Emptiness

In connection with the proposed new class blog, Don remarked that more than 30 years ago, his church leaders approached him about ways to deal with church members who would raise issues or make statements in bible class that others found discomfiting. He was asked to lead a class whose principle criterion would be openness to ideas that were not necessarily traditional, conventional, or orthodox from the Judeo-Christian or the SDA point of view.

Over the years this class has seen many different people, mostly Adventists but some from other faiths and philosophies, and some somewhat rebellious Adventists. However, it is a class not of apologetics, but of the exploration of ideas.

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Don: A couple of weeks ago Jay led a discussion centered on M. Scott Peck’s four stages of community: Pseudo community, Chaos, Emptiness, True community. Today I’d like to focus on stage of Emptiness.

In the early Christian church, there was a strong sense of community. The Jewish Christians who formed it were all of a similar mind. Acts 2:41:

So then, those who had received his word were baptized; and that day there were added about three thousand souls. They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

Everyone kept feeling a sense of awe; and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles. And all those who had believed were together and had all things in common; and they began selling their property and possessions and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need. Day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.

This is a picture of the early Church. It is a pseudo community, but that does not connote that it is a bad community. It is a group of people who share a common background, heritage, way of life, set of beliefs, goals, and even their own possessions. It says specifically they are of one mind – a characteristic of pseudo community. They loved it, and why not? There is nothing wrong with pseudo-community in itself; it’s what it leads to: Chaos.

The recruitment of people who were not like the original Jewish members of the early Christian church introduced discord and chaos. In Acts 10, invitations go out to a non-Jew, Cornelius, to join the Church. The community, including even Peter, is aghast. In Galatians 2:11-21 Paul and Peter argue about whether non-Jews should be allowed in.

But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For prior to the coming of certain men from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he began to withdraw and hold himself aloof, fearing the party of the circumcision. The rest of the Jews joined him in hypocrisy, with the result that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in the presence of all, “If you, being a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?

“We are Jews by nature and not sinners from among the Gentiles; nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified. But if, while seeking to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have also been found sinners, is Christ then a minister of sin? May it never be! For if I rebuild what I have once destroyed, I prove myself to be a transgressor. For through the Law I died to the Law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.”

In Acts 10, Peter dreams of a bagful of strange creatures being lowered to earth from heaven. Some of the creatures were things that Jews were forbidden to eat. But a voice told Peter to kill and eat the creatures. He refused at first, because they would have made him unclean. The purpose of the dream was to explain to Peter the inclusiveness God wants in the community of faith. Peter then did initially accept Cornelius, but others continued to challenge him (Peter) about accepting sheep who are not of this fold (as it were.) One argument was made that any outsiders should undergo circumcision. Paul argued against it.

Clearly, we are witnessing Chaos in the early Church community. It’s a chaos of ideas; it is not a natural, physical chaos such as a tornado – that’s the kind of chaos that tends to bring people together, not set them apart. The chaos of conflicting ideas, on the other hand, is very destructive to pseudo community, yet (apparently) it is only through the crucible of the chaos of ideas and belief that true community can be attained.

The test of true community is whether like-mindedness has been replaced by love, by open acceptance of people and new ideas, by the suspension of judgment.

In Acts 15:1-11, the chaos is brought to a head.

Some men came down from Judea and began teaching the brethren, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” And when Paul and Barnabas had great dissension and debate with them, the brethren determined that Paul and Barnabas and some others of them should go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders concerning this issue. Therefore, being sent on their way by the church, they were passing through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and were bringing great joy to all the brethren. When they arrived at Jerusalem, they were received by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they reported all that God had done with them. But some of the sect of the Pharisees who had believed stood up, saying, “It is necessary to circumcise them and to direct them to observe the Law of Moses.”

The apostles and the elders came together to look into this matter. After there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brethren, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles would hear the word of the gospel and believe. And God, who knows the heart, testified to them giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He also did to us; and He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith. Now therefore why do you put God to the test by placing upon the neck of the disciples a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, in the same way as they also are.”

Following Chaos, the next phase in the transition to community (pace M. Scott Peck) is Emptiness. How does this emptying take place? Out of the chaos, where is the transition through emptiness into true community? The passage above continues in verse 12, and points us to an answer:

All the people kept silent, and they were listening to Barnabas and Paul as they were relating what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.

Thus, silence seems to be one of the criteria for emptiness. T.S. Eliot’s verses reflect this need for quiet, for contemplation, in our chaotic lifestyle.

In our own church, we have people who do not think in quite the same way as the majority. Our tendency is to ostracize, to shun them in order to prevent them from contaminating the bigger community. How can we overcome this, so that new community can be born? Silence seems to be the answer, but it goes against our natural instinct to speak up, to defend, to push back. The pseudo community needs to be defended against sheep not of its fold.

How do we get past our natural instinct? Is the evidence for and test of true community its acceptance of new ideas? Can we control the transition through the stages of community, using various techniques and exercises, etc., or does it require divine intervention, spirit guidance?

Alice: To me, “pseudo” community implies a surface community only; a community that is not comfortable with anything new; a community that lacks love.

David: It might have been better if Peck had called it “phase 1 community,” because the prefix “pseudo” has negative connotations [postscript: It “is used to mark something as false, fraudulent, or pretending to be something it is not” — Wikipedia.] Peck’s stages imply that the only way to true community is by way of phase1/pseudo community. I wonder if it isn’t possible for a group of individuals to go straight to true community without going through the earlier phases?

Jay: Family is a form of community that does not always seem to have to go through the various phases. Perhaps as the number of people in a community increases, and as time goes on, there is more and more opportunity for dissention and chaos. The natural reaction to chaos, as Peck says, is to do something, to organize; when (as Alice says) we should let love and grace take over. That is the “emptiness.”

I relate emptiness to the blindness we have studied in the past. Being blind is not necessarily a bad thing. In the 23^rd psalm and in Isaiah we are led through the darkness. In total darkness, in blindness, we have to rely on a Guide. Similarly, the emptiness phase of community is acceptance that we cannot fix the problem; we need to rely on others, on love and grace, to guide us.

Don: My dad and I are polar opposites in many ways, and when I was younger we would vigorously debate many things, but I would not dream of trying to impose my way of thinking on him. We are far from being like-minded, yet we form true community. I am not sure if this is solely because we are family.

Alice: The one thing we have in common is Love. We should look at the entire globe as a single family. When love holds one to another, when we stop seeing ourselves as individuals, when we accept the bigger community, then our viewpoints don’t matter. I don’t think we have to go through  the four stages. God created families so we could see the value of true community at a small scale and be able to envision it on a large scale.

As for blindness: To be blind to one’s self is a good thing. I should not see myself as an individual, but rather as a part of a whole. I go inside myself to meet with God at a very basic and personal level. When we try to get ourselves noticed in the community, that’s when we become disconnected. Jesus told us to pray in secret – inside one’s self. This makes one a better global citizen. It enables one to tolerate differences in one’s brother. It enables love.

Mr. Singh: Before Jesus, there was only one community of God-fearing people but the outsiders needed to be saved by bringing them into the one community.

David: This discussion brings to mind the interface between science and religion, between physics and metaphysics. In some ways, we need to step outside our selves, outside our egos, in order to achieve the Emptiness we must go through to reach a new level. There is a scientific corollary in physics: Closed systems are in a certain phase, and to progress at all, a closed system must make a quantum jump, undergo a phase shift. Similarly with chaotic systems: A boiling liquid makes a quantum leap, a saltation, into a gas. Between those two phases is where science and religion are looking for answers, and increasingly science is helping to unravel it.

Don: We’ll talk more on emptiness next week, including the scientific viewpoint. In spiritual terms, how does it happen? Is there such a thing as “instant” true community without going through the other phases? Can we control the process? Can we apply the energy of chaos to the process, in order to produce true community?

Jesus makes a strong case in the Sermon on the Mount concerning this issue of emptiness and community, and talks a lot about the emptiness that is part of the true community of faith, or what he calls the Kingdom of Heaven. That emptiness is seen in the Beatitudes: The poor in spirit – those with poverty and humility at their base, those with the poorest spiritual insight – will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. Turning the other cheek, etc. all speak to the issue of emptiness – of forsaking arrogant spiritual understanding, of abandoning the futile attempt to interpret God’s will.

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