A Covenantal Theology or Relational Spirituality Part 2: The Measurement of the Spiritual Life
When I was a student minister in 1981 I officiated at my third wedding and had an epiphany. The couple had chosen “The Wedding Song” for a musical interlude while lighting a “unity” candle, which they did simultaneously from two distinct tapers that each had in hand. They did it almost at the exact point when the singer crooned, “And a man shall leave his mother and woman leave her home/They shall travel on to where the two shall meet as one.” They blew out the individual tapers and the single, unity candle burned alone.
I had been married three years and knew the misconception. Two don’t become one. The individuality, the separateness, the differentiation that makes two distinct human beings doesn’t evaporate when married. It doesn’t happen in any relationship born of vows and declarations of faithfulness. Or, to say it another way, when a religious covenant is formed the identities of the covenanted parties remain distinct. In my experience, when a covenant is formed, as it is in marriage or any declaration leading to a union of love, there actually are three entities. In a marriage, there is the woman, the man, and the married couple. The author of “The Wedding Song” should have written, “They shall travel on to where the two are transformed into three.” Or, as I say to couples now when we talk before the religious service commences, you are about to participate in a mathematical impossibility where one plus one equals three!
We have noted something that is grossly evident in our time, although it is part of previous eras as well: The way in which human beings today avoid a realistic view of human nature, forget or ignore our fallibility, declare they possess “God’s Truth” or know “God’s Will and Ways,” and then almost gleefully inflict untold horror on others who do not believe as they do. We have noted how this propensity towards idolatry, rampant in our time, can easily leave one in despair, spiritually beleaguered. Many liberal religionists have responded to this despair by renouncing religion, declaring God dead, and leaving behind religious language and the life of faith for philosophical pursuits. Is there or is there not a God?, a philosophical question, hounds the liberal religionist because today there is no evidence of a God being believed in that is worthy of human conviction. There is no Truth that doesn’t lead to someone who holds a competing Truth being killed. The liberal religionist has countered the rant that is religion today with a rant against religion. But, it’s still a rant.
A covenantal theology or relational spirituality offers something different.
If a religious covenant, when formed, continues the distinct existence of the two entities involved in the relationship, then it is a misconception to claim that the thoughts and beliefs of one are understood completely and held absolutely by the other. Or, as the poet wrote, “love’s function is to fabricate unknownness.” To “love God,” is to recognize first and foremost the distinction between God and me! And second, it is to declare that this relationship is a ‘third entity,” something that I participate in, but is greater than just my own self-interest.
How is it greater? In part, human self-interest is towards order, predictability, sameness, a conformity of one moment to the next and a familiarity that gives continuity to identity. Religions who claim God is Truth, and in the next declaration claim to know that Truth, reveal this inclination. “Jesus the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow” is a bumper-sticker declaration of it. God, the Unmoved Mover, to be adored as absolute and complete in every way, is a more formal theological way to express a similar view. But what if one’s relationship with God involved being grasped by something entirely distinct from self-interest, and being “lured” towards a transformation out of the self’s security in its desire for order, predictability, sameness, and conformity and familarity, and towards something more. What if faith is about risking the self here and now? What if faith involves a lunge towards novelty, a newness of self and world? If God is Love, then what if being in covenant with God is a way of saying I am being called to expand the breadth and depth of my love for other human beings beyond what my self-interest deems comfortable and my culture affirms is proper and correct and practical? What if being in covenant with God means I am being held accountable individually for extending a larger sense of love to others than what self-interest would warrant; and that I am obligated to hold my society and myself accountable for extending justice beyond what is in the civic self-interest, and that societally that accountability is measured by how just and loving we are to the least among us?
In other words, in a covenantal theology or a relational spirituality the measurement of the spiritual life is in terms of transformation. Will you change? Will you risk becoming a "novelty" that you are not now? Are you transformed out of your current understandings, rooted as they are in self-interest, and towards a larger love and greater justice? Will you help your culture to change, to offer the novelty of affection towards those not now in its purview or embrace? Is your culture transformed out of its societal and culture self-interest, measured by a larger love and greater demand for justice for the least amongst us? For the disenfranchised and impoverished? A liberty and justice for ALL?
A covenant, a relationship, formed by love is measured by the way we consent to be transformed by affection, into greater affection.
Perceiving the spiritual life in covenantal ways, as a relationship between an individual and God, and the spiritual community as a group formed for a spiritual purpose by a religious agreement, a walk together, requires of the individual and the group a willingness to be “led in the ways of the Spirit” which transforms entities – individuals or groups – out of self-interested complacency and into the spiritually vibrancy of an ever-expanding love and an expectation of liberty and justice for all souls.
But if the measurement of the spiritual life, covenantally and relationally understood, is in terms of transformation, a liberation of one from one’s current myopia in self-interest, and towards something greater, then the life of faith becomes the ultimate risk. Not of losing the afterlife, but of changing oneself in this one. You lose yourself as conceived of in self-interest, to find yourself in a matrix of greater affection (which, of course, is also involved in self-interest, so the transformation is to go on again and again, never ending growth into affection!). Jesus called this greater love and this expectation of liberty and justice for all, the Kingdom of God, and in the same breadth he is reported to have declared that it is at hand. That land exists at this moment hidden in the forms of existence our eyes catch as they now see. To immigrate to this kingdom requires nothing as easy as physical relocation, but something far more difficult. A change of heart, mind, and soul!
We can step into that land and live inside of a covenant with God any time as long as we have breath; therefore, it can be called a covenant of grace. But this third entity, the covenant, when entered into by one will change one towards loving deeper and broader than before, and expecting and working towards liberty and justice for those society has forgotten and culture despises; therefore, it can be called a regenerating religious experience.
O God, if it be thy will that I should live through this day, through the evening, to breath again tomorrow, give my eyes to see thy ways, ears to hear thy call, a heart to receive thy love, a will to extend and declare that larger love to others, and a courage to be transformed in the larger likeness of your affection; that I might better walk a path with others towards thee.
I had been married three years and knew the misconception. Two don’t become one. The individuality, the separateness, the differentiation that makes two distinct human beings doesn’t evaporate when married. It doesn’t happen in any relationship born of vows and declarations of faithfulness. Or, to say it another way, when a religious covenant is formed the identities of the covenanted parties remain distinct. In my experience, when a covenant is formed, as it is in marriage or any declaration leading to a union of love, there actually are three entities. In a marriage, there is the woman, the man, and the married couple. The author of “The Wedding Song” should have written, “They shall travel on to where the two are transformed into three.” Or, as I say to couples now when we talk before the religious service commences, you are about to participate in a mathematical impossibility where one plus one equals three!
We have noted something that is grossly evident in our time, although it is part of previous eras as well: The way in which human beings today avoid a realistic view of human nature, forget or ignore our fallibility, declare they possess “God’s Truth” or know “God’s Will and Ways,” and then almost gleefully inflict untold horror on others who do not believe as they do. We have noted how this propensity towards idolatry, rampant in our time, can easily leave one in despair, spiritually beleaguered. Many liberal religionists have responded to this despair by renouncing religion, declaring God dead, and leaving behind religious language and the life of faith for philosophical pursuits. Is there or is there not a God?, a philosophical question, hounds the liberal religionist because today there is no evidence of a God being believed in that is worthy of human conviction. There is no Truth that doesn’t lead to someone who holds a competing Truth being killed. The liberal religionist has countered the rant that is religion today with a rant against religion. But, it’s still a rant.
A covenantal theology or relational spirituality offers something different.
If a religious covenant, when formed, continues the distinct existence of the two entities involved in the relationship, then it is a misconception to claim that the thoughts and beliefs of one are understood completely and held absolutely by the other. Or, as the poet wrote, “love’s function is to fabricate unknownness.” To “love God,” is to recognize first and foremost the distinction between God and me! And second, it is to declare that this relationship is a ‘third entity,” something that I participate in, but is greater than just my own self-interest.
How is it greater? In part, human self-interest is towards order, predictability, sameness, a conformity of one moment to the next and a familiarity that gives continuity to identity. Religions who claim God is Truth, and in the next declaration claim to know that Truth, reveal this inclination. “Jesus the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow” is a bumper-sticker declaration of it. God, the Unmoved Mover, to be adored as absolute and complete in every way, is a more formal theological way to express a similar view. But what if one’s relationship with God involved being grasped by something entirely distinct from self-interest, and being “lured” towards a transformation out of the self’s security in its desire for order, predictability, sameness, and conformity and familarity, and towards something more. What if faith is about risking the self here and now? What if faith involves a lunge towards novelty, a newness of self and world? If God is Love, then what if being in covenant with God is a way of saying I am being called to expand the breadth and depth of my love for other human beings beyond what my self-interest deems comfortable and my culture affirms is proper and correct and practical? What if being in covenant with God means I am being held accountable individually for extending a larger sense of love to others than what self-interest would warrant; and that I am obligated to hold my society and myself accountable for extending justice beyond what is in the civic self-interest, and that societally that accountability is measured by how just and loving we are to the least among us?
In other words, in a covenantal theology or a relational spirituality the measurement of the spiritual life is in terms of transformation. Will you change? Will you risk becoming a "novelty" that you are not now? Are you transformed out of your current understandings, rooted as they are in self-interest, and towards a larger love and greater justice? Will you help your culture to change, to offer the novelty of affection towards those not now in its purview or embrace? Is your culture transformed out of its societal and culture self-interest, measured by a larger love and greater demand for justice for the least amongst us? For the disenfranchised and impoverished? A liberty and justice for ALL?
A covenant, a relationship, formed by love is measured by the way we consent to be transformed by affection, into greater affection.
Perceiving the spiritual life in covenantal ways, as a relationship between an individual and God, and the spiritual community as a group formed for a spiritual purpose by a religious agreement, a walk together, requires of the individual and the group a willingness to be “led in the ways of the Spirit” which transforms entities – individuals or groups – out of self-interested complacency and into the spiritually vibrancy of an ever-expanding love and an expectation of liberty and justice for all souls.
But if the measurement of the spiritual life, covenantally and relationally understood, is in terms of transformation, a liberation of one from one’s current myopia in self-interest, and towards something greater, then the life of faith becomes the ultimate risk. Not of losing the afterlife, but of changing oneself in this one. You lose yourself as conceived of in self-interest, to find yourself in a matrix of greater affection (which, of course, is also involved in self-interest, so the transformation is to go on again and again, never ending growth into affection!). Jesus called this greater love and this expectation of liberty and justice for all, the Kingdom of God, and in the same breadth he is reported to have declared that it is at hand. That land exists at this moment hidden in the forms of existence our eyes catch as they now see. To immigrate to this kingdom requires nothing as easy as physical relocation, but something far more difficult. A change of heart, mind, and soul!
We can step into that land and live inside of a covenant with God any time as long as we have breath; therefore, it can be called a covenant of grace. But this third entity, the covenant, when entered into by one will change one towards loving deeper and broader than before, and expecting and working towards liberty and justice for those society has forgotten and culture despises; therefore, it can be called a regenerating religious experience.
O God, if it be thy will that I should live through this day, through the evening, to breath again tomorrow, give my eyes to see thy ways, ears to hear thy call, a heart to receive thy love, a will to extend and declare that larger love to others, and a courage to be transformed in the larger likeness of your affection; that I might better walk a path with others towards thee.
posted by Brent Smith | 11:53 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home