Can we be so benumbed by what we call faith that we do not know we are in a state of spiritual comatose? Would Jesus have ever wanted us to become so much a people of the past that we shut out the Life of now, and the fresh meanings and experiences offered us now, in the ever-unfolding Journey? Would not such a Christianity become another religious idolatry, no different than worshipping a stream or a rock, just because it is claimed to be handed down as holy from time past?

Because of this propensity in humans to idolatry in all forms, there must be two elements in a living faith. First, there is respect for tradition, for the tradition carries a vital past holding potentials for new experience and discernment. Second, there must be a person in it that listens honestly and openly, not narcotized by the tradition. If religious tradition was always true, we would only have one tradition.

Less than dignified is either of the two: an individualist self-absorbed and overly confident of his or her experience, shutting off the potential in tradition, a traditionalist absorbed in a tradition and losing the self in a collective conformity shut off to the new in the individual person.

Over 2,000 years ago a young Greek artist named Timanthes studied under a respected tutor. After several years the teacher’s efforts seemed to have paid off when Timanthes painted an exquisite work of art. Unfortunately, he became so enraptured with the painting that he spent days gazing at it.

One morning when he arrived to admire his work, he was shocked to find it blotted out with paint. Angry, Timanthes ran to his teacher, who admitted he had destroyed the painting. “I did it for your own good. That painting was retarding your progress. Start again and see if you can do better.”

Timanthes took his teacher’s advice and produced Sacrifice of Iphigenia, which is regarded as one of the finest paintings of antiquity.

*Today in the Word. September 2, 1992.

Like Timanthes, we can get stuck in the past, admiring what we have become, have done and am doing - which is a continuity we do not want disturbed -, what God has become to us. Then, we want to freeze that, for it feels so good. We appeal to past authorities, creeds, confessions, and events, all to stay in this frozen world with barbed wire around it.

We struggled some, or much, to get to this place. We do not want to struggle to get to a better place. So, we convince ourselves - or try to - this place is best of all. We speak of the good and necessity of change and growth. We mean just an enlargement of what we already think and do, have become.

Anyway, the "authorities" of the tradition tell us we cannot think for ourselves, think outside the lines - "Just listen to us, we are 'authorized' to know and tell the truth?"

But is not a true, spiritual leader helping the other learn to think for himself or herself? Is not the spiritual leader in Christ the person who feels no need to control the thought or experience of another? He or she wants the other to learn to listen to the Inner Voice, and follow that Truth. He or she gets no self-esteem boost by being an authority. That one neither needs nor wants power over other persons, such a one wants to be with others in a shared seeking, learning, and knowing - the New Testament calls this koinonia.

We do not need Christian gurus - in disguise of pastor, priest, reverend, evangelist, missionary, or church or denominational leader! That kind of leadership is no leadership, it is dictatorship, and a man or woman of sane mind is right to resist such religious monopoly over heart and mind.

Anyway, why let something new in? After all, our family and friends, our church and acquaintances, are bowing to the idol called the past. "Just Fit In" is the theme. "Let's All Just Agree and Get Along With Each Other" is another thesis.

Yet, even Nature teaches us we cannot cease the flow of time, and with it change. And Nature reflects the Nature of Life, for it arises from God, Who Is Life.

What happens when we admire - or infatuated with - the past, so we close off to the flow of time? Well, we lose Passion (Eros), even if we do have a lot of emotion. We become sterile, closed in with those just like us, like a cocooning together. This is like the woman hurt by a past Beloved. She, therefore, closes her heart. She chooses the familiar - life before the hurt. Sure, she is safe, but she becomes sterile of Eros - of romance -, and vitality Spirit wishes to infuse into her heart. She refuses to go on from a past betrayal, or what she saw as such. She is trapped in the past, and even her heart cannot get into the present and move on. Yes, this can be the story of a man, also. The same process applies. Sterility of life is the result, in either case.

Does this not apply to spiritual living? We, in the words of the writer of Hebrews, can get stuck in the beginning lessons of Christian experience. Frankly, that is where many leaders leave off persons in the churches. The leaders are beginners, and they do not know how to embody and teach the Deeper Waters of the Way.

Sure, let us manage churches, but be a spiritual leader - well, that does not fit our need for monies, conformity, and numbers: signs by which we self-validate our existence.

I recall a dear friend, and one who worked among the denominational leadership of the Christian sect I am leaving, say to me, years ago and when I was considering seeking license in the denomination: "Brian, they may not approve of you, but you need to go before them, for they need to hear what you have to say." Well, I did. I passed, too. Now, years later, I have been told I do not fit. Why? I do not know. Nevertheless, some who know it and me are suspicious that my contemplative-mystical theology may well have a lot to do with it. God defies any religious box. If the contemplative-mystical presents problems for persons, and it has for years, I cannot deny it saved me from the "God-in-a-Box" that left me cold, arid, and dying for Something More. In the depths of the human heart, one meets the Heart of Love - even beyond all we call sacred, religious, and spiritual in this world.

But look back over Church history. Who were the shakers and movers? Generally, persons who refused to fit in, tow the line, oil the machinery of status quo. Then, not surprisingly, do the conformists kill off the very persons who offer fresh, new experience of the Divine - or reintroduce those very words and ways that have been lost in a watering down of the earlier expressions of the Way, and that offered the masses more than religion as an opiate, but, rather, an ever-deepening growth into participation in God-intimately: in the true meaning of that word.

Is it possible churches, as well as denominations, are often set up to reward those who stay beginners in the experience of Christ?

So, I ask you. Are you going on? Do you dare go on? Or, are you comfortable in the forms of the past? That is right - let us just repeat, over and over, the same thing, preach the same thing, do the same thing, experience the same thing - resisting the fresh and new - ad nauseam. Then, let us say we are following Christ, though, really, we are following our own view of what Christ was to us, not what Christ is wanting to say and be to us now.

To the extent we have churches in such fixation on a version of the past that closes off to the new, such is little more than a house of idolatry - even if it goes under the confession of the name of Christ. Can you show me wrong logically in this?

Rather, let us listen to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, for surely it has more authority than you or I:

12 "I have many more things to say to you, but they are too much for you now. 13 But when the Spirit of truth comes, he will lead you into all truth. He will not speak his own words, but he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is to come.