The religion of my childhood could be best described as Progressive Materialism. The idea was this: as society progressed in scientific, medical and technological ways it would gradually become more and more perfect. The tradition of religion would certainly be redundant. Even the bonds of community seemed quaint and old fashioned. My father was an engineer working in the satellite and defence industries so this was, I think, more clearly understood by us than most but, in the 60s and 70s, this view of the future was pretty widespread. It reached its peak in the 80s with Thatcher’s famous saying ‘There is no such thing as Society’. So, our success in life, our contentment, our very wellbeing was entirely our own responsibility. This might, if we were lucky, extend to a small nuclear family and maybe a few friends, but, basically, you were on our own. And, for the first 30 years of my life, there was no higher power. I had never said a prayer or called out for help. In my religion, there was no-one to pray to.
Bleak indeed.
And you might think that, when I started going to church, I would discover a rich spiritual landscape, a shiny Christmas box of spiritual treasures. Well, no. Yes, from time to time, usually at special conferences, I would experience the kind of spiritual power described in the Bible. But the other 50 weeks of the year it was as though I was in a spiritual desert with a shining mirage always on the horizon. I knew it was there but I could not reach it.
Did it matter? It mattered to me. And, for reasons I will explain it matters to the wider world outside the church. But, first, I need to address a very small question…
What is the nature of reality?
In the religion of my childhood there was only physical reality. Everything else: thoughts, feelings, ideas, were complicated effects or delusions produced by the chemical reactions of the brain. I was clever and learned to manipulate language and mathematics but, the more I did, the less it seemed to matter. It was as though I was missing something important.
As my spiritual education progressed I realised there were other kinds of reality blended with the physical reality we experience. In the Bible Jesus refers to ‘The Kingdom of God’ or ‘The Kingdom of Heaven’. I prefer the term ‘Realm’ to describe these aspects of reality. The diagram above shows this in simplified form but it would be better to say that all reality has all these realms blended together in varying quantities. I shall, briefly, describe each of them:
The Physical Realm. I am sitting at a table, writing on an iPad and looking out of glass doors onto a garden. All of these things are real, as is my body and your body. The Physical Realm also involves forces such as gravity and electromagnetic fields. It all seems very normal and uninteresting. But, even with my layman’s understanding of physics, I know that the physical realm is not what it appears to be. As the great physicist, Carlo Rovelli, says: ‘Reality is not what it seems’.
The Social Realm. We are meant to live in a web of relationships. The most important of these will be with other human beings but we can have relationships with places, houses, animals, nations and communities. We can, and do, have relationships with ideas and causes. We can see that this is real when it goes wrong. Loneliness is a major cause of illness. Dysfunctional relationships make people angry and unhappy. There is a saying: ‘It takes a village to raise a child’. But where are the villages in our society?
The Spiritual Realm. This is hard to describe until you have experienced it. At its most vivid the experience of encountering the Holy Spirit feels like an electric shock, but without the pain. As the spiritual realm interacts with the physical substance of our bodies this is not surprising. But we can be aware of the spiritual realm in gentler ways: The beauty of a piece of music, a sense of connection to someone we have nothing in common with, the excitement of a common cause. Certain types of prayer and meditation can bring an almost pure sense of being connected with the spiritual realm but, generally, the Spiritual realm will act with the other two realms.
It is clear that, when we ignore the spiritual realm bad things start to happen. The Kingdom of God does not include corruption, abuse or coercion. It should not include the rapid rise we are seeing in mental health disorders, especially among young people. But, why does this happen? The truth is that, as we disconnect from the spiritual realm, it does not go away. It gets taken over. There are various names for who takes over. The Devil and the Enemy are two of them. It seems to me that it is our job, as Christians, to protect this realm and keep it safe for the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
In the Gospel accounts Jesus shows us how to do this. He trains and directs his disciples to do three things: Heal the sick, cast out demons and preach the message (Luke 9:1-9, Luke 10: 1-24). He does talk about prayer but it generally has a purpose. To connect and communicate with God and to allow the other, primary, actions to take place. But I have rarely seen healing take place in church and never seen demons cast out. These actions are, of course, good in themselves but they also act as a way of bringing good spiritual forces into the world and protecting us against the bad ones. I would say that the primary purpose of the church, as described by Jesus, is to bring the good power of the Holy Spirit into the world.
So, why does this not happen? It seems that, in order to be more ‘acceptable’, the traditional church has actually adopted the materialist faith of my childhood. In the Materialist faith engaging with the power of the spirit is just silly and foolish, as the spiritual realm does not exist. While still saying prayers and reading from the Bible it cannot be entirely materialist but it is certainly doing its best! Just a couple of weeks ago I listened to a sermon preached on the healing of blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46-52). No clearer example of a real, physical miracle could be found. Yet the preacher talked only of ‘light bulb moments’or moments of sudden understanding. The physical miracle which takes place in this passage was entirely ignored. The church, it seems, cannot even bring itself to talk of miracles, yet alone do them.
The 20th Century was the age of Materialism but the 21st is starting to see a rebirth of understanding in the Spiritual Realm. The Church should be taking its place at the centre of this change. The question is: Can it do so?
