Spiritual Life and the Social Order

The inward spiritual journey always impacts life in the outer world.

A deepening connection with God (the inner work) always makes a difference in who we are with (and how we see) God, self, others, and the world (the outer work).

The spiritual dimension of life should always impact the social order in which we live.

In fact, the spiritual life gives you and me a different way of being in the world, a way of swimming upstream against the prevailing current of the social order, without having to adopt the means by which society plays the game.

To “play the game” by the rules of society is merely a way of granting legitimacy to those rules and to the social order that created them.

“The ‘team’ with the most votes wins . . . or the side that has the strongest argument is right . . . or this election is a referendum on _________.”

The social order acts – and throughout history, always has – as if it holds all the cards, as if it is the most powerful order in the world. The prevailing social “wisdom” assumes that because it creates the rules, passes the legislation, and determines what is important and unimportant, that it must be the most powerful aspect of life, whether that social wisdom represents “the Left” or “the Right”.

On the other hand, those given to the spiritual world and the spiritual realm of life bet their lives that there is a Spiritual Presence that undergirds all of life, a Divine Source present always and everywhere to which the prevailing social order is largely oblivious. Further, underlying the spiritual life is the conviction that the real authority and power in life is this Spiritual Presence, that all social claims to power and authority are mere pretenders.

So I’m pondering what it means to be a contemplative presence in the kind of world in which we live (and in which we have always lived). What is my life about as I seek to live in the world from the Center, tethered to the Source of all things?

I recognize that for centuries, when the Church was complicit in society’s corruption, those who carried forward the way of Jesus had to do so underground, in ways and in places that were quiet, unseen, and out of the mainstream. In fact, in those centuries, the mainstream expressions of religious faith were just as corrupt as society at large, filled more with the messages of the social order than with the Gospel. So it was up to mystics, monks, and holy women to carry – and live into – a way of being in the world that was healing and regenerative, rather than divisive, hostile, and hysteric.

In the Middle Ages, Popes, Cardinals, and Bishops were a part of royal courts, in the service of monarchs, and a part of the corruption that comes with power. In those settings, the religious authorities offered widespread blessing of the very corruption that served some well, but oppressed most. In those days, it was up to mystics to speak of an authentic connection with God that ran deeper than political influence. Monasteries became places where simplicity and poverty of spirit symbolized a stance against the power structures of the day. But that kind of resistance flowed mostly underground.

In the 1930’s, the Church in Germany so totally adopted the platform of the Nazis that Christians could no longer see what was real. Persons who carried forward an authentically Gospel message – like Dietrich Bonhoeffer – had to do so through an underground Church, so totally had the mainstream Church and clergy adopted the prevailing social order.

So today, the calling of those who would be awake, who would seek a deepening connection with God that makes a difference in the world, may take an underground, almost subversive form. That is not to say contemplatives or those who lean into the spiritual dimension of life should not be active in the social order, in political systems, government, business, and so on. Always, part of the Divine invitation is to work and pray for a more just, more merciful and compassionate world (“on earth as it is in heaven”). So we do not “sit this one out.” However, we also acknowledge that trusting in elections, legislation, capitalism, and policies to change hearts is misplaced trust.

Your spiritual journey makes a difference in the world.

Your practice of prayer impacts the circumference of your realm of influence.

Your openness to a deepening connection with God creates healing space within you and around you that touches the world with wholeness and generosity.

Your soul’s tether to the Source of Life is stronger and more real than all the power, control, and legislations of the social order.

And in your intention to live from a life-giving Center, you carry on an underground tradition that no power of the world can curb.

The Slow Work of the Spirit of Truth

"When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me." (John 15:26)

Jesus described the role of the Holy Spirit as an Advocate, as One Who Speaks on Behalf of another. In John 15, Jesus used the phrase "Spirit of truth" to describe the Spirit's work. Sacred Space 2018, the prayerbook of the Irish Jesuits, synthesizes the idea this way: "The work of the Holy Spirit affirms the life and love of Jesus, giving witness to what is true."

I wrestle with this notion of "truth" and what is "true." Too many, in my experience, claim the truth -- usually their own experience or opinion or way of seeing the world -- as a single concept or idea which is infallible and to which all persons must gravitate. Of course, my notion of truth is correct and yours is faulty, even though you feel YOUR notion of truth is correct and mine is faulty. And so we go to war either as peoples or groups or isolated persons to defend what we believe truth is.

I want to play Pilate for just a moment, the Roman governor who had a bound Jesus before him and who was under compulsion by Jewish leaders to render some kind of verdict about Jesus.

As Pilate tried to discern Jesus' identity, as well as his guilt or innocence, Jesus said to him, "The reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

“What is truth?” retorted Pilate. (Jn. 18:37-38)

As Frederick Buechner imagines the story, he says Jesus did not answer Pilate, at least not with words. He just stands there. He stands. And he stands there.

"What is truth?" Buechner implies Jesus answers by simply standing before Pilate. He embodies truth.

Buechner, though, merely hit upon what seems most obvious. I find it possible to affirm that Jesus IS the truth -- which I have for decades -- while still not living the experience of Jesus as the truth -- which has been my intentional pursuit for only a few years.

The more difficult question, to me anyway, is, "How does the Spirit of truth animate my life? How is the Spirit affirming the life and love of Jesus WITHIN ME, giving witness through my lived-experience to what is true?"

With Pilate, I ask, "What is truth?"

As the Spirit of truth, God seems most interested in accompanying each of us in the ongoing quest to live the truth in our own context . . . to have what Fr Thomas Keating has often referred to as a "lived experience of Jesus." That means this Divine Spirit aids each person in their openness to and pursuit of what is most true . . . about God, within the self, inside others, and about the created world.

For example, what is most true about me? What is my deepest and most authentic truth? Like you and like every other human on the planet, I am given to believing lies about myself, lies convincing me both of my abundant goodness AND of my overwhelming badness. I am prone to varnishing the truth of my self in convenient and self-serving ways, creating illusions that I want to believe about my self or that I want you to believe about me. None of us are particularly adept, at least for a great long time, at recognizing these illusions about ourselves.

Further, we can live with these illusions for such a long time that they really do become woven into the fabric of our lives, causing the lies to be ingrained tightly into our own self-image. After awhile we cannot see the truth from the falsehood. We see that happen to others -- even in public figures -- far more quickly than we recognize this bent toward illusion in ourselves.

If I played out the example even more, I could ask, "What is the truth about God I have not let myself believe . . .perhaps because it lies outside what I was brought up to believe about God?"

Or, "What is true about this other person that I have not yet seen and acknowledged . . . perhaps because to see that truth about him/her would mean I'd have to forgive them?"

Or, "What is the truth of the created world I have resisted . . . perhaps because it would make my personal lifestyle uncomfortable?"

The Spirit of truth, according to my vision, is the Spirit's work of nudging me slowly, almost imperceptibly, to see truthfully . . . God, self, others, and the world. On the other hand, the Spirit of truth seems NOT to move each of us toward a common belief system or ideology, as if being a capitalist is true and being a socialist is false. Rather, the Spirit of truth is gradually shaping my life so that the life and love of Jesus -- who IS the Truth -- becomes my own experience in the world.

Spirituality, after all, is about seeing first and foremost, seeing what is true, seeing what is real, letting go of illusions and the haze of what I want to see in favor of seeing what is actually present. And this seems to be the work that the Spirit of truth is interested in, yet which is hardly ever talked about in Christian circles. The Spirit invests sacred energy in this animating work of seeing, making connections, noticing what is always and everywhere true.

Perhaps you would wrestle with your own answers . . .

"What is truth?"

"What is the animating work of the Spirit of truth in my own life?"