Integrating Faith

 

I have been observing the prophetic movement within the Christian church since the 1970s.  Granted I was very young in the 70s, but kids have something to offer in terms of awareness.  They tend to ask pertinent questions.  Why? Because it’s easy when you’re a kid.  Everything adds up when you’re a child.  And, you know, in some ways, it should.

What do I mean?

Simply put, I mean that things are not adding up in Christianity anymore.  They might be in certain communities, but, as a whole, 2+2 does not equal 4 anymore.  2+2=G.  Or, 2+2 might add up to whatever someone tells you.  Numbers are letters.  Letters are numbers.  Science is the devil, books should be burned, and Thomas Edison was a witch.

I don’t say this in a judgmental way.  I’m not writing this to be unkind.  I say this because, in my experience with the many streams of the faith both Catholic and Protestant over the past forty years, there has been a cultural creep within the faith systems that has been confused for actual faith.  A way of speaking, singing, dressing, talking, educating, and worshiping.  I call it “Christianese”, and I’m quite certain I am not the originator of this term.

What does a lack of integration look like, and what does this have to do with “the prophetic movement”?

Integration is the act of bringing parts into a working whole.  An integrated faith would then be a belief system whose parts come together and function as a whole system rather than a divided or siloed system.  Going further, an integrated faith system would also be a faith that becomes part of a person’s life rather than existing outside of it like an island.

I observed this phenomenon when I was a child in the person of Miss Gentry.  Miss Gentry was a salty, gossipy old hen of a woman who attended my father’s Assembly of God church.  She was a member of the old guard.  I think that she was as old as the foundation of the building, and she acted as if that gave her the right to treat people however she liked.  She was mean, spiteful, and cunning.  I used to sit under the table in the church kitchen when Miss Gentry was pouring coffee into the urns for fellowship time, and that was when Miss Gentry would gossip with Miss Landry.  Miss Gentry was the Queen Bee of the church.  It seemed to me that all the meek, respectable ladies were somewhat scared of Miss Gentry.  They would smile and nod as she talked smack about the newest members.  So-and-so looked fat.  Such-and-such looked terrible.  Had they heard about someone’s money troubles, and someone else’s tawdry sex life, and on and on?  She wasn’t happy unless she was stirring up trouble.  Yet this woman was a beacon of faithful attendance and Christian charity in her community, and no one seemed too bothered by her very hurtful antics.  This was simply how it was.

This is what I mean about a lack of integration in Christianity.  This behavior was cultural.  It was a part of Southern Christian culture as I knew it, but it isn’t actually Christian or definitively faithful.  It’s Christianese.  People defended it because some explain that they are “concerned” with the piety of congregants, but is this really why people engage in such venomous invective?

What does the disintegration of faith from day-to-day living and the prophetic movement have to do with each other? Everything.

The most recent prophetic movement picked up a lot of speed within certain Christian circles after the 1970 Asbury College “revival” which came on the heels of the controversial Latter Rain movement.  You don’t have to believe that prophecy is true.  You can believe that prophecy is true.  One’s concept of revival isn’t the point.  Relationship with God is the point, and that is always available to people regardless of your denomination or stance on revival.  What’s more, if you have a relationship with God, then you can hear God’s voice.  If you can hear God’s voice, then you can participate, to a degree, in the movements of his thoughts towards you and other people.  And this is the heart of what has been named “prophecy”.

The role of the prophet in the Bible is essentially to move people into an integrated life.  The more integrated your mind, body, heart, spirit and relationships are in relation to God and your community, the more fulfilled you will be.  Integration is the point.  The more esoteric, insular, and out of reach the prophetic messages become, the more Christianese they become meaning they become more disintegrated with the rest of life.  They become essentially useless.  This is largely why people find the revivalist, or prophetic, movement hard to understand.  That and the offensive judgmentalism that radiates from many “prophetic” messages today.

Life is terribly hard.  Almost everyone I know is shattered to a degree.  The central message of both the Tanakh and the New Testament was not “try harder”.  It was always one of hope.  The primary message is “God intervenes” and his intervention is in no way dependent upon the actions of humans.  It is entirely dependent upon God’s own desire to intervene.

We desire to draw close to God because he desired us first.  We think of God because he thought of us first.  We ponder him because he meditated upon us first.  We are just returning to him.  We are merely attempting, however awkwardly, to imitate our creator.  We attempt to think great thoughts because we are made in God’s image, and he thinks magnificent thoughts that will always be unknowable, but we try anyway because we were created to try.

This effort, this trying, is what humans have labeled “the prophetic”.  Now, when we begin to let that Divine Spark emanate outward and inward at the same time and thaw us, taking hold of our minds so that we begin to think God’s thought about ourselves and others, love, chesed in Hebrew, begins to flow.  The Spirit of God intervenes, and we begin to experience that phenomenon so aptly described in 1 Corinthians 13: “For now [in this time of imperfection] we see in a mirror dimly [a blurred reflection, a riddle, an enigma], but then [when the time of perfection comes we will see reality] face to face. Now I know in part [just in fragments], but then I will know fully, just as I have been fully known [by God].”

This is the beginning of integration.  This is the end of insincerity and the doorway into the life we were made for.

 

 

It’s Only a Door 

by Adrienne Rich

                                        Either you will

                                        go through this door

                                        or you will not go through.

                                        If you go through

                                        there is always the risk

                                        of remembering your name.

                                        Things look at you doubly

                                        and you must look back

                                        and let them happen.

                                        If you do not go through

                                        it is possible

                                        to live worthily

                                        to maintain your attitudes

                                        to hold your position

                                        to die bravely

                                        but much will blind you,

                                        much will evade you,

                                        at what cost who knows?

                                        The door itself

                                        makes no promises.

                                        It is only a door.