Knowing and Faith, Pt. 2

(This is continued from the last entry)

Now, there is another important aspect to consider here.  I want to use my current experience as a prime example here, not because I am somehow a role model, but because what you just saw happen in my last 20 entries or so is fairly common in those who earnestly seek after God.  What you’ve seen is me refocusing my life, reorganizing some things that had gotten out of order.  That experience, not to mysticize it in anyway, was in reality me responding to something God showed me plainly I had to work on, namely, being a smartaleck know-it-all jerk.  In the most real sense, I had been doing something for years that had never occurred to me might be wrong.  Then, after a series of other things that happened in my life, it became instantly clear to me in an eyeblink what was wrong-I saw it all clearly, and what needed to be done. The Bible gives me a clear path to follow in such instances:  confession of the knowledge of wrongdoing, and then repentance, or the conscious turning away from of the wrong activity back to something that is correct.  After that confession and repentance is made, seeking forgivenss from those wronged is the last step in healing. 

One of the dangers of the current personal mysticism movement (e.g. “I will find my own way to God, there are many ways, and I will take what I like from a variety of systems and call it my own personal religion”), is that you lose continuity in how to deal with a problem once you’ve diagnosed it.  Simply knowing you have a pride problem is not a solution to being prideful.  It is very likely that having come to the conclusion you have a pride issue, without a larger context to view that issue, you could pat yourself on the back for your willingness to be honest and frank with yourself, and then move on without ever really changing anything.  I don’t call that progress.  It is also possible that once you’d discovered the pride issue, you’d look for a way to deal with it, but without a full view of human nature, and steps to follow to rectify the problem.  In the search for fulfillment, continuity is key.  Very rarely does real personal mysticism provide that continuity, because it can’t.  Our own personal experience is far too limited to provide a coherent, useful solution to a personal problem.  A logical step in dealing with that would be to go to those who have had the problem, as a means of collecting data and useful strategies.  The minute you’ve consulted someone else, your personal mysticism is cheapened.

Very often, the way personal mystics deal with these issues is to say, “I will do what I feel necessary to rectify the problem.”  The problem with that approach, especially in the larger sense, is that it lacks grounding in experience, and second, presumably the pride issue isn’t something that need be changed if you’re only interested in becoming a better person yourself.  Even that motivation for dealing with the issue is grounded in the self, and not others.  It’s like saying you’ll solve a pride issue by stroking your pride in assuming you can fix it yourself.  Personal fulfillment can only come in a larger societal context.  The feelings of wellness and completeness often associated with fulfillment in the context we’re using it here are inherently sociological and relational.  It only makes sense then, that you’d go to someone else (or a bunch of someone elses) to solve a pride issue.

That was not meant to be an attack on personal mysticism.  I only mean to say this:  Personal mysticism is very limited in scope as to what it can do to bring about meaningful change in us.  It is very good at alerting us to the problems in our souls, but it is very ineffective in prescribing ways to cope with or solve those problems once they’ve been diagnosed.  Christianity is not against personal exploration, quite the contrary.  It simply provides a worldview and frame of reference by which we can view that exploration in a way that is uniform across humanity, so that we can all come to the table with a similar viewpoint, and work to become better people in ourselves.  In the Christian frame of reference, that often means being conformed into the very likeness of Christ, taking on the nature of our Lord himself, in slow and deliberate steps, day by day, through the power of the Holy Spirit, which Christians believe is at work in all who profess faith in Jesus Christ.