Don: We have been talking about the transition from pseudo community to true community, through a phase of emptiness. We’ve studied it in part with reference to the transition that took place in the early Christian church, when its Jewish founders were told by God to welcome in the gentile. (Acts 10.) There followed much chaos and strife.
Chaos is a sign of pseudo community. A principle of true community is that it can accommodate differences and has an underlying attitude of love despite great differences.
Today, I want us to focus again on the phase of emptiness and investigate whether it can be deliberately engineered, or does it rely on divine intervention? Does science inform us whether the process can be intentional?
Any community—even a church community—can easily be disturbed by outside ideas and influences, and even by internal dissention. Such disturbance and dissention invariably induce a sense of distress and destructiveness. If true community could be achieved through intentionality and deliberation, it would clearly be highly desirable. But is it even possible? How? If not, how do we invoke a divine intervention to do it for us?
In Acts 15 we see that the way to true community for the early Christian church involved a period of silence among the people witnessing the arguments, the chaos, among their leadership. But God is the author of the chaos. It was God who allowed and even enforced the idea that outside influences were to be brought in to the church. He made a specific intervention to do this. It’s as if he says (as in John 10): “Other sheep I have who are not of this fold and I must bring them into this fold. This is not up for debate.” God introduced chaos in order to get to true community.
The other principle that comes out of this story is that we ought to be aware of what is going on with those who are trying to enter our community and who are different from us. The principle seems to be that those who are turning to god, and for that reason alone want to be brought into our community, should not be given any trouble, should not be required to conform to our ways.
But scripture makes clear that those in a community who are responsible for dealing with the chaos should not be just anybody: They must be credentialed in some way. In the early church, the credential was that they must have risked their life for the sake of Jesus. So this is not a task for just anybody; it is only for certain people who have some special relationship with god.
Chaos can be very disturbing and it seems as if words are often the root of the disturbance. In this passage in Acts there is a sense in which watching what you say is important. As the process unfolds, the leaders of the church conclude that the rules of the true community should be few and very general in nature.
This didn’t make all of the trouble and chaos go away. It persists even today in our churches, where outsiders are not always welcomed with no strings attached.
To the Western mind, emptiness is not something to be sought. We see it as boredom, alienation, isolation… an unnatural state. But to the Eastern mind, to empty the mind (through meditation) presents an opportunity for something better to fill the space.
As it relates to Jesus, the gospel has one very specific passage about emptying oneself: Philippians 2:5-8:
Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
This is an emptiness where Jesus gives up his Godliness to take up not just his humanity but his servitude—his obligation to serve others. This is a key element of the community—the kingdom—of heaven. The idea of servitude as part of emptiness is intriguing.
Perhaps the most informative part of the gospel with respect to emptiness is about Jesus’ time in the wilderness—the desert, a barren place of emptiness. There, he emptied himself of physical need for food and water. Then he encounters the devil, who tempts him Matt 4:1-11:
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He then became hungry. And the tempter came and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.” But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’”
Then the devil took Him into the holy city and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down; for it is written,
‘He will command His angels concerning You’;
and
‘On their hands they will bear You up, So that You will not strike Your foot against a stone.’”
Jesus said to him, “On the other hand, it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory; and he said to Him, “All these things I will give You, if You fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.’” Then the devil left Him; and behold, angels came and began to minister to Him.
It seems that the great temptation that arises during emptiness is to fill it with something physical, such as bread, or ownership of everything around him.
Jesus’ response was that he wanted only to fill himself with spiritual things.
The suggestion that pseudo community is a closed community and therefore subject to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics—to entropy—whereas true community is an open system and not subject to the law, makes one wonder whether science can shed light on the notion of emptiness and especially on engineering it—assuming that is even desirable.
David: Regarding the temptation in the desert: It seems to me the temptation was not to fill up with physical things, but to fill up with things we want—things we “will.” The proper response is to have faith and remain empty, trusting that the emptiness will be filled with God’s will. Just empty yourself and leave it at that. Have faith that God will enter the empty space you have made; and whatever happens after that, have faith that it is God’s will, and that it gives entry to the ultimate true community: The kingdom of heaven.
With regard to my essay, it’s a work in progress and I will continue to refine it. What prompted me to write it was the fact that science can now intrude into matters that were once considered spiritual, mystical, metaphysical. So if the community building process is metaphysical in nature, then there is a possibility that scientific method could help us examine it. The key methods used to look into things hitherto considered practically metaphysical are chaos and complexity theory, which make use of probability theory. They don’t look at what is, but what might be—at what are the probabilities of various outcomes. The field of “futures studies” (note the plural “futures”) recognizes that we cannot predict one future, only a range of probable futures. But having identified which of those probabilities we would prefer, then we can take action to increase the probability of it happening. One probable future is that the Earth will eventually be hit by a large asteroid, destroying humanity. We can increase the probability of avoiding that future by building a missile defense system. [Postscript: but god would seem to say: “Don’t do that—just trust me!” Hmm… 😉 ]
My real interest in writing this essay was that I see science and religion starting to merge their methods of understanding the metaphysical. The specific instance of whether science can show us a way to reach true community may be a bit of a stretch. I am not qualified to say.
Harry: I do not consider myself the type to pray. It seems to be just not in my personality. I tend to be a negative thinker, especially in the morning. Bothered by my negativity, recently I began a new daily practice of verbalizing my gratitude for the things that seem to deserve it—from my relationships to the warmth of my car on a cold winter’s morning. I do this during my morning commute.
The transformation has been remarkable. I have a new appreciation for life, my anxieties have diminished, my rapport with and ability to manage my staff (whose low education level makes them difficult to communicate with) has improved enormously.
It seems that when one is grateful, one is not influenced by anyone’s differences. I find I can live with people and their different ideas when I am grateful for what I have. One simply appreciates the existence of others. Pseudo community wants us to reinforce one another’s similar beliefs; gratitude removes this tendency.
The angels ministered to Jesus at the end of his temptation. Since I started practicing gratitude, the angels have been ministering to me, too: Good things have been happening, out of the blue.
Alice: Last night we discussed with friends from church the concept of Love along the same lines as you have discussed the concept of Gratitude. If you love everyone, their differences don’t matter, and that makes the community come together—true community, that does not try to change people.
Emma: Some of our churches are more conservative than in others. Some frown on any non-conformity with strict Sabbath observance, while others are more liberal.
Don: An attribute of pseudo community is the desire to make sure that everyone conforms, everyone thinks the same way. It is a sort of possessiveness that says “I own this church, this creed, this sacrament, this community etc.,” as opposed to the liberal desire to express “an idea that I am happy to share with you but do not want to impose on you.” It seems that we worry about losing something, of losing our spiritual point of view, if we don’t “possess” it. But Jesus is saying that losing our own point of view, our own possession, is precisely what we must do. We must lose our possessions, we must become empty, in order to find our true selves, our true community.
Harry: Jesus was grateful for his relationship with God, so he did not need to succumb to the temptation of possessions, and in the end, he received his reward for emptying himself, in the form of the kingdom of heaven.
Don: The temptation does indeed seem to be to fill up the emptiness with something that we want, whereas we should leave it empty for God’s will to enter.
Robin: I’ve always been bothered about the “40 days” in the desert. No human can live that long without water. Is it a metaphor?
Harry: A member of a conservative Baptist church believes that every word of the Bible is true. But if one is grateful for the “message” one can glean from the story, then the details become not significant.
Don: Scripture says he fasted, which implies he took no food but did take water. That makes the 40 days possible. But as Harry points out, the key message is about emptying ourselves to open our minds to God’s will.
David: The conservative churches Emma mentioned are examples of closed systems. Scientifically, a closed system is subject to entropy, to loss of energy, and ultimately to dissolution. An open group, like ours, is vibrant and energetic even after 30 years. The desert story is about openness versus closedness; about opening the mind and letting our will be carried away by the desert breeze, and trusting that whatever enters it will be God’s will.
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