been linked to the term by journalists and well-meaning fans. As a band, we just chose to ignore it. Our hope is that the term is sort of like a young puppy that continually jumps up your leg. If you pretend the puppy doesn’t exist, it will realize it’s efforts to get your attention is a pointless exercise. If you freak out and yell “No!!” each time the puppy jumps up, it’s learned how to get your attention.

The problem with the term “emo” is that it tends to mean everything and nothing at the same time. To a significant degree, the terms “emerging” and “emergent” have suffered a similar fate. The value of those descriptors are found in the eye of the beholder. The spectrum of differences found among the cast of characters in emerging Christianity is broad and it was only an inevitable development that a need for distinctions would arise.

The big problem with making these distinctions is that they are being made by folks that have previously embraced and benefited from the “emerging”/”emergent” terminology, some of them even being the key players who’ve planted the seeds of the categories they now want to uproot. The problem is once you attach yourself to a descriptor like “emerging” or “emergent,” there’s no going back. This reminds me of when “ska” music was huge in the late 90s and all of the sudden, ska bands were popping up everywhere, trying to capitalize on the wave of popularity. But then as the fad subsided, so did all the newly formed ska bands. Because they associated themselves with the genre, they were anchored it’s inevitable demise. It becomes extremely tricky to navigate a way out of that problem.

My sense is that many of the folks trying to marginalize all things “emerging” are doing so because the term has gotten in the way of their task at hand. It’s understandably much easier to detach oneself from whatever “emerging” or “emergent” has come to mean for folks than it is to explain what YOU mean by the word “emerging” and how that’s different from what THEY mean. From a church leader or pastoral perspective, you must guard and protect from creating confusion and misunderstanding among your church community and if for you that means hitting the eject button on “emerging christianity” then that is understandable. If you are a missionary seeking support for your ministry, these descriptors can also be problematic. You have potential supporters who see you writing about “emerging church” and wonder, “Are they talking about good kind of emerging or the heretical kind?” It might be a smart move to distance yourself from the terminology and call yourself something a bit more vague like “missional.” Or you might be a college professor who is beholden to certain articles of faith your institution holds dear and all of the sudden, the “emerging church” you’ve been writing about is doing a bit of exploring outside the bounds of what your institution deems appropriate. At that point, you might want to distance yourself as to not cause confusion among the faculty and students.

What’s interesting is that these folks aren’t just dropping the term. Instead, they insert a qualifier that they are not using the term every time they use the term. The issue isn’t so much they’ve stopped using the term because they can’t seem to avoid using it. It’s just that when they do use it, they say they aren’t GOING to use it anymore. The main reason for this is that the terms they seek to avoid are turning out to be unavoidable. In the marketplace of ideas in American Christianity, emergence Christianity is getting a great deal of attention and sparking much debate.

In many ways, I really do understand the desire to define more clearly what guides you and what kind of movements you’re participating in. Maybe this is just a failure of language. But if you want to these terms to stop bothering you, then simply ignore them like the over excited puppy. If you keep saying, “No emergent!! Down emergent!!!” then the puppy will keep following you around, nipping at your heals.

I recently read through Jim Belcher’s book, Deep Church which attempts to bridge the divide between traditional and emerging churches. Whether or not he accomplishes this, I’m doubtful but in the midst of his effort, I think he’s written a book that, while a bit philosophically shallow, will no doubt be helpful for the many moderate church leaders out there who feel like they’re currently lost in the wilderness.

Belcher does his best to forge what he calls a “third way” between the traditional and emerging voices. While many of his ecclesiological prescriptions appear to be valid and helpful, it seems he’s advocating not so much a third way but a kinder, gentler traditionalism. Not that being kinder and gentler is insignificant. I’d argue that it’s crucial, but is this really a “third way”? I guess it’s up to the reader to determine that. In a practical sense, yes, I suppose it could be called a third way, but philosophically, I’d agree with Tony Jones when he tells Belcher in the book that when you scratch the surface of a kinder, gentler traditionalist, you’ll still find traditionalism at their core. After a meeting with Tony Jones and Doug Pagitt, here’s what Belcher and his friend take away:

“John and I concluded that they seemed to reject any commitment to classical orthodoxy of the Great Tradition. In the quest for truth, nothing can be privileged over the community and certainly not a theology that had been worked out in the fourth and fifth centuries.”

First, I’d be really surprised if Tony and Doug would agree with Belcher’s assumption that they “reject any commitment to classical orthodoxy.” That seems like a very lazy assessment to me and something that Belcher seems to be guilty of throughout the book, especially in his treatment of McLaren’s mythological denial of all atonement theory. I really do think that Belcher is doing his darnedest to be as accurate as possible and I really appreciate that. But there are several shortcoming in his analysis of many of the folks he depicts in the book.

The other common, and very crucial, misstep Belcher seems to make throughout the book is his apparent unawareness of the fact that the Great Tradition was itself worked out in community! It’s as if pure objectivity reigned in the fourth and fifth centuries and only after the Great Tradition was established were the dirty fingerprints of community smudging up “orthodoxy.” This is a massive blind spot that really cripples the philosophical nature of the book. Maybe Belcher didn’t want to get too deep into the weeds philosophically and I can understand that to a point, but it weakens the book significantly. I think Belcher is a traditionalist at heart but is open enough to listen to the protest of emerging Christians. That in and of itself is a good posture and I appreciate it greatly but I wish Belcher could listen a little better. How do you write a book about the emerging perspective and not once mention the work of Peter Rollins? The kinds of questions Rollins is asking are crucial to the emerging perspective that to not include him at all is another massive blind spot. To boot, Belcher also ignores the influence of modern Biblical and religious scholarship which illuminates for the us that “revisionists” have been active and influential in our developing tradition. Revisionism has been and will be part and parcel to orthodoxy. To not acknowledge this is to miss something very crucial to understanding the emerging perspective and is also, at best, intellectually lazy if not a straight up distortion of the history of the Christian tradition.

All this to say, this is a book I would recommend heartily to anyone who does seem caught in between the “traditional” and “emerging” camps, looking for practical ways to navigate this tension in the midst of day to day ministry. Many of the anecdotes he shares of his own experience are surely to be very helpful for anyone committed to a church community. But if you are looking for a rich philosophical, theological unpacking of what is happening in the American church today, you might want to look elsewhere.