To Care, or Not to Care … that is the Question!

After I have been blessed to become ordained, and move out into the real world of ministry, how much of my time shall be dedicated to pastoral care? This, of course, will depend on the size of the church that I become a part of, and my ministry there; how many well-trained staff and qualified volunteers are available; and many other factors associated with my new church.  Yet before deciding this, and certainly outside of any senior minister directives, I should first have a good sense of what my pastoral theology is, and how I understand and define what style, type, and level of involvement of pastoral care that I perform for my congregants.

A discussion as to whether or not pastoral care is actually necessary in today's church is not required, for as Dr. Tom has incisively pointed out, "we have clearly established biblically, historically, and existentially the need for pastoral care …" A question that remains though is: what role we as metaphysical Christian ministers should undertake in our spiritual counseling sessions with our flock.

            First, it could be easily suggested that any counseling should be under the purview of psychology, and that as ministers we are predominantly teachers, not professional counselors. Yet in my experience as a licensed Religious Science spiritual practitioner, the people that I was blessed to work with were indeed expecting spiritual or pastoral counseling; which would include not only establishing and developing an ongoing caring human relationship that expresses sincere interest in their wellbeing, but also provided support and comfort in times of need, teaching based on spiritual principles, and direction in terms of the resources available in the church and in the greater community. And since people seem determined to continue in engaging their religious leaders and ministers in times of need, the focus should not be on whether or not to engage in metaphysical counseling, but to work to become more effective in utilizing basic counseling skills to assist our congregants.

            Second, it may seem that in pastoral counseling the minister’s primary practical goal is to empower an individual to release their imprisoned splendor from within. We just focus our people to the God within them, and the rest is up to the individual. I appreciate Dr. Tom's correlation of a minister as a coach working with their team: "Actually, the analogy of a coach working with a team is wholly appropriate to understand pastor – parishioner relationships." In this manner, a coach may need to work more one-on-one with some players than with others, with the overall goal of raising the effectiveness and performance of the entire team. One thing, of course, that a minister as coach would not do, is to tell someone what is his or hers to believe and to accomplish. The coach’s role here is focused on helping each player call it forth from within.

            Third, it is possible that long–term counseling may create a dependency in those being counseled. Yes, that could be true, but as Dr. Tom astutely points out, "Even Jesus Christ needed parents to get started." So there is a need for watch care during the counseling for this possibility of dependency, and the need for clear guidelines in the church around counseling sessions and fees for these services. Yet if we are to care, and to express concern, kindheartedness, and understanding, there must be engagement; and this may at times require longer-term counseling.

In a simplistic way, the difference between psychological counseling and pastoral counseling is this: the psychologist cures and the minister cares. And so many times in our lives, and in the lives of those we meet throughout our ministerial days, caring is at the top of the list. How much caring shall I do? Working within reasonable boundaries and maintaining proper self-care … as much as I possibly can.

Can I still trust Divine Order?

That's what we say in Unity, isn't it?  It's all in divine order; so everything happens, or has happened, by God's hand; thus the way it's supposed to be. We say this about most everything, from finding the right parking place, to our friend losing their job, to even (respectfully) a death in the family. But if I step back for a moment and listen to what we (and I) have been saying, it sure seems to be drifting into the realm of predestination. Predestination, you say?... like the predestination where in I have no choice at all? Yes, just like that one. But that's not what I really meant to say, because, being a good New Thought metaphysician, I am a co-creator with God; so it can't be real predestination. So what's up?

Is divine order an absolute law, immutable and unconditional? or is there something more going on? Say, … maybe it's just the law of averages that it works out that way!

Where this question really comes into focus for me is in the practice of affirmative prayer, when I am knowing and trusting in Divine principle, and aligning myself with that principle to co-create with it. In my practice of prayer as a Religious Science spiritual practitioner, I was taught very clearly to release the realization of the truth into divine law, knowing that divine substance has been acted upon through my realization, and by this trust in the unwavering law, it's gonna’ happen (the subject of the prayer).

But what if it doesn't? It's simple answer to say, "well, that's because the consciousness of the person I was praying for; they weren't quite ready yet for the healing." Yet when the intention of the prayer does not manifest, it does open up the possibility that the immutable law may be not quite so immutable. As Dr. Tom suggests, it could be that as the early New Thought writers did their thinking in the time of Newtonian physics, where the world was ruled by mechanical cause-and-effect, it was a simple transfer to apply this mechanical worldview to the new emerging metaphysics.

But now we’re into quantum mechanics, where things are just not as cut and dried as Newton hoped. As Dr. Tom says, "When we peer down into the atomic level, certainty becomes probability." Thus, metaphysical principle and law in today's language might be better expressed as a bell curve: well, it kinda happens this way most of the time. What this opens up for me is: can I trust God that much? If a foundational part of my trust has been based on absolute laws, and now those laws are becoming soft around the edges, what does that do to my faith? Can I allow my faith to shift further from the black-white of perfect clarity into the gray fog of maybe? I believe that's where I'm headed, yet I think this time, rather than placing this shift in faith under the category of paradox, I believe this one belongs under a broader, yet more majestic, and tranquil place: the place of mystery.

Talking About Truth

The Unity movement first had its origins in the physical healing of Myrtle Fillmore, which then influenced her husband Charles to seriously consider the meaning of her personal experience, and to apply it in his own life. From there, others who were interested in experiencing healing in their own lives began to meet with Myrtle and Charles, in order to understand and to incorporate the same truth principles that had transformed the Fillmores, into their own lives.  And so the work of teaching the healing principles as set forth by Jesus Christ (and as interpreted by the Fillmores) began as small discussion groups, which met regularly to pray and to learn for themselves how to apply Divine truths to shape their own life experiences. The small discussion groups focused on ideas, new ideas, revolutionary ideas; ideas that challenged the prevailing thought of the time, and one idea in particular: the belief that divinity lies within each and every one of us.

Sound familiar?  Well it should, for a little over two generations before; the New England Transcendentalists were meeting in small groups and discussing very similar ideas; especially the idea of an open pursuit of the Truth and the idea of Spirit as our inherent personal nature. Quite arguably, the Unity movement would not exist without the foundational work and groundbreaking reforms advocated by the Transcendentalists. What you say? Unity has its own uniquely original ideas of God and the nature of mankind? Well, let's see.

The Transcendental movement did not develop a creed or dogma (there is no Thoreauian Creed, however similar the individualism of Thoreau may seem to be to the rugged individualism of the cowboy movies of the old West), and it can be better understood as a cluster of groundbreaking ideas, that attracted to and were centered around a group of great thinkers (sound familiar?). What were they talking about? Anything and everything, yet centered on the personal experience of the Divine in their lives (are we getting warm?). The Transcendental discussion groups were ongoing groups, for they understood the seeking of Truth to be a discovery process; one that continues for a lifetime (is there an echo in here?).   The Transcendentalists read and studied many of the sacred texts of the East, and these Eastern teachings greatly influenced the direction of their thought (You mean Charles wasn't first?).

Last, and certainly not least, the Transcendentalists were willing to challenge the prevailing religious doctrines and many of the social conventions of their day, and actively and widely published their ideas to bring about change; not only in New England but in all of the world (do we seem to have a trend here?). So if you see yourself as a devoted Unity person and you haven't yet met the Transcendentalists, you must do so soon, for what awaits you is a delightful discovery of the rich heritage that the Transcendentalists brought forth and with which they poured a foundation that much of Unity and New Thought was built upon.

Reincarnation (or, you can't get there from here, again)

Let's talk about the much beloved subject of reincarnation; apparently beloved by many who pursue metaphysics, in that it appears to be an easily accepted premise (as inherently a part of Western metaphysical Christianity?), a convenient justification (although intrinsically subjective) for many of life's experiences, and appears to be included on the ‘sacred cows’ list of many New Thought folk. So let's start with some basic definitions.

According to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, reincarnation is "the idea or belief that people are born again with a different body after death," or more specifically, “rebirth in new bodies or forms of life; especially: a rebirth of a soul in a new human body." According to The Revealing Word, the metaphysical meaning of reincarnation is, "when a soul leaves the body, it rests for a season. Then innate desire for material expression asserts itself, and the ego seeks the primal cell and builds another body. Reincarnation will continue until the ego awakens to the Christ Mind and through it builds an imperishable body.” And interestingly enough, reincarnation does not appear to have merited consideration as a theological term by Van Harvey, because it is not included in his A Handbook of Theological Terms.

Thus, while the concept of reincarnation seems to be prevalent in New Thought, quite arguably innately subjective, and not theological in Western thought, the belief in reincarnation appears to have originated in the Eastern world, more specifically the Hindu religion. Reincarnation is one of the jewels of knowledge of Hinduism, is closely tied with the concept of karma, and is considered a law of the cosmic order. The purpose of reincarnation is to provide the opportunity for the soul to live many lives and undergo many experiences until it attains perfection and reunites with its Divine source.

Although easily included in Western metaphysical Christianity, there is no actual biblical basis for the concept of reincarnation, and although it was a common religious belief of many ancient traditions at that time, reincarnation was not a popular concept in the early Christian church. It was also not included in the letters of Paul that have been discovered to date, and Paul in his writings presents himself as an extinctionist on the heaven – hell question.

The Transcendentalists in their eager search for new meaning and understanding and rebellion against the prevailing dogmatism of contemporary Christian thought (think Harvard Divinity school), ‘re-discovered’ reincarnation in their study of Eastern literature (Emerson read and studied sacred texts from Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sufism along with many of his peers), and though it did not develop into a primary premise of transcendentalism, brought this concept into the fold of the emerging Christian sciences. It fit comfortably with the new passion for and necessity of personal intuition of religious truth.

It seems that there is a broad enough concept of reincarnation in metaphysical Christianity for it to be defined personally and subjectively; and for me at this point in my life experience what fits most comfortably is the understanding that there is certainly life after death, but we do not reappear in physical bodies on this time – space Earth, but progress forward in a never ending adventure characterized in Jesus Christ’s words as "In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you." (John 14:2 KJV)

Demythologizing Jesus?

If we remove myth, what's left?  Without myth, what is Jesus Christ worth to us? All we would have left is what he ‘said’ to us, and as we have established earlier in this blog, and drawn from the efforts of biblical scholars, even Jesus Christ’s words are quite arguably the words of the gospel writers about what Jesus Christ said, not necessarily the actual words of Jesus Christ.

When we remove the mythology, much of the special romance and sacred trappings go right out the door with it.  The shepherds watching in the night of Jesus's birth, the guiding star, the Virgin birth; all of these sacred yet mythological stories go away.  What historical scholarship tells us is that a person was born and lived up to age 30, wherein the particulars of the story of his life begin.

What that leaves us theologically, is a man called Jesus appearing to John the Baptist in the River Jordan at around age 30, who according to his disciples’ writings, unites with his Christ like nature, and has varying experiences in his life for the next three years, until his death and resurrection.  The historical significance, sans myth, could be summed up to be: the life-changing impact of this man on the lives of his followers and on subsequent generations.

Rudolf Bultmann, one of the most controversial scholars in the European theological world, says, “We must realize that much of its (New Testament) thinking is in mythical terms. It pictures a three-layer universe: heaven, the earth, and underneath the earth Gehenna or Hades, as the case may be."[1] Bultmann proposed that when we demythologize the New Testament and Jesus, what we have left that is significant is solely the impact that Jesus Christ has on the individual believer, nothing more.

For me, I can appreciate the value of these particular myths, in their attractive nature and connective power in linking our lives to that of Jesus Christ; yet even without them, and even with just Bultmann’s harsh perspective, the life altering significance of Jesus Christ upon my life as an individual believer, is all that really matters to me.

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[1] Johnson, Sherman. “Bultmann and the Mythology of the New Testament.”  Anglican Theological Review, January 1, 1954, 31.