Part Five: WeCreating the Future of Christianity and the World

As Christianity repents and turns from its more perniciously self-enclosing and destructive ways, the crucial question becomes, what does it turn toward?

For many, as a two-thousand-year-old tradition, the answer is to go back to the best of its past. To return to the original teachings and understanding of Jesus. To look to the desert fathers and mothers or the great mystic saints of the middle-ages. For many protestants, it is to look to the theological “orthodoxy” or founding charism of Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Wesley, George Fox, the Fillmores, or other roots of denominations and movements that began in the last few hundred years.

While there is much wisdom to be gleaned and guidance to receive from the best of the Christian mystical and spiritual lineage, Christianity will not evolve into what it needs to be for today by looking back. Yes, we learn from our history and stand on the genius and evolution brought about by the mystics and spiritual pioneers of yesteryear, but we carry that energy forward into what is needed in this day and age, in this time and place now.

In my twenties, I thought the answer was to go back. I honed in on the words of Jesus and the expressions of the early church as described in the book of Acts. I even tried to recreate my life in a community in this way. I was part of a movement called New Monasticism, which tried to incorporate the best from St. Benedict and monastic living, alongside the work of friars, Mother Teresa, the early church, the Quakers, and more. More than a bit idealistic, we certainly bit off more than we could chew, but our hearts were sincere. I tried to live in this way in intentional community for five years.

I learned so much from that experience, but one of the prime lessons was that the settings and context of the past are vastly different than today—both in the environment of our societal systems and cultural entrainment, as well as the personal expectations and capacities of individuals in this modern and post-modern day and age. So many of the creative and inspiring ways of the past just don’t really work for today at being transformative and effectual.

I have also learned an immeasurable amount from reading and sitting with the great writers and mystics throughout centuries of Christian tradition. I glean much from the best of their insights and experiences, even as so much of their writings and teachings are surrounded by the dusty coal of their day and age, not yet pressed into diamonds. Certainly, we can and will continue to learn from our forebears in the depth of their experience and wisdom, and perhaps most by inviting them as living guides and active presences showing us the way forward now.

The time has come now for us to evolve and become the mystics and great countless saints of today. Innumerable because of our ubiquity. Immeasurable because we are not singular, set-apart extraordinary individuals, but rather because we are becoming and WeCreating an empowered and enlivened collective. A vast communal network across the globe, inhabiting and enacting (abiding and attending) as the mystical Body of Christ, transforming the world in ways big and small.

So we may all take up the Christ-way of evolution, which has always been about our continual and ongoing transformation and growth into our divine being—not just individually but collectively and all throughout the world.

So what does this look like?

What are we turning toward in the loving evolution of Christianity?

In many ways, much of the entirety of the work of Integral Christian Network is about living these questions together. Paul Smith and I have addressed many considerations in response to these questions in articles written over the last six years, as well as in his books. For our purposes today, I’d like to look first at a dynamic of how this evolution comes about (and more in part six), and then a few ways mystical Christian spirituality embodies this evolving work.

Holistic Processes of Evolution

In the process of evolution, we are often coming out of—or differentiating—from that which has become limited. The evolutions of the past become the trappings of today, and a new way forward is needed. Spirit, life, and love all demand new ways of being personally and collectively, along with new wineskins—new forms of collective structures, processes, and organization in order to thrive again.

In part four, we set out some vital differentiations from the way things have been that must go.

🌱 We leave behind an insular, tribal Christianity and turn towards a God who is everywhere, crossing and permeating all boundaries and boxes.

🌱 We leave behind a dominating, authoritarian Christianity and turn towards a God who lives in each one of us and empowers us from the core of our being.

🌱 We leave behind a narcissistic Christianity and turn towards a God who is greater than us and beyond our own individualism.

These differentiations are an essential part of the evolution of Christianity—and perhaps part our own personal evolution journey as well. But they are only the first step in the process. As long as we are moving apart from something, we are still bound to it in some way. The vital shift comes when we are no longer moving away from something so much as we begin to feel we are now moving toward something new. We embrace becoming what it is we are seeking to be, rather than leaving what we have been.

Crucially, this is a process of integration, not just a new destination. Rather than “transcend and include,” I prefer the expression, “differentiate and integrate” (as a refinement to another example of transcendency bias). Our process of evolution isn’t climbing a ladder—perspective is only one quality of growth—so much as coming into greater wholeness through the integration of growth and healing, becoming something new and becoming more of who we truly already are.

🌀 If we don’t integrate healthy belonging, we will be bound by our shadow issues around tribalism.

🌀 If we don’t integrate healthy power, we will be bound by shadow projections on all forms of authority.

🌀 If we don’t integrate healthy devotion and experiential interbeing, we will be bound by shadow self-centeredness expressing in separation or co-dependency.

We can move toward the better without having all of our past issues resolved, certainly. But our consciousness transformations fill out as we come into more integrated wholeness, where all of the parts of us are welcome and belong in our continued becoming.

Living in the Creative, Evolving Interflow of the Three Faces of God

In evolving Christianity, perhaps our most crucial evolution comes through a radical and transformational reshaping of our image of God. Paul Smith’s work on the Three Faces of God is a profound and thorough theological evolution of the trinity and our God-image. It overcomes the transcendency bias of traditional Christianity (and other religious views of God as well), and integrates a holistic divine presence that is intimately with us and deeply within us, as well as infinitely beyond us.

This is not just a theological matter, but also a very practical and experiential spiritual transformation. It gives us a way to inhabit a faith that lives and moves in mystical participation in the reality and presence of God, because God is big enough, close enough, and us enough at all times. See Paul’s book for a deeper look.

For some, we may have evolved in many of our beliefs about God without recognizing how the ways we live and practically engage in our spirituality are still embedded in previous forms and processes rooted in these past beliefs and understandings of God.

WeSpace and WeCreating are evolving ways to more deeply and more wholly embody spiritual, divine realities in both who we are and what we do in ourselves, with one another, and beyond. In abiding and attending from/with/into God holistically through all three faces. The evolving Christ way of spiritual integration into greater wholeness.

“Baptized to Life” – image by Dalmo Mendonça

Creating from Christ Consciousness

In God-Being-Us, we awaken to our incarnated divine/human uniqueness expressing through our truest soul and deepest being. Our fundamental Source is God, and God is pouring forth into our very being at all times, continuously creating us in the life and vitality of Christ.

This comes forth through the very substance of our embodied being. Our incarnation. As Jesus was God incarnate, the “firstborn” of many brothers and sisters, so too are we born of God and called—and this is the kicker—not only to believe and accept this divine identity, but to live and create from this awakened Christ reality, from our divine consciousness. In this way, we become the living and evolving presence of Christ today—loving, healing, and transforming ourselves, one another, and the world.

“Christ Communion” – image by Dalmo Mendonça

WeCreating with the Living Christ Among Us

In God-Beside-Us, we awaken to our deep communion of shared participation in this divine reality, our palpable and experiential engagement with and as the living mystical body of Christ. The free-flowing presence of God is moving in and through one another in a great collective.

This comes forth through real and personal relationships with one another, through deep meeting deep in the shared experience of God among us. We feel this through the presence and guidance of the Living Jesus and other spirit guides sharing in this communion, as well as through the divine resonance and interflow of our divine/human connections shared in the space among us.

We don’t just remain reveling in this place of deep communion, but the living body of Christ creates anew through collective manifestations and expressions of loving evolution in the world. These emerge through the communal Christ consciousness arising in our midst in forms of both spiritual knowing and divine wisdom, alongside material expressions and tangible actions we undertake as eyes, hands, heart, and feet of God in the world.

“Spiral Path of Christ” – image by Dalmo Mendonça

Evolving into the Christ Mystery Becoming Here & Now

In God-Beyond Us, we awaken to all that is yet to come, to the infinite divine Mystery—yet not distant. We participate actively with this mystery as we grow and evolve into the more that is greater than who we are and what we know now. The eternal Christ who is always becoming and evolving into new forms in the here and now.

This comes forth through our intentional and conscious engagement in the process of emergence, where divine arisings spring forth in our midst in ways we never could have known or foreseen. This is the divine source we tap into from which our collective manifestations and expressions arise.

This is not only a transcendent expansion into more, but an immanent, collective arising from the divine ground of wholeness, the ever-present origin at the core of our reality coming into manifest form through our active and loving engagement in and through the mutual divine/human/material process. For the ultimate divine destination is not a separate “heavenly” realm to which we ascend, but rather the journey of the ongoing unfolding of an integrated marriage of heaven and earth, growing more and more into union evermore, now and always.

A Vital & Vibrant Evolving Christianity

These ways of participating more intentionally and directly in our life divine are the means by which we are transformed in our consciousness and our actions; we are infused with loving presence and more holistic wisdom, truer engagement, and deeper integration.

This is a way of Christianity that is no longer insular, dominating, and narcissistic. Rather, serving as a dynamic spiritual pathway of evolution, full of love and creative enlivenment.

Our transformation is an evolution forward into the new becomings of spirit emerging in our midst, through our deep participation in the divine dance of God within, among, and beyond us, beckoning us onward into the God before us and all that we will bring about together—all that we will WeCreate in the days ahead.

These evolutions will impact and engage with the shape and form of Christianity itself, but will also go beyond those confines. Of course they will, for we have repented of our insular self-enclosing, and instead will overflow into all areas of life and the world. The evolution will move with and impact the whole world. More on this next week.

Who is going to do all of this great work of evolution? Who will be the saints and mystics of today populating the earth with divine presence and the Christ-way of evolution?

Who are these mystics and evolvers?

May we come to the day when rather we might ask, who aren’t they?

All Images are open-source, used with permission, or created by ICN

Christianity Evolves