Loud & Clear

do you have an integrated or dis-integrated faith?

I’ve been wrestling through this interesting dynamic in our culture of growing spirituality. As the world continues its path toward one large global village, spirituality continues to rise in the global social awareness while closed system religions challenged as being intolerant, arrogant and terrible out of fashion.

A new dialogue is needed to communicate God’s love to a world that is hungering for wholeness but rejecting hypocrisy.

But this challenge crafting of a new dialogue can’t even begin until we can address the justified global village reaction to believers proclaiming one thing and living another. If we can’t follow our own beliefs, who’s going to listen?

I read a great concept this week from Doug Pagitt. While I don’t agree with many ideas he has, this one really struck me:

“God’s intention for individuals and for collective humanity is to bring together full integration of God’s agenda with our world…”

Our problem is not with our actions, but with our beliefs. There’s a huge difference between knowledge and understanding. Between hearing and listening. Between recognizing truth and believing truth. If we profess faith and do not live it or follow prescriptive rules for life without the inner transformation that birth those behaviors naturally, we have a divided faith. A divided faith invariably leaves gaping holes in our lives filled with sin and hypocrisy.

So the key concept is an integration of faith and deed. This full integration is what we modernly call “relationship.” But with the amount of broken relationships in this world, it’s almost no wonder we don’t fully get the whole picture of faith by that description.

So how do we achieve this kind of integration? For starters, we could try marrying our beliefs with our actions. The book of James says,

“What good is it…if you say you have faith but don’t show it by your actions? Can that kind of faith save anyone?”

And this is not a new problem by the way.  In Romans, Paul writes:

“You are so proud of knowing the law, but you dishonor God by breaking it. No wonder the Scriptures say, ‘The Gentiles blaspheme the name of God because of you.’”

We have a dis-integration problem. When the world looks at the Church, it sees dis-integration. Our actions say the opposite of Jesus’ message. In fact, it’s completely distressing me to know that our culture seeing Christianity as standing for the exact opposite things that Jesus stood for.

This simply is the product of a dis-integrated life. Jesus said,

“Remain in my love. When you obey my commandments, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father’s commands and remain in his love.”

It’s this remaining that creates complete integration. Paul says in Colossians:

“And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow him. Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness.”

Do you have an integrated or dis-integrated faith? Whose agenda do you wrestle with each day, yours or Christs? Are you evidencing the Fruit of the Spirit?

Now remember, there’s no condemnation if you’ve got a ways to go on this. I know I do.

But this is the journey we’re on. A journey of transparency, authenticity and integration with the Holy Spirit. And from that wholeness, we will have a foundation to engage a culture yearning for truth but fearful of dogma. Because, as Jesus said, the truth is what really sets us free.