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St. John 13.34-35 (NLT)
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
The eminent German Lutheran Christian mystic and shoemaker--after earlier in his life being a farmer--, Jacob Boehme (1575-1624), writes, "A proper man who is born in Christ's Spirit, who is in the simplicity of Christ, no longer has any argument over religion with anyone" (165). Boehme refers, then, to purported Christians who argue over knowledge, and other matters pertaining to religion (166).
Boehme speaks of factionalism in the Church of his time, well reflecting our time: Now I eagerly wish to see how one is to bring all these sects together into one, which would call itself the Christian Church, because all of them now are despisers and each group denounces the other and decries it as false (164).
Being a mystic--for mystics, by Grace transcend factions--, Boehme refers to the transcendence of sects, by which most often we speak of Christian denominations, rather than using the term sect (164):
A Christian however has no sect. He can dwell among sects, even appear in their [worship] services, and yet hang on to none. He has only a single knowledge and that is Christ in him. He seeks only one way, which is the desire always to act and live correctly. He puts all his knowing and willing into the life of Christ. He sighs and always wishes that God's will might happen in him, and that His kingdom might be revealed to him. He kills the sins in the flesh daily and hourly, for the woman's seed as the internal man in Christ continually tramples the head of the devil's vanity (Genesis 3:15).
Truly, as Boehme says to us, the Kingdom--or Divine Influence-- does not consist in any idea; it consists in power and love (165). Ideas keep us apart, and if persons strove "for love and righteousness as they do for ideas, there would be no strife on earth" and we "would need no law nor order," affirms Boehme (165).
So, we have the chief devisive instrument in Christian faith: affective attachment to ideas. The contemplative mystic is nonconforming by Conferred Nature (by Grace)--though, he or she is not rebellious--, for he or she is imbued with Sacred Spirit and imbues Sacred Spirit, and that Spirit is all holy--set apart from all fragmentations. Such a man or woman knows unity arises from the Living Fact of Union, not the dead letter of ideology. While he or she honors differentiations among Christian communions, the Communion of Spirit leaves the contemplative mystic apart from no one--no one inside or outside the Christian faith (and he or she interprets Christian other than the man or woman affectively attached to the rule of ideas, rather than the Living Principle of Love). Neither does the contemplative mystic feel an urgency to defend the faith, explain God, or argue over the faith. While he or she has ideas, such a person never gives allegiance to them, and all the ideas are subsumed to a singleness of devotion to the Living Christ Within.
*References to Boehme are from Jacob Boehme: The Way to Christ, Trans. Peter Erb, in "The Classics of Western Spirituality."
**OneLife writings are offered by Brian K. Wilcox, a United Methodist pastor serving in the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church. He writes in the spirit of John Wesley's focus on the priority of inner experience of the Triune God; scriptural holiness; ongoing sanctification; the goal of Christian perfection (or, wholeness). Brian seeks to integrate the best of the contemplative teachings of Christianity East and West, from the patristic Church to the present. Brian lives a vowed contemplative life with his two dogs, Bandit Ty and St. Francis, in North Florida. OneLife writings are for anyone seeking to live and share love, joy, and peace in the world and in devotion to God as she or he best understands God.
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