My own thoughts on holiness have been greatly influenced by Wesley who makes a case for holiness as something closer to wholeness, to recover from brokenness to become perfect not in the sense of becoming flawless and “all that I can be” but in the sense of being all that I am am in this moment, the right person, at the right place in the right time. That is to acknowledge that I may not be finished and I may not have reached the goal but I have come as far as I can at this point in my life and working together with god I have realised (made real) my potential to be what god created me to be as far as possible at this very moment.

The road to holiness is very much an inward Journey, discovering the image of god in me and the my purpose and function in the body so that I can accept who I am and live fully as myself in every moment.

M. Scott Peck states:

”If one ever has the good fortune to meet a living saint , one will have met someone absolutely unique. Through their visions may be remarkably similar, the personhood of saints is remarkably different. This is because they have become utterly themselves ” (M. Scott Peck, The road less travelled)

Similarly Thomas Merton writes:

“For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self … Therefore there is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace and my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God. If I find him I will find myself and if I find my true self I will find Him.” (Thomas Merton, New seeds of contemplation).

My calling then and the road towards holiness is to discover this true self and to live out who god says I am, in doing so I will not only find the relief of holiness but I will find godself in my search of myself. While this may feel like a becoming or a transformation of self it is more a being what I already am. All that I was created to be is already within me and there for the discovery if I dare to dismantle the false self (what Paul would call the flesh) and show up as my true self.

Life is my religion. Being alive is my daily spiritual practice. Love is my rule. Humankind is my family. Authentic friendships is my church. The kingdom of god runs through my veins.Jesus is my brother. Becoming and being all that I am is my calling. Helping you become and be all that you are is my ministry. My deepest feelings is my guide. All living things are my teacher.

Who are you in this picture?

It may seem like an obvious thing to say, if god is our father then Jesus is our brother. There are some people (in the past myself included) who may have a problem thinking of themselves on the same level as Jesus. It seems disrespectful towards the son of god and almost blasphemous.

Jesus himself if not denies, downplays his own divinity. More than that, Jesus deconstruvpct the whole notion of family and proclaims a universal brother/sisterhood of humankind. Jesus also elevates his disciples stating that they will do greater things than he has done.

Paul repeatedly teaches that we are now part of god's intimate family and we need to start acting as such.

The Salvation Army General urged the Swedish Salvation Army Officers at an officers gathering in Huskvarna to: “be Jesus in every community”. Early on I saw my ministry along these lines to incarnate Jesus in whatever community I find myself in. During my officers training this was turned upside down for me.

I came as a cadet to my social practice week to Springfield Lodge in London. My line manager asked me what is social work for you? I quickly answered that, being Jesus for these unfortunate souls, was my mission. He then challenged me saying that maybe I needed to do one better. Maybe I needed to see everyone who walked in the door as Jesus.

Maybe we need to realise that when we say that Jesus is our brother, we need to realize that our brother, neighbour, the other is Jesus in our life and we need to learn to see th other as such.

Life is my religion. Being alive is my daily spiritual practice. Love is my rule. Humankind is my family. Authentic friendships is my church. The kingdom of god runs through my veins. Jesus is my brother. Becoming and being all that I am is my calling. Helping you become and be all that you are is my ministry. My deepest feelings is my guide. All living things are my teacher.

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom 12.2 NRSV)

Thus he bundled all philosophy together as human/worldly thinking as opposed to divine or divinely inspired thinking. It tickles me that I attended a Salvation Army – Ethics weekend last weekend where the main speaker: PhD James Reed said the absolute opposite. That many of the philosophers must have been divinely inspired in their search for truth and wisdom.

But if philosophy truly is what the name means, the love of wisdom, and if theology is words about god. Then it seems to me that Theology without philosophy is a dangerous enterprise. In my days within the church I have encountered good and bad theologies, wise and unwise theologies and it seems to me that the love of wisdom is a very good place to start the theological endeavour.

Listen to the scriptures exhort us towards philosophy:

Good friend, take to heart what I’m telling you;
collect my counsels and guard them with your life.
Tune your ears to the world of Wisdom;
set your heart on a life of Understanding.
That’s right—if you make Insight your priority,
and won’t take no for an answer,
Searching for it like a prospector panning for gold,
like an adventurer on a treasure hunt,
Believe me, before you know it Fear-of-God will be yours;
you’ll have come upon the Knowledge of God.

(Prov 2.1-5 The message)

It seems to me that if all truth belongs to god, then the search for truth, the search for wisdom will lead us godward in the end.

Paul very clearly teaches that the secret (mysterion) of the Christian faith and life is this: Christ in you, the hope of glory. That you (yes, you!) are the temple of god. This is the glorious mystery of the incarnation, that after Jesus leaves, we are not to await his physical return (although that may also happen some day), but to embody Jesus presence, the reality of the kingdom or the life eternal in our everyday.

If life is our religion then the kingdom of god, the abundant/eternal life is a reality that dwells within each and every one of us. Our bodies vibrate with it, our true self is made up of the stuff that the kingdom is built from. It is realised in our relationships to each other, to the planet and it’s eco system.

William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army and a pre-millenialist was a firm believer in building the kingdom of god here and now. He believed as do I that it is truly up to us to embody the kingdom in what we do, how we live and what we say, and the rule for doing this is the rule of love.

When love for god and love for our neighbour pumps through our veins, vibrates through our bodies and radiates from the words that we speak to each other as we live courageously as our selves within the framework of vulnerable authentic relationships, recognising the sacredness of everyone and everything around us, then every moment becomes a sacred sacrament and the kingdom of god is in our midst.

Life is my religion. Being alive is my daily spiritual practice. Love is my rule. Humankind is my family. Authentic friendships is my church. The kingdom of god runs through my veins. Jesus is my brother. Becoming and being all that I am is my calling. Helping you become and be all that you are is my ministry. My deepest feelings is my guide. All living things are my teacher.

She made me reflect, and I think I have been reflecting on, what is my voice, ever since I came back. Apart from realising (once again) that as a cisgendered white male in the clergy I am always going to speak from a position of power and privilege, no matter how much I deconstruct this and show how unprivileged I have been as I grew up. I also realised as I invited all these fantastic theologians to read my blogs that I did so with a certain trepidation. The old fear: “what if they find out that I am a fake”, quickly reared it's ugly head.

It's not that I am ashamed of what I write/have written, I'm not. It is the fact that I do not write with an academic voice like for example Christena Cleveland or with the philosophical depth of Peter Rollins. I write like, well like me.

This is where it hit's me, I am no academic. Don't get me wrong, I love academia, I want to read books that make my brain hurt as I strain to encompass the grand idea, philosophy or theology in them. But I do not write with an academic voice, and I never will.

In my writing, I am first and foremost a poet, sometimes a pastor and often a preacher. I am a pirate and at my best I manage to marry this to being a good parent.

This is my voice, I write not for the academics admiration or to enter into an academic conversation. Sometimes I am philosophical but, I tend not to delve to deep and often lack the philosophical discipline to truly enter into the philosophical dialogue. No, I reach up and pluck ripe fruits from the top of the tree and try my best to serve a nice fruit cocktail for my friends down here on the ground. I am not an academic, or a philosopher, I am a preacher/poet with my feet planted firmly on the ground looking for a theopoetic that will part the veil and allow me to, if only for a moment, experience the divine.

This is my voice.

But to most Christians church is more than just a belonging, it is also an event. It is the place where I worship and meet with the divine (which again in the light of being alive is my daily spiritual practice, would make the place everywhere). So that is not very helpful either. Jesus, however, states that where two or more are gathered in my name, there I will be present. This has also been one (of many) definitions of church.

What does it mean to be gathered in Jesus name? I am sure that if we ask ten theologians we’d get at least 15 answers. So, here is mine.

If life is my religion, being alive is my daily spiritual practice and love is my rule then loving relationships is the primary place to experience this divine love. If we are the temples of the holy spirit, then it is when we come together and I can see the divine love in you or perhaps, when I can see you through the divine love, this is when I am confronted with the divine, the transcendent. Thomas Merton states that if we truly recognised how glorious we are as human beings, we would fall down on our knees and worship each other.

Here is the catch, when we gather together and we are guarded, when we hide behind masks of ego and fabricated selves to fit in, we never really meet the other, we never really encounter each other.

This is why I believe that Authentic friendships, the kind of friendship where we have shed our masks and constructed coverings, where we dare to meet the other eye to eye, when we let divine love reveal how the other is lovely and sublime, this is where true church happens.

It is when we dare to show up as ourselves, naked and not ashamed, vulnerable, perhaps a little scared, and share our true selves with each other, this is when we truly meet under the name of Jesus and Jesus becomes a shining light of truth, grace and justice in our midst.

Life is my religion. Being alive is my daily spiritual practice. Love is my rule. Humankind is my family. Authentic friendships is my church. The kingdom of god runs through my veins. Jesus is my brother. Becoming and being all that I am is my calling. Helping you become and be all that you are is my ministry. My deepest feelings is my guide. All living things are my teacher.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu borrows the term ubuntu from his immediate culture and proposes that we are all part of the same organism:

One of the sayings in our country is Ubuntu – the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can't exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can't be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality – Ubuntu – you are known for your generosity. We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole World. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity. (Desmond Tutu, 2008)

This echoes Paul's words of us being one body:As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also ChristFor in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons, and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.h14

Now the body is not a single part, but many.If a foot should say, “Because I am not a hand I do not belong to the body,” it does not for this reason belong any less to the body.Or if an ear should say, “Because I am not an eye I do not belong to the body,” it does not for this reason belong any less to the body.If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?But as it is, God placed the parts, each one of them, in the body as he intended.If they were all one part, where would the body be?But as it is, there are many parts, yet one body.The eye cannot say to the hand, “I do not need you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I do not need you.”Indeed, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are all the more necessary,and those parts of the body that we consider less honorable we surround with greater honor, and our less presentable parts are treated with greater propriety.whereas our more presentable parts do not need this. But God has so constructed the body as to give greater honor to a part that is without it,so that there may be no division in the body, but that the parts may have the same concern for one another.If [one] part suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy. (1 Cor 12.12-26)

While this has often been preached as being words about only the church, it seems that Jesus himself often included not just those who would follow him but everyone into the folds of whom is accepted and included.

Again John 3.16 talks about gods love not for the individual Christian, not for the church but for the world (cosmos). We are all integral parts of this world, a world that god declared good, and part of a humanity that god declared better (very good). “If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if one part is honored, all the parts share it's joy”. Everyone one you meet is part of this global family, the air I breath in is the air you breathe out, we are so intimately connected down to the quantum level.

Which is why my family is not defined by who lives in my house or with whom I share blood ties. My family is all of humankind, everyone I meet is a wonderful work of art and god is the artist that created them all, in this sense everyone I meet is holy and worthy to be honoured, respected and loved.

P.S.

Reading this the day after, I wonder if it takes this concept far enough. Maybe we cannot stop at humankind, maybe I must, like St. Francis, recognise that the sun and moon, the bird and the bee, the brook and the tree are also part of my family and must be respected and cared for equally. Maybe I must realise that not only is every person holy but that every place and plant is equally sacred as part of the cosmos that god loves.

Life is my religion. Being alive is my daily spiritual practice. Love is my rule. Humankind is my family. Authentic friendships is my church. The kingdom of god runs through my veins. Jesus is my brother. Becoming and being all that I am is my calling. Helping you become and be all that you are is my ministry. My deepest feelings is my guide. All living things are my teacher.

This it is what I was taught as I took my first stumbling steps as a Christian. I was also taught that the bible is a love letter from god. This, however, struck me as a bit odd given the strangeness of some parts of the bible. Also the gospel as I was taught it was not entirely loving rather than being the good news, it seemed to me to be rather bad news for most people I know.

Yet the most cited verse of the new testament is John 3.16 “For God so loved the world” (theos agapeo cosmos), it seems to me that when you shed the externals of organised religion and “What we have always taught and thought”, what remains is a core that is love.

 I belong to no religion. My religion is love. Every heart is my temple

-Rumi

Scripture tells us that if we love god and love our neighbour as ourselves we fulfil all of the law and the prophets, furthermore it tells us that we, as Christians should be known for our love towards each other (I intentionally read this as our love for all human beings as opposed to the sectarian, love for those who think and act like us) and Jesus says that a man who says he loves god but does not love his brother does not know god.

It seems to me that love is the core of the Christian message and being in love is the fundamental Christian practice (abide in me) and the love that we feel, share and saturate ourselves in actually is the very essence of god.

It seems logical then that love becomes the rule, the measure of all things, as if one could measure love. In practice this means that at any given moment, in any given place rather than the worn out “WWJD” maybe we need to ask “WWLD” or what is the loving response to this particular situation. What is the greater good that the divine eros/agape/phileo is calling out in this moment?

Living life according to the love priority as expressed by Jesus is therefore, in my opinion the core of the Christian message. Living in love (which means both understanding and accepting that I am loved and secondly letting that love extend to the people around me) becomes central to living a Christian life, if there is such a thing.

This focus on love is sometimes caricatured as “cheap grace” and while it may be true that this focus on loving others does not require anything of the other, it is extremely costly and requires everything from oneself. I know I have written this before, but I think that it needs ample repetition: There is nothing cheap about grace.

We simply must: Let love rule!

Life is my religion. Being alive is my daily spiritual practice. Love is my rule. Humankind is my family. Authentic friendships is my church. The kingdom of god runs through my veins. Jesus is my brother. Becoming and being all that I am is my calling. Helping you become and be all that you are is my ministry. My deepest feelings is my guide. All living things are my teacher.

Then I stumbled across the following quote by Cadet Christopher Footer in JAC Issue #45:

There is only one God, and there is only one Salvation Army. That army however is made of many people; and many people have many views. There are traditional Salvationists, Pentecostal Salvationists, radical Salvationists, neo-Salvationists, primitive-Salvationists… The list is endless. The focus of this paper is Primitive Salvationism, however it is important to state from the very beginning that these labels are just that, labels. Not everyone will fit neatly into a ‘Salvationist box’; and even when someone does fit into a box this does not mean they are incapable of stretching beyond the boundaries of that box. These labels should aid us in discovering who we are, and what we stand for; not constrict us from expressing ourselves to our God, and to those around us.

When I saw the labels Radcial Salvationist and Primitive Salvationist I felt a need to explore the difference between these two positions within Salvationism. I agree with Footer that these labels are just that, labels and must not restrict us in how or what we believe about god but must function as starting points for an ongoing conversation of what it means to explore your faith in a Salvationist context.

Since there is no authoritative source on what primitive salvationism or radical salvationism might be I will simply juxtapose some of the distinctives of both agains each other trying to remember all the while that the only real starting position for any salvationist theology is the doctrines of the Salvation Army and those doctrines claim in turn that the scriptures of the old and new testament is the only starting point for any life or practice of a salvationist.

So in trying to imagine what a radical salvationism (I posit here that there has been no real attempt to imagine this before as a cursory googling of the term yields mostly salvationists who by the term radical means extreme or committed salvationism as opposed to the philosophical stream of radicalism) as opposed to a primitive salvationism would look like that seems a good place to start, namely how we read the doctrines and the scriptures. Now I want to right at the beginning apologise for the reductionist way I will portray both modernism and post-modernism and many other concepts that I am well aware are much more complex than a simple blog post could ever do justice, but this is a simple blog post so you will have to restrain yourselves from pointing out that I have oversimplified these concept unless if by doing so I have missed the mark completely in which case: Flame away!

Before we get into the substance of this post, I also want to state that this is far from a finished line of thought. It is more of an experiment, an imaginary what if and a plea for others to consider the implications and submit their thoughts. So please blog about it and link here, comment on here, on twitter and Facebook.

I think the most fundamental difference between primitive and radical salvationism would be one of worldview. Primitive salvationism wholly embraces a modernistic worldview or maybe even a pre-modern victorian or imperialistic worldview. Whereas the radical salvationist perspective would be post-modern. This in turn colours how the two groups would approach and read both the SA Doctrines and the Scriptures of the old and new testament.

Scriptures and doctrines

The primitive salvationist would probably approach scripture as a biblicist and in a modernistic way be prone to treat both the biblical text and the doctrines of TSA as a legal document where you have access to indexed historical and absolute universal truth. It becomes a roadmap with a clear starting point and a decisive ending point. As scripture is viewed as hard truth, doctrines also become non-negotiables but the landmarks of the tradition by which one navigates. I will not be lured to address the inherent difficulties of biblicism but will refer to perhaps “the bible made impossible” by Christian Smith.

A radical salvationist approach would on the other hand be very different. The radical salvationist would approach scripture not as a legal document but rather as an eclectic collection of poetry, narrative, arguments and counter arguments. Maybe as a theological discourse one overhears and then interprets and deconstructs to reach for that which is unattainable, the event harboured in the name of god. Scripture would then not be the answer book of fundamentalism but the starting point for theological conversation and discourse. In a similar way the doctrines would be a starting point for conversation and deconstruction where one would be looking for the event of salvationism. Perhaps the main discourse would be, what is salvation, or the event of salvation and can one truly be saved unless all of creation is redeemed and saved or gathered up into that event which is harboured in the name of god.

The military metaphor

In primitive salvationism the military metaphor is embraced to the n:th degree. In some ways it could be said to be the hallmark of primitive salvationism, however that may be to over-simplify the issue. Primitive salvationism is all about the early leaders of the salvation army and to adhere to their words of wisdom as if they convey a method that transcends time and holds universal truth. Maybe because the early leaders words are saturated with the military metaphor, the metaphor itself becomes central to primitive salvationism.

A radical approach would need to deconstruct the metaphor and find what remains. Perhaps one could go to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s words and decide that the war we fight is the battle within every heart. Although the most probable outcome would be to discard the military metaphor as a quaint legacy of an imperialistic age and claim that “We are lovers not fighters”. The move then would be towards radical (both as in extreme and in the etymological sense of “to the roots)” social justice and a gospel of grace and love.

Social action

It may be in social action that the primitive salvationist and radical salvationist finally meet, in both approaches there would be a relentless commitment to social justice. The only difference I think is the motivation behind the action.

A primitive salvationist’s primary concern, as I understand it, would be to prepare the way for sharing the gospel. Now that may sound cynical but I truly believe that while love will be a great motivator, the primitive salvationists view on what is the greatest love gift, would be to share the good news of salvation for the soul as it must be if you truly believe in the eternal ongoing punishment of the wicked.

A radical salvationist would after deconstructing salvationism, I think, arrive at a holistic view of salvation where social justice is part of god’s ongoing redeeming and salvific work. Alternatively a radical salvationist view would be that the call to social justice is part of god’s insistence and that, as we are gods incarnation here, it is our work to do.

What is left

With such a radical emphasis on deconstruction and relativising of both depth and surface of salvationism one might ask what is left to form a rallying cry for this group of radical salvationists. What there is, is a relentless commitment to deconstruction. A realisation that what we see in salvationists is not all there is to salvationism. The concept holds something more, something deeper, the event that defies deconstruction. In search of this the radical salvationist will deconstruct, what we do, what we are, what we believe and what it looks like. Knowing that if the god that insists, insists there be a Salvation Army then there is more to that call than what has been articulated in the doctrines and articles of war. There is a truth that stirs, an event hidden in the words we use.

So we call out, not entirely sure what or who it is we call to, and yet we call from depths of our being for the other, come!

I am sittning at the Salvation Army leadership conference in Örebro, listening to Tommy Hellsten talking about finding your true self and how the ego must be crucified, taken apart, gotten rid of.

I think of Eddie Izzard that stated last night during his “Force Majeure” show that he had an overgrown ego, he tells an anecdote where he is riding in a taxi back from watching a show at Wembley stadium, the cabbie asks: Will you be going back to Wembley and Eddie thinks the cabbie is referring to his career rather than a return trip in the cab he's currently riding and embarrassing hilarity ensues. (This entire paragraph is just another example of what this post is about #namedropping)

In a moment of clarity I see how often I allow my ego to take center stage. How I make something unrelated about me and about my story. Especially looking back at my latest trip to “Subvert the norm II”, how often did I insert myself in a conversation, making it about me when it may have been something else entirely (and much more interesting) from the beginning. It seems terribly habitual, in every scene from the script of my life, I fall back into this pre-adolescent mode. See me, hear me acknowledge me.

Granted, the reason I went on this trip was to figure out what to do with my life, my calling, my ministry. Even so I break into the ongoing conversation with my story, when maybe listening to the others story might have been what would allow me to be confronted with a subversive story that may free me of my troublesome contemplations.

Henri Nouwen speaks of the wounded healer, but as my beloved mentor and friend Brian Slinn taught us in our understanding people class: your wound is where you find compassion and empathy for the other, but you do not have to bring it out and show it. In other words, our woundedness and the vulnerability we can develop out of it is what teaches us compassion, empathy and gives us the inner strength and integrity to help the other but we do not need to bleed on them.

My only solace and prayer is that someone else may have encountered my story and my journey and been transformed by being confronted with the other, however misplaced my motivations may have been.

I do hope that I will get better at spotting when this happens and say: Oh my ego! Time to shut up! Until that day I give you, my friends permission to speak for me, just tell me to shut it.