Becoming an Attentive & Responsive Community

Becoming an attentive and responsive community starts with individuals being attentive to Jesus and being responsive to the voice of the Holy Spirit, and then followed by God’s love meandering through every street and every corner of the neighbourhood moving towards the goal of connecting people with the Heavenly Father. Throughout the journey, each of us continues on learning to befriend with the stranger within oneself through contemplative prayers by shifting from our perception of scarcity to the new perception of abundance, in order to serve God and people as a community without borders.

1        Hello Stranger

There is an ancient Chinese proverb: “A person’s worst enemy is oneself.” Regardless of the source, the statement is universally applicable to all human beings. The enemy within oneself is our sins, where we fall short of the glory of God. The fruit of the Spirit is “love, peace, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control”[1]. Is the fruit of the Spirit difficult to produce? To me, the process is very challenging, but it is necessary for all Christians. The transformation is a lifelong process. The process begins with honestly admitting my sins (spiritual sickness), and humbly pleading for God’s healing. “The only people who grow in truth are those who are humble and honest.”[2] I must honestly lay out any of my selfishness, impurity, jealousy, bitterness, and hatred… etc in front of God. The purpose of doing so is definitely not for self-accusation, because self-accusation is not from God but from the anti-Christ. It is necessary for me to logistically label my sins in front of Him, not that God did not know, in fact He knows more than what I could label. This is for me to recognize and to know myself – getting to know the stranger in me. I do not need to be anxious or afraid during the process when I dwell under God’s unconditional love that Christ has already died for my sins. Now, it is time for me to recognize my sins so that those sins of mine can be nailed onto His cross, and cleansed by His precious blood; therefore, I am open to the healing power of the Holy Spirit. “True religion is never about fear. It is always moving beyond fear…the word ‘fear’ in both Psalms and Proverbs means the awe that small children have for someone they honor and respect. It is not the fear of being harmed, but the awe of reverence and honor for someone we look up to and are devoted to… Fears and faith seem to be opposite to Jesus.”[3], as my spiritual director often reminds me of the Bible verse of Mark 5:36b, “Jesus told him, 'Don’t be afraid; just believe.'” The reason “we refuse to admit our weakness, our needs, our poverty because we are frightened of rejection”[4]; however, God never rejected a true believer due to the fact His love is unconditional, as the poet described in Psalm 51:17,  “My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.”.

After we have recognized the enemy within us, instead of walking away or shuffling it into a dark corner, we need to embrace it by pleading to our Heavenly Father to forgive us through Christ. If we repent, we will be forgiven. Because God has forgiven us, therefore we can forgive ourselves. Hence, God restores our identities as His children, similar to the parable of the prodigal/lost son. By the way, we are always His beloved children, and the adverb “always” shows His love being unconditional. We could not do anything to make God to hate us; only that God would become sad when we are not listening, not trusting, or not responding to Him. When He is sad or upset, He can still love because God is the almighty.

This “stranger within” does not only creep up once in our life time. This “stranger within” can emerge anytime and anywhere in any ways, form or shape. Our duty is to recognize this stranger as quickly as possible, and honestly and humbly turn in this “stranger within” to God as soon as possible. Only then, healing and comforting, which often require time, mysteriously come from the triune God.

Being evangelists, we love the word “outreaching”, would the above practice be growing overly inward and lacking a sense of outward growth?  Jean Vanier stated: “We need to touch the truth of who we are. It is then, as we grow gradually into the acceptance of our wounds and fragility, that we grow into wholeness, and from that wholeness, life begins to grow forth to others around us.”[5] Please accept my political apology, if quoting words from a Roman Catholic theologian/humanitarian to answer a Protestant question is offensive! As Protestants, I think it is about time for us to recognize our heritage, rather than slamming onto the brake whenever we hit the name “Martin Luther” while tracing the lineage of Christianity, without exploring further back into history for the fact that we believe in the same triune God. In Protestant terms, inductive Bible Study should not only scratch the surface of our mind through observation, interpretation and application for the sake of comprehension and behavioural correction , but also God’s word should “induct” our core (our heart) to scan for and to burn up any of our impurities based on God’s unconditional love.

2        “E.T. phone home?”

After recognizing and turning in the “stranger within” to God by knowing Him, does it make me feel like an extra-terrestrial being? On one hand sometimes I feel like E.T.; on the other hand, this world is our Father’s World, therefore Christians are not E.T. beings on earth. Only because sin has entered the world, therefore we feel like E.T., with longings of reconnecting with our creator. We just need to be in touch with God often. Our “stranger within” needs to phone home often, in order to have our wounds healed by Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit. We need to continuously be aware that “Jesus was a companion, an artist, a healer, and a mystic.”[6]

If one refuses to admit his/her weakness, our needs, and our poverty, one will be continuously playing either a victim role or a tyranny role for the rest of his/her life, respectively depleting community resources or creating harms. The practice of contemplative prayer is like phoning home. Through contemplative prayer, we get to know oneself and God. “To know God is to live in God and to let God live in us so that our hearts beat in unison, so that we have the same desire… yearnings… priorities as God. This personal experience of the love of God for ourselves gives us a new inner strength; this is the presence of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us and working through us.”[7] However, this is not “spiritual capitalism”[8], as we are not “focusing on attainment and achievement” for making us into superior beings, because such expectation “keeps us from the truly transformative experience called grace”[9].  Richard Rohr’s definition of “contemplative prayer, is not a way of thinking… not a way of talking; it finally moves beyond words into silence. It moves into the mystery that is too deep for words.”[10] There are no calculation and dualism in contemplative prayer, but to learn embracing and surrendering. To me, this sounds like the technical term “online”, our connection with God is always online, that our phone is always online, like teenagers that their mobile phones are always either online texting or calling. We need to have similar passion, though more spiritual less flesh, of always being online with God. Furthermore, this online praying business is beyond words. That is a “stance”[11] of living in awareness of, trusting on, and delighting about the presence of God. It is like what God told the elder son of the prodigal/lost son parable in Luke 15:31a, “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me…’”. Our Heavenly Father has already reaffirmed His promise to us through incarnation - “Emmanuel”. We need this intimacy with our Heavenly Father through Christ because of what Jesus said in John 15 about “The Vine and the Branches”.

Unceasing “prayer is the ultimate empowerment of the people of God, [not laws and guilt which often disempowered us and make us live in insufficiency and doubt]… prayer gives us a sense of abundance and connectedness.”[12]; therefore, we can start learning to love (giving) because “contemplation recognizes the God-self, the Christ-self of abundance and security.”[13]

3        Moving from Real Scarcity to True Abundance

By befriending with the “stranger within”, and unceasingly phoning home - having continuous dialogues with our Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus Christ, there is a possibility for us to gradually start migrating from a world of scarcity to the world of abundance, by faith.

In the secular world, we always view the world under scarcity because of our sins that we have already assumed that we need to hoard resources through our might and our power. Neither this is a modern problem, nor an issue from the invention of money. The concept of scarcity entered Eve when the snake tempted her on eating from the tree of knowledge that she would be like God, out of the desire of gaining wisdom, she ate and she gave it to her husband and he ate as well. She saw the scarcity of wisdom, so they ate the forbidden fruit. Scarcity being the fundamental economic (both material and spiritual – in fact they are inseparable) reality begins in Adam and Eve’s time when they ate the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge. The chart of economic supply and demand is always skewed in humans’ perceptive because of our limitation and our not trusting, after the fall of mankind, since sin has entered the world. God’s chart of supply and demand in a perfect world is linear, in which the definition of “demand” in His Kingdom is about our desires/longings becoming in unison with His under His grace and mercy, along with Peace and Joy.

Having said that the fear of scarcity comes from our original sin, on my second thought, perhaps Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove’s comment on “money's power worked to convince people that scarcity is the fundamental economic reality”[14] is an accurate reflection of today’s world as our possessions are indexed by monetary value. People’s default value is scarcity. Scarcity becomes real when everybody hoards and/or acts abusively. What is real does not imply what is true. The situation of scarcity could become real due to deception, but truth never lives under deception. For example, recently, an elderly person told me that he “really” worried the government was going to legislate that only elders with a saving less than a certain amount could receive funds from the old age security system. I asked him, “Why can’t people use up the existing resources before asking for more?” This is an example on the point of view about scarcity, as the government never announced that elders cannot apply for their old age security later on, after using up their savings.

When I was reading the book “New Monasticism” written by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, I felt a strong sense of communism or socialism, and the only difference was the presence of God in “New Monasticism”. To my understanding, “New Monasticism” is similar to socialism viewpoint with God among the people. Communism did not work out well in East Germany and China. Although China still labels its mono-governing unit as the communist party, everyone knows that the system has been degenerated into extreme capitalism, along with the corruptive side-effects of bribery. Anything going to the extreme ends up rebounding. Regardless whether it is Communism, Socialism, or Capitalism, as long as any system forbids God in its picture, our sinful nature pervades, and then the concept of scarcity conquers the people’s mind. Even if people didn’t see scarcity to begin with, any movement without God would become like a hippie movement, inundated with street drugs, in order to hypnotize resulting pain and sadness after their awakenings. Hippie’s counter-cultural movements swayed and diverged because God was missing from their centre, lacking of “let go, let God” mechanism. Only when we have God in our hearts, we may able to relearn His abundance by trusting Him as our provider. However, the reality is that the back and forth shifting between scarcity and abundance continues because the devil has not been thrown into the pit yet. Again, what is real does not equal to what is true. The truth is that Christ is the victor, as Jonathan R. Wilson described it in his book of “God So Loved the World”. When we dwell in God’s love, we naturally share our materials and thriving towards socialism. This is how I understand the concept of “New Monasticism” (reallocation, redistribution, and reconciliation)[15] by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, which is based on God’s love that we can share.

 To see the abundance of the Father’s world is not from our might and our power, but to receive through the Holy Spirit. The hymn “This is my Father’s world” helps us to understand. The process of experiencing His abundance requires faith in the triune God. Faith is a lifelong building project, with continuous dialogues and interaction with God.

4        To serve without boarders

While being healed by God and starting to see His abundance, we can learn to practice becoming an attentive and responsive community. I respect and admire church pastors, as they have put in much effort to endorse all programs running simultaneously according to schedule, while caring for the flock. Besides church pastors, do we need community/workplace pastors outside the church? From the books that I have read, there are many reasons that people resist church, which I concur as these are really happening in the world from my personal observation as a layperson. Some of the examples from the books are:

• ‘Gandhi couldn’t see value in a message that had no hope or power for the here and now, and later stated, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”’[16]
• ‘“Jesus is cool, it’s just that they have f***ed with Jesus. I mean, Christianity was at its best when it was secret and hidden and you could die for it.”’[17]
• ‘… maybe why we clerics prefer laws and guilt (which often disempower us and make us live in insufficiency and doubt)’[18]

The role of community/workplace pastors is to reach those who have misconception about the Gospel. Sometimes community/workplace pastors need to work undercover in order to be in touch with many of our church phobia friends in the community and in the market place. “The ‘quiet revolution’ of God's kingdom doesn't spring up big and tall, parading its supremacy over all the other kingdoms of the earth. Instead, it spreads underground. It thrives beneath the surface. When you whack some little piece off, it just spreads somewhere else. And in the end, God's kingdom wins.”[19] Therefore, community/workplace pastors are necessary to live among the people and to grow together with the community/coworkers in order to attend their needs and be responsive on liberating them from sins by the work of the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ, whenever there are any individuals in the community/market desiring God to enter his/her life. Community/workplace pastors are to work agilely inside and outside of the church boarders.

“The dirt of life in the here and now provides the nutrients to cultivate a life with God. We also need exposure to the energy of the Spirit of God surrounding us. Jesus demonstrated a life that was grounded in humanity and struggle and open to the energy and breath of God. We find him in the marketplace caring for the needs of people and on the mountainside connecting with the eternal Father. His life was an example of dynamic unity and synergy between the pursuit to love God and everything that God has made. And this is the life we are being invited into.”[20]

 To collaborate and to work towards God’s Kingdom are not from our might and our power, but to receive through the Holy Spirit, as stated in Zachariah 4:6  that “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty.”

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[1] The Holy Bible, Galatians 5:22-23

[2] Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs (p.103), The Crossroad Publishing Company.

[3] Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs (p.87-88), The Crossroad Publishing Company.

[4] Jean Vanier, Befriending the Stranger (p.16-17), William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

[5] Jean Vanier, Befriending the Stranger (p.61), William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

[6] Mark Scandrette, Soul Graffiti: Making a Life in the Way of Jesus (Kindle Loc 433-435), Jossey-Bass.

[7] Jean Vanier, Befriending the Stranger (p.30), William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

[8] Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs (p.28), The Crossroad Publishing Company.

[9] Ibid, (p.28)

[10] Ibid, (p.126)

[11] Ibid, (p.29).

[12] Ibid, (p.125).

[13] Ibid, (p.67).

[14] Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, New Monasticism: What It Has to Say to Today’s Church (Kindle Loc 485), Brazos Press.

[15] Lesson #18 - Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove (New Monasticism), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUs0ojx-pM8

[16] Mark Scandrette, Soul Graffiti: Making a Life in the Way of Jesus (Kindle Loc 503), Jossey-Bass.

[17] Mark Scandrette, Soul Graffiti: Making a Life in the Way of Jesus (Kindle Loc 722), Jossey-Bass.

[18] Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs (p.125), The Crossroad Publishing Company.

[19] Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, New Monasticism: What It Has to Say to Today’s Church (Kindle Loc 302), Brazos Press.

[20] Mark Scandrette, Soul Graffiti: Making a Life in the Way of Jesus (Kindle Loc 2562), Jossey-Bass.