These are challenging times we live in as we witness the eternal battle between good and evil being played out in dramatic ways before our eyes. None of this is new, of course, but today we have the impact of firsthand recordings of events and the immediate amplification through social media, which allows people on all sides of these issues to publicly express their versions of beliefs and realities. The full range of our human reactions and emotions, for better and for worse, are on display, well before any kind of due process can occur. From an integral lens we can also see the full range of human development being played out.
For Christians and other religious people, tragic events of senseless violence with people in position of power being cold and cruel tend to evoke questions about truth and God. We wonder why God allows such cruelty and evil to exist. Why doesn’t God step in, why doesn’t God intervene? We want a God who is in control. We want a God who will banish evil and disease, and pain from life. We want things in life to make sense, to be orderly, fair, and rational, and a God who mirrors our own view of life and reality.
Then comes the story of Jesus. The story that tells us God came to earth in human form in the baby Jesus, who was fully human and fully God. God did not come with earthly power and majesty but came in humility, poverty, and vulnerability. God did not come to control and coerce, but came in vulnerability, inviting us to believe and to be in relationship with the source of all life. Because life is messy and sometimes painful, we seek certainty and safety, not vulnerability. But we cannot have intimacy without vulnerability, both sides choosing to risk hurt, loss, and rejection. Jesus, being fully human, must have experienced the same feelings, fears, and hopes that we all do. His story is one of human joy, intimacy, suffering, and defeat, and also one of Divine victory of good over evil, life over death. His message invites us into a whole new way of being, into evolving relationships with God, with life, and with one another.
I recently finished reading a book recommended by the pastor of my church: A Faith of Many Rooms, by Debie Thomas. The author shares her own developmental journey as she wrestled with questions of faith, the paradoxes of life and the Christian story, and contradictions she tried to reconcile. Her parents were first generation immigrants from a small town in India, now living in Boston. Her father was a pastor of a multiethnic, evangelical church, as well as a local Indian Christian Fellowship. Consequently, she had very strong church cultures as well as ethnic cultures that influenced her life and perspectives.
Debie doesn’t use the language of integral philosophy but clearly describes the stages of her growth, nonetheless. As a child, she basked in the magical stage of absolute belief in the faith of her parents and her culture and speaks fondly of the love and affirmation she witnessed and experienced. Then she grew into the Amber, mythical stage and started to struggle with the burden and fears regarding salvation. She describes her strong feelings of shame and unworthiness as she learned the creeds of the church and wondered if her level of belief and faithfulness were enough to save her. To compensate, she recited the sinner’s prayer again and again, noting in her diary the number of times she got saved. This was an anxiety she carried with her for many years.
As she moved into adolescence and on into college, Debie talks about her Orange, skeptical stage of faith. She notes her disillusionment was the loss of her illusions about herself, the world, and her understanding of God. She rebelled against the narrowness, constriction, and confinement of the faith she grew up with, a faith that says only those who believe and practice as we do will be saved. She states she decided during that time to leave the evangelical faith she grew up with.
As she wrestled with her doubts and questions, Debie did not lose her desire to be in relationship with God and notes that God was patient and present throughout her struggle. She found her way into the Green, inclusive stage and into what she calls a roomier Christianity, one that accepted all of her as she is and included those with different backgrounds and faith experiences. This allowed her to explore different ways of interpreting and expressing her faith, which was more open, abundant, gracious, and had space to wander and to grow. In her words, “the rooms in which God meets, hosts, and nourishes you will be unique to your own spiritual journey”.
At some point Debie also began to notice some aspects of progressive Christianity that troubled her, such as the distrust of and discomfort with the core concepts of sin and salvation that are within the story of Jesus. She started to move into an integral level which allowed her to transcend the rigid and exclusionary perspectives of sin and salvation of fundamentalism yet include the broader “truth that we need a robust understanding of sin’s insidious reach and power, one that recognizes evil as a malevolent force we can’t defeat by our good intentions and willpower. Christianity as story invites us to lead integrated lives, bringing together our Sunday pieties with our Monday questions, our Friday heartbreaks with our Saturday sins”.
We need a roomier Christianity as we confront the realities of the brokenness and inhumanity in the world in which we live. We need to address the cruelty and evil we are witnessing, stand up and say no, and also allow light, love, and compassion to shine through us. It is easy to judge and condemn one another, especially those who are politically, spiritually, and developmentally different from us. It is much harder to follow the teachings of Jesus, to hold one another accountable and yet love our enemies. It is easier to retreat into the security of our world views and harder to stay vulnerable and open and curious. Yet, that is what we are called to do and that is what spiritual and emotional maturity looks like. I think we all have plenty of room to grow and certainly many opportunities to trust and to walk with God in our personal and collective evolution.