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In this writing, a revised edition of a writing from April 2004 and that you may need to read a number of times to get the point of the meandering flow, I present the Christ Path and the Trinity as means of insight into a teaching that shows a means to the healing of our divided world and peace among all. For us to move toward the healing, our religious teachings must be translated toward peace, which requires a humbled recognition--even, deeply felt repentance--that our religions have been, often, used to create disharmony, rather than harmony. Thus, transformation of the world requires an inner transformation of communities and persons that is both deeply humbling and profoundly freeing. With this transformation, we no longer have to position “my God” against “your God.” Rather, there is only “God,” even within the differences of understanding of what that means, for God is not other than God, regardless of the incompleteness and biases of our God images. Please, read and share this marvelous and daunting journey with me into the unknown but seen by faith and faith, alone, but a faith that leads us to experience the Mystery.
We cannot transcend differences at the level in which differences arose? For example, in what can be called mental consciousness, we begin to differentiate "this" from "that" and assign names and classifications. We become fascinated with differences. However, we solidify, or make absolute ("idolize"), this perception; that is, the perception becomes a stabilized concept of separation. This becomes our belief and penetrates our worldview as a worldview based on absolute otherness. The logic is, "I see you as other, therefore, you are only other." Or, "God is there, I am here, so God and I are only other than each other."
We create dogma--religious or secularized--that, then, validates our separatist perceptions. Indeed, every war is a war engendered by persons who think in separatist terms. By the political, theological, and social leaders, we are not given messages that the differentiation is only part of the Truth, and, generally, heresy is heresy for it is part true, not fully true. Indeed, we are not told that our belief in only difference is, ultimately, a dangerous half-truth. We may even use "God" to justify this created and mentalist worldview, fitting our concept of God in our socialized worldview. Then, the worldview becomes self-perpetuating, like claustrophobically existing in a small room with no windows and wondering why we are having difficulty breathing. As some say, "We turn around after being created by God and return the favor by creating God in our image." Fresh air does not arise by exploring the room, a way of opening must be made for the flow of the outside, the larger than that one, little room. Notice how Jesus models this openness by doing so much of his ministry outside in nature.
Every person in religion that damns everyone else in other religions is attached to the half-truth of only-differentiation, in some sense. As long as I adhere to the concept that you and I are wholly and only other to each other, then, it is easier just to say, “You are going to hell.” But, what happens when I see you are other than I, but, at the same time, you are I, as well?
Therefore, religious prejudices result from this half-truth of difference, as religious persons and systems partition out a supreme and prideful territory based on "we" and "the other." Some in my own tradition have idolized Jesus and missed the meaning of Jesus. The two are not the same. Then, Jesus becomes an excuse to create another territory to protect, rather than a Way that opens into the world of those who are, at the deepest level, who I am. I can create a "Jesus" territory and guard it, while Jesus is outside that territory, still helping and loving persons I feel unworthy of my association and doomed by Jesus. Odd, how this works: but it, finally, does not and will not work.
These religious territories are guarded by the border police, who often see themselves more as guardians of truths than encouragers toward Truth. But, what if I can see that God is neither your God nor my God, but that we each have concepts that hint toward the true One we are seeking to worship and serve? Then, when seeing through the concept, I cannot judge you as fully wrong in your idea of God, while I try to convert you to my concept or assume you have nothing of God to teach me. This is why the chief means of witness in contemplation is through dialogue with the other, rather than instructing the other.
I do not mean to demean dogma. I speak against the making absolute of relative belief, which is a subtle form of idolatry. However, when relative belief is not idolized, it leads to the fruition of the Whole. Jesus himself spoke, "I have not some to destroy the Law, but to fulfill it." So, the unfulfilled is important as containing the potentiality of giving us that impetus to move toward fruition, which is always more of the Truth. So, that is why Jesus speaks, "The Truth will set you free," not "The truths will set you free." No Precepts, no Creed, no Scripture, no Confession will free us. Only the Truth, which these can point toward, frees. And God is, among other references, rightly called Truth: not Christian truth, not Buddhist truth, not idealist truth, not realist truth, … God, as Truth, is free from “your” truth and “my” truth; however, truths reveal God to the extent they are faithful to the Truth.
Mental consciousness, wherein arises differentiated truths, is a normal aspect of emergence of consciousness. To experience the emergence of unitary consciousness, or participatory consciousness, differentiation must be possible. This is why one must have a religious orientation to relate to persons of different religious orientations. One must be devoted to a differentiation before she can know unity. I can have a more healthy relationship with a Hindu by being a Christian, rather than my being nothing religious. Unity passes through mentally working out and practicing a belief system. Pure faith arises out of the framing of thought. We do not just wake up one day and without working with belief at a mental level, come to actualization of our unity with others. We conceptualize for conceptualization to open into transcendence.
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Participatory consciousness, which is the dynamism of out-flowing and spontaneous Love in reciprocal sharing, finds expression in the metaphor of the Trinity. I say metaphor, because those who framed the teaching of the Trinity knew they were presenting a sign of God. They were saying, using signification, God is Trinitarian Being, a God who encompasses communion in unity.
The Trinity shows us the trans-conceptual way God operates within and beyond difference. Through the conceptualization of the Trinity as belief, we are opened to the meaning of the Trinity beyond belief, which is an ever-spontaneous insight into the way beyond only-otherness to differentiated unity.
In this symbol of differentiated unity, the Father is the One, Godhead, or Source from whom all creative energy outflows and in whom all potentiality inheres, eternally. That is, all form is already within the One, for the One contains, as Intelligent Being, the potentiality of all that becomes. St. Paul quoted Greek wisdom, saying, "In the Creator we live and move and have our being." Therefore, the Father is a reference to this Source replete with all that is birthed, or outflows, from its ever-pregnant Being. Becoming arises from Being.
Then, the Word, or Son of God, alludes to the creative outflow itself, given to the primordial potentiality inhering in the Father. The Word is the expression, or explication, or incarnation, of the implicate order in Pure Being. Thus, Jesus says, "When you have seen me, you have seen the Father." When you have seen the creative energy of God, you have seen God. God as Word is consummate, perfected, never-ceasing Self-Giving, and all selfless giving arises from the impulse of this Giver.
Jesus reminds us that all differentiated form is the evidence of a differentiating, undifferentiated Creator. This One manifests a stable essence in the instability of particularity in time, ever-changing and always remaining the same; likewise, ever expressing and replenishing.
The Holy Spirit is the immediacy of this eternal energy expressing the One, inhering in the Creator and wedded with the Word, making all this creating and recreating possible. The Spirit is the Spirit of God, for it is the expression of the dynamic willing inhering in the Creator. The Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, for it is the expression of the alignment of the Word with the Wording One. The Word is only possible through the infusion of Word with Spirit, as evidenced in the story of the Holy Spirit coming down to conceptualize the Word in Mary and in the Spirit descending on Jesus at his baptism. Likewise, Jesus breathing on the disciples in the Gospel of John shows the disciples become embodiments and sharers of the living Word through the confluence of their beings with the Spirit of Truth.
The Word, as the form of God-Energy, flows out of God. Thus, this is the Word of God. Then, the Spirit imbues and flows out of the Word within time, allowing creation to be ever-changing within the structuring tendency of the energetic and energizing Spirit. Without the Spirit, there is chaos. With the Spirit, harmony is formed, for Spirit brings out the possibility of a reciprocal enhancing of both otherness and oneness.
St. Paul says, "God was in Christ reconciling the world to God." Jesus reminds us, then, that he embodied the God beyond difference. Jesus is a differentiation of God in time. In Jesus, then, we see the interpenetrating of God and human, this and that, you and me, one thing and all things. Jesus is Nondual Being. Jesus, then, offers us a path, what I call Christ Path, beyond our trying to resolve our differentiation in a half-truth that perpetuates our inability to cooperate globally, even locally. The Christ Path is a path to embrace differentiation as unity. Only differentiated unity can lead beyond tolerance to true Love.
If we look into the cosmos, we will see that creation supports the deepest teaching of the mystical paths. Creation itself shows us differentiated unity. The Word through the cosmos heralds the hope that we can bring healing to our world, through realizing, experientially, a unity that allows us to experience love of God and neighbor, knowing that we are one because we are different and different because we are one.
Then, we can participate in creating peace in this good creation through realizing that Jesus' teaching to love our neighbor is actualized in honoring that we are equally the same and equally other, as well as fully our differentiated selves. Only in this paradoxical path will we find healing for our neighbor and ourselves. We will discover that to love our neighbor as ourselves is possible because to love our neighbor is loving ourselves. This is a humbling path, for it demands the retracing of all our esteemed, prideful ideological prejudices to their beginning in the simple Truth that sets us all free. However, the transcendence is not a return to some past time, rather, it is a forging ahead to where we have never been before. The path is the lifting up of all the half-truths into the fruition of the one Truth.
In this, we do not reject cherished and true belief, but we let it open us to the Living Word, to live in transforming union with God, by the enabling work of the Spirit of Grace. Only in this manner can we maintain and appreciate our essential unity among the nonessential differences. Let us follow daringly, lovingly, and gracefully, with the Grace of God to help and guide, and in so doing honor Christ, who shows us the Way of and to Love. Amen.
OneLife Ministries is a pastoral outreach and nurture ministry of the First United Methodist Church, Fort Meade, FL. For Spiritual Direction, Pastoral Counseling, spiritual formation workshops, Christian meditation retreats, or more information about OneLife, write Rev. Dr. Brian K. Wilcox at briankwilcox@comcast.net.
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