Following on from my previous post about God’s absence/presence I have been thinking about how this relates to Charismatic expressions of Christianity.
One might think that Charismatic spirituality is very much in tune with the presence of God – after all it has quite an immanent view of the Holy Spirit who is seen as being very present to people, to the extent that they will physically respond (shaking, falling over etc.).
BUT – in my opinion, Charismatic spirituality is still guilty of conceiving of God as being predominantly somewhere else. Yes, God might come close (and this is seen as God presencing himself where he was not present previously) – but these are fleeting moments, normally only possible in highly-charged corporate gatherings, and then God is gone again, leaving us wanting and waiting for more.
The challenge remains to remove the blockages to our awareness of God’s continual presence.
I was looking for this blog yesterday and could only find your lost tribes one. It’s great – and very visually beautiful. glad to have found it. good on you Matt. Must admit, I don’t think Christians can claim the territory for the benefits of meditation but you know where I’m coming from…….and I’m here to learn and be grateful not to argue the toss – which is the touchstone for me of my own inner pilgrimage. Your website helps me to do both of those things.
will keep returning and thanks for the blog.
Claiming territory? Hmm.
What excites me is the possibility that at the core of every major world religion (and even some non-major ones) is something that is experientially common or identical. (This would have to hold true if the mission really is God’s…)
Christianity does have in its history this wisdom or knowledge (about meditation). It may not be as pronounced in Western Christanity as it is in Sufism or Buddhism. But it has featured. ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’, for example, or in the writings of theologians better known to the Orthodox church.
It excites me that Christians are finding this lost wisdom again. It doesn’t need to be a tug of war between faiths. It doesn’t even need to borrow from other faiths – but the dialogue is good of course.
I enjoyed your last two posts a lot, Matt. Keep it up 🙂
Matt, I think you’ve really identified an important problem with the language of invitation to God that is often used in church, that suggests God is absent or can be summoned to be more fully present. I have hanging in my house a plaque that says, “Bidden or not bidden, God is present”, which Carl Jung hung in Latin over his front door in Zurich. But I still think that invocation is important [1 Corinthians 16.22, Revelation 22.20] – invoking God is about reminding ourselves of the Presence of the God who is really there, as Leanne Payne puts it. This is all really, of course, about practising the Presence of God.