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Scripture
Galatians 5.16-17 (ESV)
16But I say,walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.
Romans 8.3-5 (ESV)
3For God has done what the law,weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.
Wisdom Words
The knowledge that God has loved me to the uttermost will send me forth into the world to love in the same way. God's love to me is inexhaustible, and I must love others from the bedrock of God's love to me. ... Neither natural love or Divine love will remain unless it is cultivated. Love is spontaneous, but it has to be maintained by discipline.
*Oswald Chambers. My Utmost for His Highest. May 11.
Comments
The New Testament uses two key words for "flesh." First, New Testament writers refer to sarx, the word used in the above scriptures. Thomas Keating, in The Mystery of Christ, explains the theological import of sarx: "Sarx means the human condition-the incomplete, unevolved, immature levels of human consciousness." And, "Sarx refers to the human condition closed in on itself; fallen, and not interested in rising. It is the human condition committed to biological survival for its own sake or for the sake of the clan, tribe, nation or race." Keating continues, contrasting sarx with the other New Testament word for "flesh," soma: "[S]oma refers to the body insofar as it is open to further evolution: it is the human condition open to development."
The Incarnation of Christ, then, is not just a historical event. The Incarnation, Christ becoming "flesh," or soma, as taught in St. John's Gospel 1.14, is a cosmic event that encompassed the entire universe and the entire human community of earth. "Jesus," as Keating comments, "introduced into the entire human family the principle of transcendence, giving the evolutionary process a decisive thrust toward God-consciousness." What does this entail for us now?
I am not just to accept Christ in a religious or conceptual way. I am to enter His Way. To enter The Way, The Truth, and The Life is to walk in the Spirit, the pneuma, not the flesh, the sarx.
The pneuma is the Principle of God-consciousness. God-consciousness, or Christ Consciousness, is the transformation of thinking and feeling to think and feel as God thinks and feels. God-consciousness is one with transcendence both of being closed in on oneself, as an individual person, and giving devotion to any definition of community that shuts out the other, refusing unconditional hospitality.
So, if I live by the Spirit, not the flesh, and the Spirit is the divine Principle of Transcendence, I will not allow those who walk fleshly to close my mind and heart to all creatures or restrict compassionate-openness to an exclusive understanding of community, even spiritual or religious community.
I do not, still, transcend limits of the flesh, or sarx, through efforts of the flesh. Sarx can only produce sarx. There must be the entrance of another Principle with potential to transform sarx, and that is pneuma. Only Spirit produces Spirit-fruit.
St. Paul puts the cosmic significance of Christ unleashing the Principle of Transcendence this way: "in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit." The "righteous requirement" is relational, that is, fulfilling the just obligations contained in the relationship I have with God and others. To "walk in the Spirit" is to be transformed and animated by the very Principle of Hospitality that allows one to fulfill the intent of right relating with others and God that religious rules or commands cannot lead one to fulfill. While religious or moral rules and statements of principle can tell us what we are to do, they can never animate us to do what we are to do, and they can never give us the attitude of willing hospitality that is the motive and spirit of the doing. Again, sarx can only lead to more sarx, even if sarx is trying to do what is right, religious, moral, or spiritual.
This is why simply trying to imitate Christ will not work. We cannot imitate Christ simply by wanting to imitate Christ or thinking that is what we are to do. Only the Spirit transforms us into the consciousness able to imitate Christ and to do so for the right reasons. This is where most religion fails those who desire to follow The Way. Religion tells them what to do without leading them to the practices that grow the consciousness to do it.
We must, then, to be living in right-relations, be living within fellowship with the Spirit. St. Paul puts it this way: "For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit."
Finally, returning to Keating saying that sarx "is the human condition committed to biological survival for its own sake or for the sake of the clan, tribe, nation or race." Then, in Spirit we transcend all particularity, or exclusion, in community. Even as Spirit opens us outward as persons, by our surrender to and fellowship with the Principle of Transcendence, we as community open outward, also, in loving-inclusion.
This comes in our lives through a crisis of identity. We take upon ourselves social, family, and religious identities, and these include who is fit to be included and who is unfit to be included. The radical message of the Gospel confronts us at each step that we meet someone or some group, and their inclusion means a disobedience to the cultural definitions of fit and unfit.
Only in the Principle of Transcendence, in which all boundaries are transcended, do we find True Love, and this only occurs in personal and communal evolution into God-consciousness. This is truly a spiritual consciousness, for it is of Spirit, and the religion of all religions and the morality of all moralities must serve this Principle for us to help bring peace among humans and healing to nature.
When I say yes to this Principle, the desire to walk in this Way grows. All other good, or helpful, desires serve this desire. All bad, or harmful, desires are transmuted into the one goal of Inclusive Embrace.
Some form of contemplative spirituality is essential to this transformative living by the Principle of Transcendence. Its neglect in the churches is a reason churches themselves often fail to open outward to include the other judged "unfit" into a radical hospitality of welcoming. All too often those who claim to follow Christ do not evolve to the consciousness, through spiritual practice and real-life choices, that is an evolving beyond the excluding identities given them and to see the world through the eyes of the Christ Light.
Suggested Reflection
Looking over your life journey, in what ways do you see you have grown in God-consciousness?
Looking over your life journey, in what ways do you see you have grown in being a compassionate and inclusive person?
Do you see a difference between inclusion, as set forth by the New Testament, and tolerance? Explain.
For submission of replies, see below:
*Brian K. Wilcox is Pastor of Christ Community United Methodist Church, Punta Gorda, FL. He is a vowed member of Greenbough House of Prayer, a contemplative Christian community. His passion is living a contemplative life and inspiring others to experience a deeper relationship with Christ through contemplative prayer and living.
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