Christ Lives in Me: Contemplative Christianity in the New Testament

A Bad Rap: Mysticism’s Fall From Glory

Contemplative (mystical) Christianity is clearly present in the New Testament and is at the heart of the Christian faith.

Contemplative Christianity (Christian mysticism) was all the rage up through the 1400’s. That’s a solid 15 centuries of being “cool”. Generally, folks embraced the concept of having a deep-hearted connection with God and a relationship with the unexplained. In fact, one could argue that surrendering the self to the indwelling presence of Christ was what Christianity was all about. Experience-based, mysterious faith was “in”.

Not everyone was a mystic of course. The regular believer in the Middle Ages, for instance, was just fine with their weekly services at the village church and was obedient to whatever it was the Pope and local bishop thought was cool.

However, your standard-issue Christian, though perhaps not practicing contemplative Christianity directly, LOVED the idea of the mystical, and it went beyond just the indwelling presence of Christ. Believers would take pilgrimages to a cathedral to see a piece of St. Ralph’s elbow bone and loved to read the stories about how St. Anna drove out the harpies from Krakow’s blacksmith shop on Christmas Eve.

All joking aside, Christianity through the middle ages was completely accepting of what couldn’t be understood fully with the mind.

Shrewd as Snakes and Innocent as Crocs

Though this acceptance of mystery was a beautiful quality for believers to have, there was a downside, naivete. The regular believer had no idea that St. Ralph’s elbow bone that she had sojourned days to see was really just some random piece of sheep femur. The archbishop thought he could use some old bones to turn a profit (gotta pay for those silk PJ’s somehow). It worked.

You may have learned about indulgences while studying church history. Today, it seems hard to believe anyone would buy (figuratively or literally) a ticket to heaven. Yet, this practice was widespread. The pockets of the clergy became even deeper at the expense of those who put their trust in them.

Throwing out the Baby with the Bathwater

Unfortunately for the church elites, all good things must come to an end. In came the scientific revolution. All of a sudden, faith had to bow down to reason. People had access to Bibles and were able to read the scriptures for themselves. Someone studied anatomy and identified cow buttocks as cow buttocks (silk pj’s became harder to come by). Indulgences stopped, corruption lessened, and the church split.

In one direction went the crowd who valued obeying church doctrine before all else (sorry Catholics, that’s you). In another went the crowd who primarily pledged allegiance to scripture instead–if it wasn’t explicitly in the Bible, it was right out (yeah, that’s you Protestants).

There were still Christian mystics, they just weren’t quite as cool. And the regular Christian thought twice before talking about that dream they had about their late Aunt Hilda or about the utterly mysterious nature of the divine.

In short, folks didn’t buy into St. George taking out a dragon (that one I’m not making up) or that purchasing their own or a loved one’s personal stairway to heaven was a thing, but deep experiences of faith were also viewed as questionable–one to cause a raised eyebrow at dinner instead of a vibrant conversation about the surrendering of the self to Christ. I would argue that in many ways, this is still the case.

East Meets West

As time marched onward, contemplative faith was kept alive in monsateries, the Eastern Orthodox church, and in the non-Christian Eastern faiths. Then, with the advent of a global culture in the 20th century, Western Christians heard about Buddhist meditation, yoga, and nirvana. Many were fascinated.

Those who had kept the contemplative tradition alive, those Christian monks and nuns, laughed and said…Eastern faiths are cool and all, but did you know that the mystical is at the heart of your own faith as well?

It All Starts With Christ: The Original New Testament Contemplative

Jesus was, unsurprisingly, the mystic to lead the way. Many of Jesus’ teachings point to an inward connection with God and a continuous movement towards union with the Father. Though this deserves a series of posts just on its own (perhaps in the future?), here is a taste of the mystical within Jesus’ teachings:

Within You

The Kingdom of God is within you.

Luke 17:21

Though the most literal translation is “within you”, even with the translation of “among you” or “in your midst”, there is a clear sense that the kingdom is not some future thing off in the distance, but rather, here and now. The kingdom that Jesus ushered in was not an earthly kingdom but one that required an inward change of heart.

Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees in this passage. Taken as the literal translation “within”, Jesus is saying that the kingdom is found by going within. This is a journey that the Pharisees would greatly benefit from, as the majority derived their sense of worth from rule-following and outward displays of piety. Only by finding their worth from their connection to God “within” them would they find peace.

This truth has meaning for us as well. Like the Pharisees, we will find the peace and joy of the kingdom from connecting with the Spirit of God within us, not by the outward searching and grasping of the ego.

Losing Your Life

Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.

Matthew: 10: 39-40 (NIV)

Here again we see Jesus urging a moving away from outward, worldly connections and meaning to a sense of self and experience of God that involves going within and connecting to something deeper. Jesus is within us, and God is within Jesus. The “indwelling presence” is the sole (and “soul”) focus of Jesus’ teachings.

From this deep understanding of the indwelling Spirit, a follower of Christ can then truly love God and neighbor, even one’s enemies. This happens in 2 easy steps (shipping and handling included, and we’ll throw in a “get out of purgatory free” card if you order in the next 20 minutes!)

Step 1: Realize that God dwells within. Life becomes a joyful, intimate journey with the Father (since you carry His presence along wtih you whereever you go). Life is also a journey towards even greater unity with God with the help of the continual guidance of the Spirit.

Step 2: Become aware that this same God dwells within all others, even those who don’t recognize God’s presence within themselves. Once you are aware of God’s intimate presence in all people, true love of neighbor becomes possible.

John: The Contemplative “Whom Jesus Loved”

My first two quotes are derived from the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), because another of the first contemplatives, John, wrote the the fourth Gospel. The mystical message presents clearly throughout the Gospel of John. The vine and the branches (abiding in Christ), eating and drinking Christ (bread of life), Jesus as living water, and, one of my favorite verses from the Bible:

One with the Father

[I pray] that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

John 17: 21-23 (NIV)

Yup, enough said.

Back to Your Brother…

John’s mystical focus continues in his epistles, where he speaks of “love”, “abiding” and being “in God”. And if you think Jesus’ apostle will let you off the hook on the loving your neighbor bit, that you can get away with just hanging out in the love of God and secretly growling about your brother of sister, John has this for you:

 Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble. But anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them.

1 John 2: 8-11 (NIV)

If you are in the light, you see only the Spirit of God in others. Sure, they may have forgotten that they are children of God, but that doesn’t change the truth. John urges us all to walk in the light by abiding in Christ. We can only do that by going within.

Paul: The New Testament Contemplative Who Was Untimely Born

The Gospels are filled with the mystical (unexplained/mysterious from an earthly perspective): the resurrection, transfiguration, and miracle after miracle. However, this pattern doesn’t end with the Gospels. The last of the New Testament mystics, Paul, speaks openly of experiences that cannot be explained.

Paul is thrown from his horse and blinded by Jesus, who comes to him as a bright light from heaven (Acts 9: 1 – 19). He is taken up to the third heaven in another unexplainable, “mystical”, experience (2 Corinthians 12: 2 – 4).

Though we don’t typically think of Paul as a mystic, his teachings pass the test. One of the best passages to consider to understand Paul’s contemplative perspective is the concluding chapter of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.

Just before chapter 3, Paul beats the drum of the indwelling presence of Christ:

And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

Ephesians 2:22

As Ephesians Chapter 3 begins, Paul speaks of the “mysteries” directly revealed to him (no, not from the other apostles or from Scripture–he is clear that they are revealed to him directly by God). He also prays that Christ will dwell in the hearts of the Ephesians and root them deeply in a love that cannot be understood. If that wasn’t enough, Paul then ends with this:

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

Ephesians 3:20-21

Paul attests that God is at work in and through us and that God’s power is limitless. “Miracles” and the unexplained are possible. We can have a direct experience of God. And, because of God’s indwelling presence within us, we are capable of so much more than we believe.

Where to Go From Here

The truth of the contemplative tradition is deeply embedded in the Gospels, the writings of the apostles (we didn’t touch on Peter, but this contemplative truth is present in his letters as well), and in the writings of Paul. Let’s sum all of this up:

• There is more to “reality” than what we can experience with our five senses
• Jesus and God are one, and dwell within us via the Spirit
• God can be experienced directly and can speak truth to us directly
• In order to access the kingdom, we must shift our understanding of who we are from a human ego in an Earthly world to a soul in unity with God who is inhabiting a human body
• All humans have the indwelling presence of God and should be treated as such
• God’s power in and through us is mind-blowing

Breathe all of that in. Then, go sit with it. Allow the truth of our faith to transform you. This is the contemplative root of our faith.

If you would like to read the first article in this series, click here. The next article can be found here.