Transformation as Waking and Walking Together

In my last post, I wrote about how religion, if it is to be transformational, must be countercultural. Perhaps the most countercultural religious message ever is this one: “Awaken!”

We sleepwalk through most of our lives, and our culture tends to support this sleepwalking. If you bring even the tiniest bit of real awareness to this very moment—in all its horror and beauty—you will be changed, and you will be lured toward changing the world.

But rather than bringing our attention to this moment, our conformist, consumerist culture constantly encourages us to do things that keep us spiritually asleep. Most of what we buy, watch, read, eat, drink or otherwise consume might as well be a sleeping potion (and a lot of it is just that).

Resistance to the dominant culture requires building an alternative with other people and supporting one another in our efforts to see (and act upon) things as they really are—rather than through the filters of fear and unreasoned conformity.

Real and meaningful spiritual growth will not be gained by naming the problem and then transcending it—which has sometimes been the orthodox religious response to suffering and evil in the world. Mere transcendence (whether it is achieved in this world or any other) does not transform anything.

Rather, we move forward on the path of transformation by naming the problem and incarnating the compassionate response in community with others.

But, if we are to walk together, rather than sleepwalk together, we must adopt some way of walking that (1) keeps us on the path, (2) keeps us going in the same direction on that path and (3) can bring us back to the path when we inevitably stray from it.

The early American Puritans were not nice people in many ways. In fact, they were often hard-hearted, mean, judgmental and exclusivist. However, they did something really beautiful when they started articulating

their concept of covenant.

For example, in the 1632 covenant of the Center Church of Hartford, we find these words: “walking together therein, with all brotherly love and mutual watchfulness to the building up of one another in faith and love...”

There are dozens of other examples of such covenants from this era, in which members of the church pledged to God and to one another to walk together in the ways of love—not some mushy, idealistic love,
but a kind of love that results in building something real, something that can only be built when we all pledge to walk together.

Religious transformation requires covenant (or something very much like it) in order to become an actual human undertaking rather than just a nice idea.