Christian Mysticism: Esoteric and Elite?

No, utterly open and free — but admittedly very hard to swallow.

I continue to test my vision of a biblical faith community against the world I see around me today. I test it because I don’t pretend my vision is the one right way to do things. The very lack of detail should indicate such, but I’ve been accused by some that I’m trying to create my own little cult.

Any community of faith which is honest and open will naturally include a significant number who aren’t really part of it all. When working in mainstream churches, I consistently ran up against this obsession with “born-again” membership. I call it obsession because (1) Jesus didn’t use the term “born again” that way and (2) currently He and the Trinity are the only ones who know, or can know, whether anyone is truly spiritually alive. A community of faith aims at being spiritually receptive and responsive, but there is no pretense of goal-oriented record keeping and management.

Every church I’ve been involved with has always been obsessed with increasing membership. Not a single word in the New Testament supports that obsession. Becoming bigger and more noticeable is not a valid objective. Getting together so as to strengthen the resolve to leave all that behind is more like it. Notice how carefully the New Testament writers refer to God adding to their numbers. By implication He can also subtract from their numbers by guiding His own to disassociate from those who insist on dragging worldly concerns into a spiritual haven. His agenda has nothing to do with corporate growth goals.

But of necessity, when following the biblical model, every congregation will include some who just don’t get it. They may or may not pretend to be really involved, but such will always show up. We don’t have to make any great effort to accommodate them, at least in the sense of offering inducements to stay. The whole point is that they come because they want to be there when we do naturally what the Spirit directs.

More likely, the majority of spiritually dead members are there because it’s just a social structure they like for some reason. That is entirely valid. Ancient Israel always had a large entourage of hangers-on who simply felt safe, happy and comfortable in the company of a Covenant Community they couldn’t bring themselves to join. Their presence received due honor; they had their place in the scheme of things. A true New Testament church would also attract many like that.

Some would come simply because of social pressures, embarrassment, etc. Not good, but there is little anyone can do about that. We don’t pick on them, nor do we turn them into projects for renovation. We simply welcome them as we would the spiritually alive, since we have no way of knowing which is which. We have to always watch out we don’t create our own little sub-culture which blinds us to oddball things God may want for us, and those who don’t seem to fit may well be God’s chosen leadership in some particular mission.

What we can know is when folks manifest an interest in other-worldly concerns, which is the very nature of the Kingdom of Heaven. A driving desire to disassociate oneself from this world and a longing desire to be in the Presence of God gives rise to certain predictable behavior patterns, and this is what we hope to encourage. Never mind whether it’s fake; the nature of a person is not for us to know. All we need to know is whether that person at this moment reflects our best understanding of what those other-worldly concerns should be in the context.

True Christian Mysticism is self-selecting. You can’t sell it, can’t build big organizations around it. Only those willing and able to ignore convention in search of something far better will even take a second look. We can’t quantify that desire because it can be faked for a thousand different motives. It appears elitist and esoteric because few have any interest. A genuine interest can only be inspired by God. Further, only He can make it workable for them. So there is not a whit of secrecy in that sense of the word “esoteric,” but the nature of Ultimate Truth is self-obscuring. He reveals Himself to whom He wishes.

A gathering of Christian Mystics includes people who believe He has revealed Himself to them and would like to strengthen the grip of that revelation on their lives by sharing what little of it can actually be shared. There are no rituals, no memberships, just a desire to participate. We’ll miss you if you don’t make the next meeting, but nobody is going to count noses and mark rosters. That revelation cannot be organized; it is the substance of Christian compassion and warm fellowship. Want some?