In “New Models” I set out to explore the question of what new lifestyles are developing in the 1970s that serve to give a sense of personal integration and meaning and that also contain within them a commitment to social renewal. I explore three different models: the Militant Model, the Esoteric Model, and the Liberated Model. Briefly, the Militant Model corresponds to the lifestyle of the SDS-type radicals; the Esoteric Model to the young people who are pursuing Eastern spiritual disciplines; the Liberated Model to encounter group enthusiasts, and also corresponding to Charles Reich’s Consciousness III. I discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each model in the following areas: self-awareness, sense of history, political stance, and transcendent values.
THE CHRISTIAN MODEL
Throughout the paper I suggested that Christians and Christianity may have something to offer to this new age. It is now time to outline what this contribution might be.
I believe that Christians could offer a new model--a new Way of Being--for our time. This model would contain the necessary elements for a radical transformation of the individual personality and the total society. To cite Paul, I believe that Christians can and ought to be the “representatives of the new humanity” (Colossians 3:12).
Representatives of the New Humanity! What a wonderful, stirring phrase! The Christian becomes not only a New Man or a New Woman, but he or she represents the New Humanity--a total vision of what it means to be alive and of what this world could be. But of what does this New Humanity consist? For this age, I would suggest that it consists of the following:
Self-Awareness: The Christian must be totally self-aware. He or she must be willing to plumb their very depths, to analyze themselves psychologically, ideologically, and spiritually. The Christian must be willing to peel off the layers of the subconscious in order to find the soul and communion with God.
Sense of History: The Christian must be aware of history. In an ahistorical age, Christians must witness to the kernels of truth and joy that are contained within our traditions. Christians must know and understand their own pasts, and know and understand the past of humankind. Christians must understand the beauty and the agony of the human struggle, and in their grasp of history they must be willing to “hold fast to that which is good,” so that it can be building material for a new society.
Transcendent Values: These were given by Jesus, and they are two: Love God, and Love Your Neighbor as Yourself. Then, as now, these two values subsume all others, and contain within them all that is necessary for the building of a new society. Love Your Neighbor as Yourself is the most socially radical commandment that could possibly be imagined. If we can rediscover this commandment, cleanse it of the hackneyed usage to which it has been subjected, and experience it in its awesome simplicity, it would totally transform social, economic, and political relations on this planet.
Political Stance: Christians must be willing to carry their transcendent values into the political arena; Christianity has suffered from its inability or unwillingness to translate its radical values into collective political action. Christians have been strong on individual ethics and weak or conservative on civic ethics. The history of Christianity is strewn with church endorsement of the status quo, when the status quo represented everything that Christian ethics stood against. The Christian must be willing to take a stand for a new world--one in which the love of God and the love of one’s neighbor are manifest and real.
It can be seen that I am suggesting that the Christian Model integrate the best features of the Militant, Esoteric, and Liberated Models, with the worthy addition of a sense of living tradition. In this it may sound as though I am another of that chorus that begins its statements with some variation on, "If the church wishes to be relevant to the needs of today, then ...." This is usually followed by a series of suggestions that entail adoption of some new practices or styles so that the church won’t die from lack of attendance on Sunday. This has been a pattern in Christianity lately, so much so that the churches seem worn out from chasing new fads around.
I am not suggesting that the church get “with it”; what I am suggesting is that Christians rediscover Christ. The Christian model I am proposing has always been the true Christian model. It is not something new, it is something very, very old. At base, to be a Christian is to be the wildest of revolutionaries, and yet the most profound of conservatives; to be a Christian is to believe in the possibility of the total transformation of the personality, and yet to accept other people as they are; to be a Christian means to take a radical stance for a new society, and yet to accept that human society will never be perfect.
The model that I am suggesting is “new” in that it incorporates and transcends some of the latest thinking, but it is also old, in that it is strictly scriptural. We can find the outline for it in Christ’s teachings and in Paul’s letters, and we can look to Paul for a detailed and exciting description of what it means to be a Christian.
FOUR MAJOR COMMITMENTS
1. The Christian must be committed to the inner search. As I have suggested in this essay, this means a systematic effort to discover who you are. Christians must be willing to face themselves, their neighbors, and their God in complete openness and honesty. In the end it is only this radical honesty with ourselves that will allow us to find God, and allow God to dwell within us.
Fortunately in this age we have any number of methods available to us for self-discovery. Unfortunately, none of these methods is to my knowledge complete. Therefore, I recommend a combination of Eastern and Western disciplines. There may come a time when a church, or group of churches, or lay movement will begin to train “ministers” who are conversant with both Eastern and Western methods, and are capable of working with groups and individuals to help them find their souls. Until such time I suggest that the interested reader consult with friends who may be in such disciplines. (By “Western Methods,” I mean the various therapeutic modalities that have developed since Freud.)
Let me stress again that no therapist can fill you with the Holy Spirit. Only God can do that, and God will do it at a time of God's choosing. To enter on the inward journey is not to find, but to prepare yourself to be found.
2. The Christian must be committed to acquiring knowledge about the world. To be direct, the last place for a Christian’s head to be is in the sand. Yet this is what most of us do. We hide ourselves from the terrible facts of what this world is like today. We switch off our television sets from the painful documentary or newscast, we take refuge in books and past times that provide “escapes” from our troubles, we take drugs or drink alcohol in order to feel good or let go. This is not surprising, since information about the pain and suffering in this world is pouring in from every direction, and without God, we would soon be overwhelmed.
Yet this is the only way we are going to find God. God will only come to us in God's fullness when we have faced this world squarely--when we have dared to look at human history, at its glories and disasters; when we have dared to look at human society, with its wonderful achievements and its brutal oppressions; when we have dared to look at the human personality, with its desire to love and its ability to work the worst cruelty. God in this age will not be found hiding behind monastery walls. God will not be found by wishing ourselves into the 19th or 16th or second centuries. For us the power of God’s truth and the fullness of God's understanding can only be found right now, in the midst of this world.
To be specific, we Christians are going to have to start using our brains. We are going to have to view the search for knowledge in as important a light as the inner search. Consider for a moment those of you who read this: how much do you really know and understand about American history? How much do you know and understand about the Chinese Revolution of 1949, and the Cultural Revolution of the mid-'60s? How much do you know about the origins of the Cold War? Or of WWII? or WWI? What do you know about India? What do you know of Buddha? Freud? Marx? Mohammed? Do you understand international economics? Do you fathom the ecology crisis?
And what do you know of your own history? Do you really understand your parents and the world they lived in? How about the world their parents lived in? Do you understand your own sub-culture; do you know its strengths and weaknesses? Do you understand your own faith, or your parents’ faith or their parents’ faith? Until you know these things and more, you do not know who you are.
We are each of us the sum total of hundreds of generations of growing and yearning, of planning and failing, of building and destroying and building again. Within each of us, if we look back far enough, is the history of humankind. We contain within each of us the potential, the energy, the dreams of all who have gone before us; and if we are to discover our own unique role on earth we must look back at those dreams and try to understand why they failed and how they succeeded, so that we may dream more clearly and act more boldly.
3. The Christian must be willing to take a stand for a new world. As I have said before, we of the West are the upper-class of the world. We control and use the vast bulk of the resources of the world. As Christians we must confess that every person on this planet is our neighbor, and our brother or sister. If we follow what Jesus taught, we must love our neighbor as ourself. If we do, then we must proclaim that that neighbor has as much right to a share in the world’s treasure as we do, and that until a world redistribution of resources has taken place, we cannot rest easy.
Specifically, I would suggest four steps that any Christian should take toward this goal:
a. Christians must be committed to working in the political arena to bring about a world redistribution of resources. We must be willing to work for candidates who will do the most to help build a world in which no one goes hungry, in which everybody has equal access to resources for growth and development of mind, body, and soul, This means that we must work for a radical redistribution of production in this society. Instead of building superhighways here, we should be building roads in Africa; instead of building palatial hotels and motels throughout the world, we should be providing shelter for the needy--here and abroad; instead of paying farmers to not grow crops, we should be growing crops for the hungry of the world; instead of plowing billions into sporty automobiles, we should be putting money into tractors and mechanical vehicles for the farmers of the world.
In other words, we must share our collective excess. It is our collective wealth--our amazing industrial machine--which we need to share with the rest of the world. We have come to a point where we are glutted by our machine, and where we must engage in ever more wasteful practices to keep it running. It has turned from a gold mine into a source of pollution and degradation.
We cannot shrink from what this means. Here we are in a world that possesses the talent, the resources, the drive to provide a decent standard of living for all. And yet that standard is not met, and in fact many claim that the gap is growing and perhaps the world’s poor are getting poorer. But if we attempted to redirect our economy--given our present organization of production--we would bring about a world depression. The absurdity of that is also the clue to our salvation.
Imagine entering a depression with all our resources intact, with hands ready to work, with machines ready to produce! Yet that is exactly what happened in the Great Depression. As committed Christians we must try to find out why that happened; we must delve into economics, and look again at those old bugaboos, capitalism and socialism. We must recognize that we are talking about a reorganization of our productive resources toward social ends, rather than the end of profit.
b. The Christian must undertake to lead an ecologically sound life. This means that each Christian must undertake to cut down on his or her consumption of resources drastically. This means conservation of water, conservation of energy, conservation of natural resources.
c. Christians must be willing to take the personal step to share their own resources with the most needy. By this I mean something far more drastic than tithing. What I mean is that the Christian should be committed to not having more than anybody else. We should be committed to moving toward a living standard that is equal to the average world living standard, keeping in mind our own health and safety.
In the ideal practice, this would mean that any person who wished to enter this new path would take stock of his or her income, decide what was absolutely minimally necessary, and give the rest away. It would be important to see that the money was given in such a way that it increased the world standard of living.
I think it is important to leave the decision as to what is minimally necessary up to each person. Many people--most of us, in fact--are so used to living well that the lightest reduction brings great pain. We would probably each have to work out a plan for a gradual de-escalation of our living standard, giving up a little bit more each year. As we did so, we would no doubt become quite inventive in finding ways in which co-operation with others would bring us some of the same benefits while still freeing up more money. (We don’t all, for example, need washers and dryers in our basements; we don’t all need cars; we don’t all need television sets. These things could be shared.)
d. The Christian must be willing to analyze his or her vocation in light of the above. We must be willing to ask whether our eight hours a day, five days a week, 48 or 50 weeks a year is being used to build a better world or is being used to destroy the one we have. Let me give a small example. I recently had the distinct displeasure of working a short time for a florist who decorated the gala affairs of the rich. It was nothing for us to prepare in advance for weeks for one evening of fun that might cost as much as $16,000 for arrangements, food, band, and all. Sometimes the decorations alone--much of which was thrown away or wasted--cost in the thousands. In light of the present world situation, this strikes me as a decidedly unchristian vocation. So does surfing. So does being a ski instructor. So does making Lincoln Continentals. So does being a stockbroker.
I am not suggesting here that we draw up a list of “Christian” and “unchristian” vocations, but that we each consider our current occupations in light of the needs of the world. Such a consideration might mean a change in vocation, or a redirecting of one’s thrust, or a challenge to the organization in which one works.
Here are some examples of how this might work: (1) Workers in an automobile factory might take a hard look at what they are producing. They might ask whether such a product is really needed, or whether their company should be making something else that would better help the developing world or the poor, even if that meant a reduction in profits. After WWII, the Fiat workers in Italy did this, and refused to produce a luxury car, demanding instead that the company produce inexpensive cars for workers. (2) A stockbroker might decide to leave his or her profession and use his or her talents in underdeveloped parts of the world, or underdeveloped parts of our own country. Or the decision might be to stay on as a stockbroker, but giving away the bulk of income, and using his or her influence to help redirect this country.
Of the three steps suggested so far, no doubt most readers will find commitment #3 the most radical and the most difficult. It was the same for the rich young man who asked Jesus what he might do in order to secure eternal life. Jesus tells him to sell all his property and give the proceeds to the poor, and then to follow him. “When the young man heard that,” we are told, “he turned away crestfallen, for he was very wealthy” (Matthew 19:21, 22).
In these times we are precisely in the same position as that young man. And the advice-- and the challenge--is the same. Jesus says that we cannot serve two masters, and most of us who call ourselves Christians have been serving Mammon. We have been looking to our treasure here on earth for our security and well-being, and, of course, we have not found it. Are we not willing to follow the harsh advice of Jesus, or do we turn away crestfallen, muttering that this man must be some kind of crank?
This is the crucial choice for our time. Are we willing to give up our riches and follow Jesus? Are we willing to step off the materialist merry-go-round of the developed West? Or do we keep on clutching the painted pony, hoping that we can have the best of both worlds? The gospel says that it cannot be so, and as long as we avoid this decision, or act as though it does not exist, we stand convicted as thieves and hypocrites--the Pharisees and Sadducees of our time.
4. The Christian must stand for freedom. I almost hesitate to state this point, since it has been so abused by the supposed free world against our enemies. As Herbert Marcuse so correctly states, the term has been “reified”--made concrete when it is abstract. Thus, the free world includes Brazil and Greece and the Philippines, countries that are most decidedly unfree.
Now, as always, it is hard to stand up for freedom. It is hard to stand for free expression and free inquiry when the former has been used to justify the most unpleasant insults and the latter has brought us the atom bomb. And yet we must. The mystery and the beauty and the power of God is that humans cannot be compelled to find God, but must find God of their own free will. If we believe in God, and if we believe that God is the Ultimate, the ground and the core of our being, then we must affirm and encourage the inquisitive, searching mind. Only in a world where each of us has the freedom to inquire, and the freedom to speak our truth and to hear someone else's truth will God come to dwell in many hearts and take us on the next step in the human drama.
When this article appeared, Adam Finnerty was working with the “Shakertown Pledge,” which calls people to a simpler, more consistent lifestyle.
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