Are you He that should come or are we to wait for another? Matthew 11: 2-11.
This is John Baptist’s, question from prison. He sent his disciples to Jesus because he wanted to know what was going on with the Messiah he had been extolling. Had he got it right? Jesus’ answer was to point to the miracles of healing and resurrection. In other words, the sign of God-with-us, divine indwelling in human form, is health, restoration, kindness, loving care for the needy; the extra-ordinary within the ordinary. However, one explains the mystery of the Incarnation (or tries to) these words of Jesus do tend towards a very practical definition. They point to concerns which, on the whole, have not figured as priority or key-note signs of Christian life in the religious elite.
It is interesting that throughout much of Christian history what one believed about Jesus meant more than whether you lived His teaching. You could get burned at the stake or executed in some other hideous way (for the sake of your immortal soul) for not toeing the party line regarding beliefs about Jesus. Even the greatest mystic could come perilously close to disaster if their attempts to convey the ineffable in language strayed too far from official doctrine. But you could be vile in your behaviour to those closest to you, ungenerous, vicious, mean and a thorough pain to be around and that was sorted, if admitted to, by a few Hail Marys. I am being slightly frivolous here, but you get the point.
These days we do not expect the Spanish Inquisition, how one interprets doctrinal definition, or leaves it alone entirely is generally up to the individual; few religious communities check up on your orthodoxy! What is even more interesting, today, is that people outside of any religious affiliations, who are devoted to spiritual practices and take them very seriously often demonstrate and stand for the values that were so close to the heart of Jesus’ teaching.
What has come to be known under the blanket term of the Human Potential Movement takes belief very seriously, but that is not belief in doctrinal propositions but rather it is the recognition that what we truly believe dictates our behaviour in every way. Belief can be a mental assent to an intellectual proposition and this may have no impact on the way we live. Belief can also be a knowing something to be real and true in the depths of our being and it is by this knowing that we organize our lives.
A vital aspect of growing up, becoming mature, is to question our deep beliefs which we inherited or took on board when we were young. Maybe they need revising, maybe we need to instill some new ones that support us in our quest to become all that we are capable of becoming.
If my intelligence tells me I must be imbued with the energy that fills the universe else I’d be dead. So what? Does that make any difference to the way I live? If I know that the divine life fills every part of me, my thoughts, my actions, my love of myself and my love for others is going to be coloured and activated by that belief. History is replete with examples of people who believed in Jesus and perpetrated the most appalling crimes against humanity in His name. On the other hand, the positive changes that we see around us in big issues like the women’s equality, racial and gender concerns or the protection of the young and vulnerable are changing because individuals are questioning deeply held beliefs.
The Human Potential Movement is by no means a contained community but finds expression in many different avenues with variation in primary concerns. There are however some features that occur again and again in the writings and teaching of people involved. Psychology, the brain sciences and quantum physics etc. form the back-drop for this new kind of understanding and they are leading to some very entrancing conclusions that tend towards virtue! And they are based in research which makes them very respectable.
Firstly, there is quantum physics. One cannot over-estimate the effect this discipline has had on the understanding and expression of spirituality, neither should one over-estimate the extent to which anyone understands quantum physics. Those who are in a position to know seem to agree that if you think you understand it then you are wrong, which is just where the mystics put any suggestion that you can understand God. They say whatever you say about God is not God.
A second tenet of scientific enquiry which is fully in line with mystical experience is the knowledge that all is one; separation is an illusion, the whole of creation is inextricably connected. This has become a significant aspect of practices within the H.P.M. A practical application of the belief in our oneness is expressed effectively in the power of prayer, though that word, having so strong a religious connotation, is often replaced by ‘intention’, ‘sending good energy’ or similar wording. The idea being that how I think about you and the love I send towards you has the potential for aiding your well-being; in other words, prayer, without consciously ‘involving God’.
An extension of the knowledge that we are all one is the realization that the same life force or energy fires through us all, i.e., the energy that keeps the universe going, the force of creation. Now for a spiritually-minded person that energy is called God, but many of the non or ‘post’ – Christian writers who are so enthusiastic about human potential often prefer to use other terms, like The Source, the Universe etc. to avoid the complications of ‘what one means by God’. But many are happy to talk about God and joyfully claim that the divine power is there and available to all, “the inherent wisdom programmed into our DNA” as one writer called it. Christians would talk about the Holy Spirit, but have been inclined to hedge that about with provisos that the gift of the Spirit is determined by belief in Jesus (a thoroughly bible-based conclusion but it creates a lot of probs in the present day). There’s the right belief thing again.
Exploration into the working of the human brain provides useful and encouraging information as to the benefits of altruism and virtue. Big subject, just to glance at here, but to give one example: it has been proven by sound scientific research that gratitude effects one’s health positively, feelings of gratitude do something good to the brain. Therefore, to live in a state of gratitude allows one to enjoy creation, other people and abundance of all sorts without the need for grasping or perceiving oneself in a state of lack. It is also a grand antidote to being in the victim role. This is what the research comes down to!
Little did I realise when I started to contemplate Jesus’ response to J.B,’s question that I’d be exploring the ways in which science supports the New Testament teaching about the Good Life! To translate John’s question from within a contained, specific, religious ethos to a Twenty-first century unconfined spiritual enquiry one might say. “Is this Man the example of what it means to be a fully developed, mature, enlightened human being?” And would the answer be the same, “This is how such a being lives.”? For all one may believe about Jesus being divine, if one doesn’t take the totality of His humanity into account one has missed the point of the Incarnation
G.K Chesterton famously said that no-one knows if Christianity works ‘because no-one has ever tried it’. A glib remark that only really has meaning on a broad canvas, but it is a useful considering the Incarnation and what it means to be fully human. St. Paul gave us a pointer to this in his terms, as ‘the glorious liberty of the children of God’. One expression of Christianity ‘that has never been tried’ is the encouragement of the faithful to believe in their inheritance of ‘the glorious liberty’. Historically it has been the practice of the church to keep the faithful under obedience, i.e., as minors not self-defining adults (only self-defining in respect of sin). The doctrines and the admonitions functioned as the Law functioned in Paul’s time, in God’s name, to maintain the current beliefs about the correct ordering of society and to keep people in their place.
Paul’s revolutionary system works like this: If you love God then, because you know that you are loved, that you matter, you naturally respond to being loved by behaving like a loving responsible human person, one who doesn’t need to be controlled by rules and regulations because the rules are internalised and dominated by the experience of loving and being loved. That doesn’t mean you are always nice or good but it does mean that you are real and authentic, which is different.
In the First Century St. Paul wrote of ‘the glorious liberty of the children of God’. A secular writer of the Twenty-first Century writes, “Freedom comes from understanding ourselves and our relationship to God.”
