Four Foundational Beliefs for the Future of Christianity
Part Seven: Moving from Toxic Beliefs to Transforming Ones
Yes, gays and others of differing sexual orientations and gender identities are dragging the church into the future
At our best, we gays and other nonconformists are prophets. Without explicitly addressing gays, Richard Rohr makes a case for why we dissenters are dragging the church into the future. We are almost always profoundly emotionally injured - and more often than others realize, we are physically bullied, beaten, and murdered. We are among the world's walking wounded. Rohr writes:
“When we find ourselves wounded and marginalized, and we allow that suffering to teach us, we can become prophets. When we repeatedly experience the faithfulness, the mercy, and the forgiveness of God, then our prophetic voice emerges. That’s the training school. That’s where we learn how to speak the truth.
The prophets . . . saw through the idolatries at the center of the system because those who are excluded from the system always reveal the operating beliefs of that system. Speaking the truth for the sake of healing and wholeness is then prophetic because the “powers that be” that benefit from the system cannot tolerate certain revelations. They cannot tolerate the truths that the marginalized—the broken, the wounded, and the homeless—always reveal.”
As Søren Kierkegaard said, “If Christ is along in the ship, there is stormy weather at once!”
So, for the Christianity of the future, we need and will continue to need to deconstruct old beliefs that have become toxic and no longer serve us. We will also need to reconstruct our religion in healthier ways. Here are four foundational beliefs we can build on that are more loving and in harmony with the life, teachings, and presence of Jesus
1. God Loves and Welcomes Everyone
If Jesus revealed what God is like to us, then he showed us that God loves everyone. Actually, God does seem to have favorites. They are the outcasts, sinners, and oppressed!
I believe the Divine They welcomes people of other faiths or none. Christianity is the truth for me. But it is not the only truth. In today’s world, we share our lives with people who are Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, spiritual but not religious, and those not interested in any spiritual path at all. I experience many of these people as selfless, integrated, and socially responsible by following their own paths.
God welcomes traditionally excluded people, like the sexually adventurous, gays, and other “unrepentant sinners.” I am a proud gay follower of Jesus that the majority of the Christians of the world would condemn.
Every man, woman, and child is an offspring of God who loves us as parents love their children.
This is a “super belief” that benefits all people everywhere by resting our love for one another on a divine basis.
More and more people are deconstructing their Christian faith and either turning to the East or becoming part of the rapidly growing “spiritual but not religious” crowd. Wise people tell me that these people can most deeply come home spiritually by returning to their original tradition in the most progressive version they can find. Then they can bring with them the truth found in other traditions and loving paths and can continue to benefit from those other paths.
2. The Centrality of Jesus
I believe Jesus is the central figure in Christianity —his life, teachings, and living presence with us today. This is my foundational belief as a follower of Jesus, my life-changing friend. I love him dearly.
Jesus was a Hebrew mystic who directly experienced ego-diminishing oneness with God Consciousness. He was a gifted teacher and healer who attempted to pass on this awakening of divine consciousness to his followers.
As the years passed, his followers turned this experience into a rigid religion and, in their admiration, elevated him to the status of the only son of God, the only person who was fully human and fully divine.
Because of the abuse rendered in Jesus’ name in the past to many today, it is difficult for some to access the presence of Jesus. However, I believe God is not limited to Jesus in revealing the divine presence and has provided many other transforming presences. These are found both in the Christian tradition and other traditions and can inspire, motivate, and guide us.
3. Christianity is Constantly Evolving
Paul writes, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains, and not only the creation, but we ourselves (Rom. 8:22).
Creation has been groaning for billions of years in evolutionary pains. Creation will continue to groan as we go on to evolve into all that we can be.
Jesus himself pointed to the evolving character of our spiritual beliefs. He said, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the spirit of truth (awakened consciousness personified) comes, she will guide you into all the truth (John 16:12-13). That is as true now as it was 2000 years ago.
For Jesus, the God of his religion who had been both love and vengeance, had now evolved to the God of love only.
As a twelve year old, I remember asking my Sunday School teacher about Jesus’ words that he has much more to teach us. My prayer for decades has been, “Jesus, I want to see the more.” As I have seen what I understand to be some of that more, I have wanted to teach it and make it available to others. I traced this in detail in my book, Integral Christianity: The Spirit’s Call to Evolve.
God wants all religions to evolve to the best version of themselves possible in today’s world. There are signs that the next stage of awakening is beginning to emerge, including within Christianity. ICN is one of those signs.
4. We are all gods in the Making
Perhaps the most startling statement Jesus ever made was when he said that we are gods (John 10:34). At ICN we frame this as the Inner Face of God Being Us.
David Bentley Hart is a prominent American Eastern Orthodox theologian, writer, philosopher, and religious studies scholar. In his recent book, You Are Gods, he writes,
“As God is God in the eternal and eternally accomplished movement of God to God, so we are gods in the process of becoming God. God became human so that humans should become God. Only the God who is always already human can become human. Only a humanity that is always already divine can become God.
The church is simply a corporate and historical expression of Christ’s affirmation that ‘You are gods.’”
In our innermost being, we are already divine beings like Jesus on a human journey of letting that divine self emerge. Of all the things I believe, this is the most challenging.
Like most, I was raised with expectations to live by what others thought. I was easily shamed and fearful. I was only too aware of my “faults,” feeling alone, with constant anxiety and frightening panic attacks as a child that continued throughout my life. I felt I was always struggling with something — too many problems!
Then add in the family and religious abuse that caused me to repress my feelings in general and my gay feelings in particular.
Later in life, I came to believe my True Self was divine like Jesus and never wounded or separated from God and others. The problem was that this was so unbelievably counter to what I felt. My “human experience” was all I could feel. I was a divine being who was a mess on the inside!
Wounded
Twenty years of therapy, medication, healing, and spiritual practices finally began to have their impact in my sixties. I’m a slow learner. But now it’s reversed. Most of the time, I sense the divine glow inside, and it only occasionally gets dimmed by my lingering wounds and shadows. My 85-year journey of slow evolution was unquestionably worth it. It was what I needed — lots of time!
The wonderful Henri Nouwen, another gay man, as documented in his 2002 biography, Wounded Prophet by Michael Ford, said that we are all “wounded healers.” When I first read that, I felt liberated because I was certainly wounded even while regularly praying for the healing of others in our monthly healing services at Broadway Church.
More recently, I have added, “We are all wounded gods.” That helps me embrace my divinity without thinking I have to have my life all together. Try it!
5. I repeat, again, that I believe God loves and welcomes EVERYONE
Five? You said four foundational beliefs. Yes, I did. But this one is so important I am repeating it again!
God dearly loves ALL people and will see them home in the mystery of eternal life. This means God equally loves traditional Christians and questioning skeptics, believers and agnostics, women and men, those of all sexual orientations and gender identities, and those of all races, classes, and abilities.
The “Structural Racism Index” study by the Public Religion Research gives us data that supports what anyone paying attention already suspected: American Evangelicalism has become an ethno-religious political identity rather than a commitment to Jesus.
As you may see from my several “gay sheep” cartoons, I think the acceptance and welcoming of gays is also a crucial issue in today’s Christianity. Gays are heroically dragging the church into where Jesus is in today’s world. Yes, pastors and denominational leaders are distressed that their churches and denominations are splitting over this issue. But the distress should be not over the splits but that Christians are so not in touch with the love of God and Jesus’ teaching, model, and presence. These churches and Christians are advocating a version of Christinaity that is no longer true – it is not selfless, integral, and socially responsible in today’s world. Jesus is our incredible model of that truth test. Let’s follow him!
The power of the Christian faith to transform lives does not require it to be exclusively true. Exclusivity is born out of fear. This is the fear that there is only one path to God, and if you aren’t on that path, you’ll go to hell. I believe there are many paths to God who, by whatever name or no name, welcomes everyone. And whether one finds such a path in this life or not means that God gives us unlimited time beyond time to evolve into manifesting the divine beings made in the image of God that we truly are.
Christianity, for me, contains what prominent philosophers through the centuries have called the three cosmic values transcendentals - truth, goodness, and beauty. A transcendental refers to something that exists beyond the time-space-matter world. But Christianity is not the only religion of truth, goodness, and beauty. In today’s world, we share our lives with people who are Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, spiritual but not religious, and those not interested in any spiritual path at all. I experience many of these people as truthful, good, and beautiful. They can be selfless, integrated, and socially responsible by following their own paths.
I understand that when Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” he was not saying he, as an individual personality, was the way. However, the writers may have interpreted it as that in their radical enchantment with Jesus. I believe he was referring to his “I” or what today many of us now call our True Self.
Only our True Self is the way, the truth, and the life. Our True Self has never been separate from God and others. Our True Self has never been wounded. Our True Self fully embraces our divinity and humanity. The more we are available to our True Self, the more we find the way, the truth, and the life. Regardless of its terminology, any path that helps us find our True Self is a path to God. In the most evolved versions of all religions and spiritual paths available today, our true self is manifest as selfless, integrated, and socially responsible.
So, I repeat, God loves and welcomes everyone. No exceptions.
Jesus taking a selfie with one of his many gay sheep.
Looks like a kiss, holy of course.
Could that be a male sheep?
Gay men all over the world are swooning.
For Reflection . . .
1. Which of the four transforming themes I have explored in this essay do you most resonate with? Why is that?
God loves and welcomes everyone
The centrality of Jesus
Christianity is Evolving
We are all gods in the making
2. What are your foundational beliefs?
3. I invite you to read section 4 in lectio-divina mode. What do you feel when you digest “I am a god with a wounded heart”?
