Tag: integration

The Illness of Our Era: What Is It?

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality BlogLeave a comment
Anxiety, by James Callaghan

Our contemporary society focuses primarily on a functional existence. In our pragmatism, we care a great deal about production, the things we can do and produce; and we are attentive of how we appear to others. Western culture is enamored with all things of the outer person that others can see, touch, hear, smell, and taste with physical senses.

The outer person is important. The way in which we present ourselves to the world does have meaning and significance. Yet, so does the inner person.

The Inner Person

I believe the inner person, the true self, the soul, is just as vital, if not more, than the outward displays we give to others. On the inside is where our motives and intents come from. The core of self is of utmost importance; it is the place where our inherent worth is found.

Being aware of this inner person (which I use interchangeably with “soul” and “true self”) gives us a guide for ordering our outer self – our activities, work, and relationships.

If we are unaware of what’s happening deep within us, or pay little to no attention to the soul, our outer person becomes a false self. A gross disconnect then occurs between how we think and feel within, and what we choose to display for everyone.

In paying attention to the inner person, we will likely find that there is a lot of anxiety within us. Anxiety may even transform itself into a despair of self and/or the world.

The Anxiety Within

This anxiety, however, is not all bad. It certainly can lead us to a struggle with life, an experience of strained relationships, and a crippling fear of what will happen. Yet it can also help us become in touch with the soul, and enable us to gain an awareness of what is happening within and what to do about it.

It is my firm understanding and unshakable conviction that if we are to learn anything at all about healthy functioning in this world, it must begin with learning about one’s self – the true self, the inner person, the soul.

Knowing Ourselves

“Without knowledge of self, there is no knowledge of God.”

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol.1

As we commit ourselves to the journey within, we come to discover our place in the cosmos, and the image of God that is inherent in us. We come to know ourselves as integral to creation.

If we never gain this sense of humanity and of the divine, then we lose our special perspective on reality, and of the vital interconnectedness we have with God and others. Separateness then replaces the unity and oneness which exists. As a result, the person lives without a sense of their true place or function in this world.

Feelings of isolation and estrangement take over. This profound experience of disconnection with God, people, and even self creates a powerful sense of anxiety. Fear becomes a dominant theme. Unconscious emotions and desires drive the anxious person. A belief that my conscious self is all there is to me is a path of denial that leads to abject misery.

Knowing ourselves – before we know anything else – must be our pursuit. Failure to do this is perhaps why we live in such an era of worry, pessimism, and fear.

Addressing Our Fears

Have you ever felt that there is no one to whom you could turn to in your time of loneliness and despair?

Is there a time when you felt as if you were in a deep dark hole of quiet anxiety?

Did you ever brood over your situation in life so much that all of your courage melted like ice cream on a 100 degree day?

Was there a season in your life where you felt the world could not understand your grief?

Has God ever felt aloof to you, with your prayers seeming as if they were bouncing off the ceiling?

Depending upon who we are, the self believes that if I am right enough, help enough, achieve enough, unique enough, know enough, plan enough, party enough, lead enough, or withdraw enough, then I will relieve this bothersome anxiety and fear within me and can get on with life.

Others may seek solace in the finite things of this world. But that approach only exacerbates the existing problem. Believing that freedom from an ethereal illness can come by having more of something you can see only increases the despairing feelings.

Any sickness of the soul must be addressed by means of infinite resources.

The Need For Integration

If we lose ourselves, we are fragmented and in need of integration. The work needed is to bring our spiritual internal parts into a unified whole. This then puts us in a position to experience the grace and peace of God. Indeed, the process itself becomes the divine mercy and settled rest.

We tend to hold onto what we are afraid of experiencing. This very problem often becomes the solution. Our anxiety has the potential to lead us toward the grace of God, or away from it by self-conjured solutions and/or coping mechanisms.

Rather than holding our anxieties and fears close so that we can keep an eye on them, we need to let go of them. This is accomplished by actually feeling our feelings. By holding our emotions loosely, they can express themselves and then fly away.

If we never experience anxiety, worry, discouragement, fear, depression, or despair, then we internally see no reason whatsoever to pursue transformation of life – to go after that which is immortal and invisible.

The Apostle Paul’s Struggle

At the end of a frustrating litany of anxiety over his inability to control the trajectory of his inner self, the Apostle Paul concluded:

So I find it to be a law that, when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:21-25, NRSV)

Sin presupposes itself through anxiety. And anxiety awakens the awareness of needing freedom and deliverance. Worry is not our master. Anxiety has no authority over us. Fear merely exists for us to pay attention to something.

In Christianity, that something is a someone: Jesus. Christ is the Deliverer from sin, death, and hell. The oblivious and lonely darkness we find ourselves trapped within has a way out, or rather, up. A divine hand reaches from above to snatch us from our inky hole.

If humanity never had a need of God, people would not know themselves. They would fail to realize that there is immortality in their very souls.

Taking the Journey Within

It takes bravery to engage in a journey within, down into the core of one’s being. It’s neither a vacation nor a weekend adventure. The path unfolds slowly over time; it is circuitous, and often frustrating. Yet, when we find the incredibly bright blue diamond at the center, we immediately know every part of the journey was worth it.

The illness of our era is that we are soul-sick with anxiety, even despair, and most of us don’t know it. But why?

Like a cancer lurking unaware within the body, the years of ego construction has smothered the image and likeness of God within.

Anxiety becomes the initial symptom that something is askew with us. We’d better get checked out and find what the root problem is.

Are you up for the discovery of yourself, and thus, of God?

In Need of Integrity (John 7:19-24)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
Pharisees, by German painter Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, 1912

It was Moses, wasn’t it, who gave you God’s Law? But none of you are living it. So why are you trying to kill me?”

The crowd said, “You’re crazy! Who’s trying to kill you? You’re demon-possessed.”

Jesus said, “I did one miraculous thing a few months ago, and you’re still standing around getting all upset, wondering what I’m up to. Moses prescribed circumcision—originally it came not from Moses but from his ancestors—and so you circumcise a man, dealing with one part of his body, even if it’s the Sabbath. You do this in order to preserve one item in the Law of Moses. So why are you upset with me because I made a man’s whole body well on the Sabbath? Don’t be hypercritical; use your head—and heart!—to discern what is right, to test what is authentically right.” (The Message)

One of my ardent desires for every person on planet earth, is that they will experience an integration of themselves – that they will know their true selves. And with this awareness, their head, heart, and gut will all be in alignment with each other. Every part of oneself will be acknowledged and work in harmony with the other parts.

I’m talking about wholeness. This is what produces peace, unity, harmony, joy, and strength of spirit. For me, this is the consummate Christian path of discipleship to walk. Jesus has gone before us to clear the way as the pioneer of our salvation. He makes it possible to realize wholeness. Christ has the ability to make us well and to live well. To know Jesus is to be whole.

People who are a bundle of disparate parts – with some of those parts suppressed and unacknowledged – are disturbed. They always seem to be upset with something because the parts of themselves are unable to communicate with each other. With them, there is no peace or wholeness. There is only a myopic view, usually coming from only using the head, only thinking.

But to have thoughts of God, to think about God’s law, and to police how God is thought of and how God’s law is implemented – without the heart or the gut involved – leads to fragmentation and disruption.

To only think, and withhold feelings and intuition, is to sin.

It’s impossible to know God and live God’s commands without involving your entire self. A head without a heart cannot affect humanity with the good that it so desperately needs.

A heart without a head cannot effectively steer the rudder into accomplishing sustained goodness.

And a head and a heart without a gut cannot sense the danger around the corner and loses its good plans and intentions.

Jesus was addressing religious leaders and a large chunk of fragmented people. Many of those persons were unable to discern who Christ actually is, because only the person of integrity and wholeness can do that. So, each one came at Jesus from their own limited place of disintegration. And none of them were able to truly see themselves as they actually are – blind to the reality that they were not keeping God’s law.

Christ and Pharisee, by Russian artist Ivan Filichev, 1993

A fragmented person’s perspective comes at things like this: “I’m obeying the law, although there are some laws I’m not really holding to.” Yet, Jesus understood that to break just one law makes us lawbreakers and in need of healing and wholeness.

Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath. The disintegrated person only saw Jesus working on the Sabbath, which in his head is a no-no. It requires work to heal someone. Therefore, it can wait until tomorrow. Thus, this Jesus fellow sinned against God and disobeyed God’s law. In fact, it only stands to reason that he is in league with a demon, the fragmented person reasons.

But that is to make a poor discernment of the situation. It is, however, only what the fragmented person can do. However, a wise understanding of the man’s healing by Jesus is to observe that Love has come among you – that Sabbath was made for humanity, not humanity for the Sabbath – and that this bringing of wholeness to a person, in restoring not only his health but his ability to connect with society, family, and community, is a knowable good thing. This is most certainly not what any sort of demon would do.

Perhaps one ought to test the spirits and make a good, right, and just discernment. Just maybe, Jesus is the one who can guide us to wholeness, goodness, and integrity. It could be that God is among us, and we didn’t even know it.

Constant criticism of others only deflects from paying attention to our own spirit; and always living in your head keeps you from experiencing the heartache of love.

Merely giving-in to the heart without engaging the head creates a caregiver who has no idea how to care for themselves; eventually they become bitter and gain a critical spirit that no one is caring for them as they care for others.

Blurting-out gut-reaction judgment at another may be truthful, but it will be taken as a severe and discouraging criticism because there was no thought or heart behind it.

There are a lot of upset people in this world. Yet, there are precious few persons with the wholeness to speak from the head, heart, and gut as a unified whole, bringing words and actions of life to others.

The persecuted person is one who has become wonderfully whole, namely because there are far too many fragmented people who view them as a threat, and see them as demonic. Fragmented folk believe they need to put the integrated person in their place, if not done away with altogether.

And that is exactly why Jesus was arrested, tortured, and killed. But fragmentation, disintegration, oppression, and sin do not have the last word. They are not the judge. There is resurrection, new life, and abundant joy because the grace of God in Christ always has the last word.

Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, by Argentine artist Jorge Cocco Santángelo

There’s trouble ahead when you live only for the approval of others, saying what flatters them, doing what indulges them. That’s the way of the fragmented ones; they will find themselves cursed. However, the blessings of God’s rule and reign recognize and affirm the whole person. Jesus said:

You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.

You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.

You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.

You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat.

You’re blessed when you care. At the moment of being ‘care-full,’ you find yourselves cared for.

You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.

You’re blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of competing or fighting. That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family.

You’re blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God’s kingdom. (Matthew 5:3-10, MSG)

May you live into who you are, and avoid who you are not, to the glory of God. Amen.

Hold It Loosely (Exodus 1:1-7)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment

When Jacob went to Egypt, his son Joseph was already there. So Jacob took his eleven other sons and their families. They were: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Benjamin, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. Altogether, Jacob had 70 children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren who went with him.

After Joseph, his brothers, and everyone else in that generation had died, the people of Israel became so numerous that the whole region of Goshen was full of them. (Contemporary English Version)

Exodus is the second book of the Bible, and the second of five books known as the “Pentateuch” by Christians, and the “Torah” by Jews. The first book, Genesis, ended with the story of Joseph – who was one of the 12 patriarchs. God established a covenant with Abraham, the father of Judaism, and promised him land and descendants – even though he did not have a son. God miraculously gave Abraham and Sarah a biological son, Isaac, who grew up to be the father of Jacob, or Israel, Joseph’s father.

The stories in Genesis surrounding Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph were filled with wonderings of whether God’s promise would ever survive, or not. Yet, it did. Joseph, in the ultimate reversal of fortunes, went from the lowest person in Egypt to it’s highest official. Through Joseph, the brothers and their families ended up relocating to Egypt because of a severe famine.

Present-day land of Goshen, Egypt

As time moved on, Joseph, his brothers, and all that generation died. In contrast to the extended family of Jacob, 70 of them, who initially went to Egypt, the opening of of Exodus relays an exponential growth in numbers of Israelites.

God was faithfully and tirelessly preserving the covenant and the promise for Israel. When the people went to Egypt, God assured them they need not be afraid. The Lord will make them a great nation, will be with them, and shall lead them back out again. (Genesis 46:1-4)

The opening of Exodus not only connects us with events in the latter part of Genesis, but also hearkens back to it’s very beginning, when God spoke to the first human couple. The Lord gave them a five-fold blessing, consisting of commands to 1) be fruitful 2) multiply 3) fill the earth 4) subdue it, and 5) have dominion over it. (Genesis 1:28)

Following the Flood, God blessed Noah, repeating the commands to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth (Genesis 9:1). Later, God spoke to Abraham, promisingto make him fruitful (Genesis 17:5-9). Moving into Exodus, we see a fulfillment of the commands and the promise taking shape, stating that the descendants of Israel were fruitful and multiplying, so that the land was filled with them.

It was this very blessing of progeny, and the fertile increase of descendants, which sets up the entire book of Exodus. The great and growing numbers of Israelites became a source of concern and fear amongst the Egyptians. It wasn’t long before the Jews were seen as another source of slave labor.

Sometimes, we must bear in mind and remember that great blessing also has an underbelly of great blight. Only God and relationships last forever; everything else is temporary, including our earthly blessings.

Therefore, it is wise to hold all things loosely, with open hands, and not with clenched fists that believes possessing things in this moment will be permanent. The following are some things to remember:

Remember who is in control

When things are going well, it may create the illusion that I am in charge of the blessing. But, in reality, it was given to you, and it can be taken away, as well.

The only thing you can control are your thoughts, feelings, emotions, choices, actions and the story you are telling yourself about what happened in the past, is happening now, and will happen tomorrow.

We all have our personal invisible backpacks to carry. That backpack is ours, and nobody else’s. Others have their own burdens to carry, which are individual to them. They aren’t yours to carry. Their stories aren’t yours to tell.

God is the Sovereign of the universe, and controls all things. That is God’s burden to carry. Not yours. Carrying the world on your shoulders isn’t your job. So, hold loosely whatever happens on this earth, whether for good or ill. 

Remember that life is both planning and improvisation

We have an agenda, make our plans, and put things in place. Yet, in the execution of doing it, we have to move with whatever circumstances and conditions arise – with whatever life throws our way – and then adjust our expectations.

Remember it’s both in planning and in improvising. The Israelites laid plans to go to Egypt, went there, and then had to deal with changing conditions once they were there. All planning and no improvising is unrealistic; and all improvisation with no plan is flying by the seat of your pants and living in a dream world which doesn’t exist.

What’s more, it might be your plan, or your group’s plan, but it’s not everybody’s plan. They have the freedom to say, “No thank you.” So, be careful to not marry yourself to a particular outcome. Release the urge to cling or obsess about certain expectations. Hold your plans loosely, and plan to improvise.

Remember to cooperate with God

In reality, there is a divine/human cooperative which exists on the earth. Ideally, we are to work together, me doing my part, and God handling the rest. And the both of us constantly must be in dialogue with each other.

When we align with this truth, and participate with God and integrate this cooperative into daily life, then we begin to relax, breathe, move with confidence, and speak with purpose. Head, heart, and gut are no longer disparate parts within me, but work together in a harmonious sync with the Lord.

If this is a challenge for you, set aside some time and be in nature. Look around you and observe all the life thriving right in front of you. Connecting with what is alive connects us to the universal Love which exists everywhere. And that Love can help us and heal us – if we will but let it.

I can hold things loosely because I know the internal pressure of “getting it right” isn’t mine to carry. I can cooperate with God, relax, do my best, and trust.

Blessings are wonderful and abound everywhere. Yet, adversity, acrimony, and even abuse still lurk about in this old fallen world. So, may you learn to hold all things loosely, and live as you know you can, and ought. Amen.

Exposing Hypocrisy (Mark 7:1-8)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment
Old Men and Christ by Ivan Filichev, 1992

The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.)

So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?”

He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:

“‘These people honor me with their lips,
    but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
    their teachings are merely human rules.’

You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.” (New International Version)

Reading the Gospel text for today, I try to imagine what emotions Jesus might have experienced when confronted by some religious leaders about his lack of attention to traditional and ritual hand washings – maybe frustration, anger, sadness, exasperation, disappointment, irritation, aggravation, or discouragement.

Perhaps Christ felt all those emotions. Whatever Jesus was feeling at the time, I can easily see him taking a deep breath and exhaling a great big *sigh* over the hypocrisy displayed in front of him.

Hypocrisy is a disconnect between espoused values and actual behavior. Whenever there is an incongruence between what we say is important and how we really live, this is being two-faced and duplicitous.

The men who came to see Jesus were plain old insincere hacks who practiced religious quackery. And Jesus saw right through their fake pretention of righteousness.

First off, this narrative is neither a blanket condemnation of Pharisees nor a dig on rituals themselves. Instead, Christ’s words were directed to specific persons using their rituals to leverage an appearance of religious superiority over others.

That type of motivation for engaging traditional rituals completely ignores the ethical and moral intention of those practices.

Sometimes folks can get so doggone wrapped up in how faith is represented that they lose sight of the faith itself.

Jesus and Old Men by Ivan Filichev, 1993

Hypocrisy has to do with our motives – not so much what we do but why we do it. Rituals themselves are good. Why we do them, or not, or how we go about doing them, gets at the heart of our objectives for engaging religious practices.

We need to ask ourselves:

Are our spiritual practices truly a worship offering to God, or are they merely mechanisms for keeping up the appearance of holiness?

Hypocrisy is acting a part which is not our true self. It is, instead, to live from the false self through the attempt of providing an idealized person to the public. What we ought to be doing is embracing the true self and realizing our common humanity with one another in genuine devotion to God and service to others.

Religious hypocrisy is particularly insidious because it uses what is sacred for selfish purposes. It damages the credibility of the religion, creates idolatry, and papers over hate with a veneer of pretentious piety.

The hypocrite is one who is a bundle of disparate parts. They have a massive need of integration to a whole and real self. The cost to facing this is the vulnerability of exposing oneself as flawed, imperfect, even ugly. Many persons have no willingness to be viewed by others as such, and so they maintain their play-acting and continue to seek the attention and accolades as a model religious person.

We all must come to grips with the reality that God cares a whole lot about why we do what we do.

If and when the forms of faith become tools of oppression to place heavy burdens upon others backs, then those forms have supplanted the faith itself.

Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks, and from the heart the hands and feet move. Whenever we care more about being and appearing right than getting it right and becoming better, then we have a heart problem. The heart of the issue is the heart itself. Clean up the heart, and everything else follows – not the other way around.

The probity of today’s Gospel lesson is that we might misinterpret what is important to God. We may be playing the hypocrite yet have the belief we are genuine. The capacity for our hearts to enlarge with love is in direct relation to an awareness of the hidden motives buried within those hearts.

Evil intentions and motivations are what separate us from God – not our race, class, age, gender, religion, ethnicity, behavior, rituals, or anything else on the outside.

If we find ourselves being nit-picky of others, this is usually a clue that the unconscious self is trying to protect us from facing the pain of our own sins by projecting and focusing on another’s supposed missteps with tradition or ritual.

Fortunately, Jesus came to this earth full of grace and truth. There were times that Christ set aside niceness and decorum to go for the heart. In shining a light on the motives behind the deeds of people, some repented and received the good news of the kingdom of God; and others resisted to maintain their illusion of control and superiority.

Nobody could ride the fence with Jesus around. You either loved him or hated him.

The beauty of grace is that when we squarely and uncompromisingly face our sins and let go of the things we consider so important, and turn to God with authenticity, we are welcome at his Table.

Most holy and merciful Father, we acknowledge and confess before you our sinful nature, prone to evil and slow to do good, and all our shortcomings, offenses, and malevolent motives. You alone know how often we have sinned in wandering from Christ’s way of grace and truth, in wasting your gifts of compassion and justice, and in forgetting your love.

O Lord have mercy on us. We are ashamed and sorry for all the ways we have displeased you. Teach us to hate our errors; cleanse us from our secret faults; and forgive us our sins; for the sake of your dear Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.