The Glory and Disaster of Modern Thought
Introducing the Modern Mental Worldview
Growing Up in the Jesus Path Series – Part Four
The pastor was at the door greeting people after the church service. One woman said as she left, “You really made me think today, pastor. Don’t ever do that again!”
That summarizes the clash between the traditional and modern stages, which began five hundred years ago in the West. The periods known as the Renaissance and the Reformation in Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries were the major movements within Western Christianity that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church. The Enlightenment or Age of Reason then flowered two hundred years ago as an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries with global influences and effects. It developed as traditional answers stopped making sense, and dogmatic systems and unthinking religion were called into account.
In the modern age, institutional religion in the Global North has declined as individuals began to question and examine their beliefs. In Gallup’s eight-decade trend, Americans’ membership in houses of worship continued to decline last year, dropping below 50% for the first time. In 2020, 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue, or mosque, down from 70% in 1999. It continues to be a time of conflict, disappointment, and anger as some find that their beliefs do not stand up under scrutiny.
GROWING UP — from Spiral Dynamics by David Goebal
In late high school, college, or adulthood, the modern rational worldview begins to emerge in industrialized countries. This is the world of the inquiring self. This stage is individualistic, rational, and achievement-oriented.
The emergence of the modern mental structure of consciousness sparked amazing scientific discoveries and the Industrial Revolution. Ninety percent of the scientists who have ever lived are living today. Democracy flourishes in this stage, and the United States Constitution, Bill of Rights, and many of the laws written to protect individual freedom all flow from this worldview.
Individuals begin to realize they have a right to have their own opinions regardless of what the Bible, religion, or their group says. Some become agnostics and atheists at this level. This can represent a movement forward in their spiritual growth.
For the first time, large groups of people began to think in world-centric terms. Tolerance and compassion for others around the world became a significant value. The modern rational stage can be seen in the rise of democracy, banishing slavery, scientific endeavors, and dramatically increasing life spans. Also, Wall Street, emerging middle classes worldwide, market capitalism, liberal self-interest, materialism, the fashion industry, sales, and marketing.
Most of what is sometimes called “the civilized” world is at the rational level—except for the religious institutions. An estimated 25% to 30% of the world population is at the current mental level. In the United States, the figure is closer to 50% of the population.
Modern Church
The modern church was birthed in the liberal social justice movement and, to a lesser extent, under the influence of the New Thought Movement such as the Church of Religious Science, Church of Divine Science, and Unity Church.
The modern church is represented by the mainstream “social gospel” of Protestant liberalism. These are the classic liberal churches usually found in mainline denominations such as Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Methodist (Global North), Christian (Disciples of Christ), Congregational, and preeminently in the United Church of Christ. The Unitarian Universalist Church is solidly in the modern stage. However, even though they are still referred to as a “church,” they are not included in our discussion because they no longer identify themselves as a Christian church but as a “liberal religious tradition.”
Modern culture also introduced the steady decline of institutional religion in the Global North. Sixty years ago in the United States, 50% of the population said they went to church weekly. Last year that number was 26%. Lifeway Research has found that 75 to 150 churches are now closing each week in the USA. There are now more than six former Catholics (i.e., people who say they were raised Catholic but no longer identify as such) for every convert to Catholicism. According to Pew Research, Catholicism has experienced a greater net loss due to this shift than any other religious tradition in the USA.
A growing number leaving the church are angry about the abuse found in traditional Christianity, which excludes women from leadership and gays from everything. Others seek to find more depth in Eastern practices. Since divine-human spirit is behind all evolutionary development, we may see this decline as a result of God’s work in the world.
The Gospel of Thomas speaks to this when Jesus says, “Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign over all” (Saying 2). That disturbance can be very upsetting and worrisome. Yet, it is most often a natural expression of spiritual evolution leading to the marvel of evolutionary breakthrough and the ability to bring blessing to all.
New forms of the church or Christian community are needed. ICN is one such form, offering an integral Christianity in both theology and mystical practice. For me, it is, in Jesus’ words, a “marvel.”
The Bible
The modern church has made friends with science and is still searching for how to make friends with the Bible. The Bible is often viewed suspiciously as a relic from the past. It may be basically discarded or radically reinterpreted. Thomas Jefferson cut out the “irrational” parts of the Bible, such as anything mystical like the Resurrection and healing miracles. He produced this Jefferson “holey” Bible.
The Integral level understands that it is a stage of consciousness, not the Bible, that makes the traditional Christian cling to a literal interpretation of the Bible. Therefore, one cannot use reason to argue someone out of a position they did not arrive at by reason. This is why trying to use reason to change a person’s beliefs who is deeply embedded in the traditional religious level does not work. Reason may not touch them unless they are searching or in enough angst or pain to be open to the rational stage of spirituality. A major work of divine-human spirit for the last two thousand years has been to nudge the world into the rational stage.
God
The modern church is uncomfortable with a God that relates to us personally, what integral Christianity calls the 2nd-person perspective of God—the Intimate Face of God-Beside-Us. However, Jesus, who called God his Abba or Daddy, also said that God was greater than he was. How are we to think about this “greater” God? This is the God that is beyond the personal or any personification which I call the Infinite Face of God-Beyond-Us – the God of Cosmic Infinity and Beyond. This is the God with which the modern church is most comfortable.
Jesus
Homeless Jesus, with over 100 copies on display worldwide, was originally a sculpture highlighting the evil of human trafficking. However, Canadian sculptor Timothy Schmalz also describes his creations as “visual prayers,” which force people to stop in their tracks and reflect on what they are seeing. I first saw this sculpture as I was writing this article on the modern stage of the church. I immediately noticed two meanings. Jesus said, “Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me” (Matt 25:45). Jesus was identifying with the homeless and outcasts — and the modern church has boldly embraced Jesus’ message of social justice. At the same time, I saw Jesus, not as a social prophet, but personally and mystically, being pushed out of his home in Christianity. When Jesus has no home in the mystical spiritual tradition he founded, it is sad indeed.
The focus on Jesus as a historical human being takes the forefront when looking through the modern lens. Jesus is viewed as an extraordinary human being and an exceptional teacher of wisdom and love. However, in this viewpoint, there are serious questions about how much we can actually know about him. Reason tells those in the modern church that you can’t have church or Christianity without Jesus, but at the same time, the modern church is never quite sure what to do with him.
Prayer
Praying to God or Jesus is now embarrassing, even if only practiced in emergencies. Prayer is problematic at the modern level because prayer is traditionally thought of in 2nd-person terms of addressing God as a separate being, and that idea has been soundly rejected in the modern church. Instead, prayer may be understood as meditation, contemplation, or reflection. When I asked Bishop Spong about his prayer life, that is the answer he gave.
Sin and Salvation
The word “sin,” if used at all, means harming others or ourselves. The idea of sin in the New Testament is understood as more of a legal term in Paul, who was primarily concerned with putting Jews and Gentiles on equal footing. Both groups were “sinners” who needed Christ. Later on, Augustinian ideas of sin came into dominance, wrapped up in the introspective conscience of the West. Martin Luther is the prime example of becoming overly burdened with the weight of personal sin. The modern idea of sin is focused firmly on social injustice and oppression. Modern churches usually consider all people to be “saved” if we need saving at all, or at least destined for heaven — if there is a “heaven.”
Heaven and Hell
One cannot be sure if life continues after death. Death may be a dissolution of molecules. There is no hell except for the one we create by our lack of love and injustice to others.
The Kingdom of Heaven
The Kingdom of Heaven as a present dimension is now taken seriously. If we remove all the “spiritual” and “mystical” content from Jesus’ life and teaching, teaching, what is left is his challenge to love, especially the vulnerable and oppressed.
In modern stage Christianity, the Kingdom of Heaven is focused on social justice and liberation from oppression in this world, not the next. Liberation theology is very much a modern mindset.
Removing the Stone of Madness by Hieronymus Bosch
The Mystical
If the traditional level believes that the only good mystic is a dead mystic, then the modern level believes that all mystics are hallucinating. Try this prescription and see a therapist. Mysticism is usually considered irrational, and it is dismissed. Mystics from other times and cultures were simply delusional. What is real is only what can be measured and observed in the physical world.
Limitations
The unhealthy aspects of the modern station in life are materialism, greed, reduction of values, and meaning in life. This also includes discounting the inner subjective realm of the spiritual path by believing that the only way to know anything is by the tools of scientific exploration.
Scientism declares that the only way to know anything is through science. That statement is one of faith and not science since it cannot be verified scientifically. Scientism claims that if science can’t prove it, then it doesn’t exist. That’s bad science. This leads to the discounting of expanded states of consciousness which provide other authentic ways of knowing reality. A worldview that can’t go deep into our souls or reach high into the infinite is drastically limited.
The modern church preaches social action because they are certain that Jesus went about doing good. Both Jesus and the modern church do that with passion and grace. Once you remove the vertical dimension of spirituality, only the horizontal is left. If you deny inner spiritual realities, all that’s left of Christianity is a “God” that is spelled with two o’s.
Strengths
The modern church may not be passionate about Jesus’ connection to God, who or whatever God may be. However, they are passionate about social justice. The valuable elements of the modern structure of consciousness also include vast medical and scientific breakthroughs and healthy competition.
The blossoming strengths of the modern church include incorporating the value of science and reason along with faith. There is a strong interest in the historical Jesus and scientific method to help understand the Bible. Jesus has been newly discovered as a social revolutionary who sought liberation for the oppressed. This is the beginning of a world-centric level, thinking beyond the ethnocentric group of the traditional structure.
At the modern level, individuals may become agnostic or atheist. This can be a healthy expression of spiritual evolution at this stage. Wilber says, “As Hegel first put it, and as developmentalists have echoed ever since, each stage is adequate and valuable, but each deeper or higher stage is more adequate and, in that sense only, more valuable.” Even with its limitations, the modern level has flourished and benefited all of humankind, including the church.
However, new forms of the church or Christian community are needed. ICN is one such form, offering an integral Christianity in both theology and mystical practice.