An effective way to neither know God or yourself is to live from the law. A false christ is a christ who is a construct of the law. A false you and a crippled son is one who is born of the law instead of being born of the Spirit. We are not born of the Spirit because we have the gifts. We are born again as a son when we move from our Adam into Christ our life.
Oneness is neither a piety or pie in the sky. Oneness is with God as the real you in the real Christ. We are real because God is real. We find our reality in Him and in what God has done to annul our condition of disconnection and un-wholeness. Our real God is three. Unity in diversity is the source of identity, wholeness and agency. This is life and this is love. We are included in the fellowship of this life.
POSITIONING
To be real; to be whole; to have identity and agency our persons must be located in Persons that are larger than we. David wrote of the, ‘The rock that is higher than I’. Isaiah spoke of the ‘Rock from which we are hewn,’ and the author of Hebrews speaks of the power of a limitless life.
They were speaking of the personal that is of eternal substance. There is nothing more personal and communal than the trinity.
SUBSTITUTES
Theologically speaking, this substance cannot be the law because the law is an abstraction. Neither can it be religion or philosophy because on their own they are relative. Their pseudo-substance is the shadows, position and constructs of the knowledge of good and evil – the manifestation of disconnection from God.
An identity in a group or community is only a relative identity. A genuinely core identity for human beings is to be a son/daughter of God. Other identities may distinguish us. But they are facile and capable of insulating us from our real identity in God.
Words, positions and definitions do not establish our identity. Our state of being does this. We are sons in spirit and in truth when we agree that Jesus is our life. As a result we have the communion with Father and Holy Spirit that Jesus has.
GENUINE IDENTITY
Our identity is real when we are interwoven with God as persons and as the community of the saints. We are un-real and phantoms of our potential selves when our identity is in anything less than Jesus, God’s son. Thus an identity in a denomination or belief system, religion or philosophy is mainly phantasmagorical and a rope of sand.
THE REAL YOU COMES AFTER THE SCHOOL MASTER OF THE FALSE YOU
We have this real identity in ‘the rock that is higher than I.’ We are not disconnected from God. We are more than near Him. As sons and daughters, we are part of Him. We are part of His being, yet separate agents. We are interwoven with the trinity as Jesus said we would be: ‘On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you’ John 14.20. Richard Rohr writes,
NOT BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION
“In order to be vital, we must be able to demonstrate a metaphysical core for Christian spirituality and holiness—not merely a behavioural, psychological, or moral one. A Trinitarian metaphysic provides just such a vibrant and inherent core. Trinity is and must be our stable, rooted identity that does not come and go, rise and fall. This is the rock of salvation.” This is where we came from. This is where we have been planted. This is where we belong. Your privilege is to agree with this belonging and flourish form it.” (1)
BORN AGAIN - WHEN
We are born into our true selves - when we die to religion, or to materialism, or to the cult of consumerism or the cult that convinces us that we have the right to kill the earth for the benefit of what we have become used to. Baptised into Christ our life we can rise from lies to join the liberty of God’s loving the world.
This kind of union with God unites us with light and truth itself. Here we have the mind of Christ and are delivered from the illusions of the knowledge of good and evil. Living from within a law-culture with law on our hearts we can possess political understanding because we are in the realm of Adam. But to own spiritual discernment we need to have moved to the new covenant realm of Christ our life. We need to be born again. Oneness with God is participation in His light.
(1) Rohr, Richard. The Divine Dance: The Trinity and your transformation (Kindle Locations 1230-1233). SPCK. Kindle Edition.