Roots Of Psychopathy In The Church (Part 3)

Most movements are organized around concepts. The people within the movement do not have a problem with the concepts because they are, after all, in the movement because they believe in those concepts.

There are thousands of church organizations. They each are organized around certain concepts. That is, they all possess clear conceptual formulas that explain what they are all about. The problem is that while these concepts lay out ideologies about who people perceive themselves to be, how they organize themselves around those concepts, and how they would like to act in the world, they do not in any way help people with what they are actually doing. In other words, the ends have been defined in certain terms, but before people can get around to actually doing these things all manner of other things need to be defined and adhered to. People's actual relationship with God in daily life - which is supposedly at the core of faith - rarely, if ever, becomes real. Go ahead. Ask someone to describe that relationship in real, tangible terms, and see if you do not simply get a conceptual formula. Even activist-oriented expressions of faith are no different, as if that were what God is asking for in the first place. Trading actual interaction with a living God for accomplishments, organization, and programming they become fools. Elaine Aron's research using fMRI's makes it clear that 80 - 90% of people have brains that are not capable of a deep, connected integration of what is actually present to them in the world.

The options of what people can actually do in life in regard to simply being open to the presence of God become coopted in favour planning to do it. Faith becomes essentially theoretical, acquiescence to being moderately useful. Model citizens in other words to ideals that are set by inchoate ideologues which have nothing to do with daily resurrection and meeting God in the natural world.