Here is a seeming spiritual law. Not that it itself is so much a spiritual thing as a human thing. Let’s call it a law of human behaviour which excels in a religious atmosphere. Here it is. “The old will ALWAYS persecute the new.” That is NOT a maybe. That should always be a given. Judaism persecuted those they could not reconvert; the same may be said of Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Pentecostalism, Bapt-ism, Charismania-ism and so forth.
We may ALL expect to be roundly castigated and condemned by those who have unilaterally removed themselves from our orbit because of divergent paradigms. This is manifested in subtle and not so subtle ways. Pejoratives, putdowns, pretences at superior understanding or knowledge, shaming, blaming, higher levels of spiritual purity, and many other things including using weird religious words (Today I am meditating on a verse – really? You would never talk like that in day to day living – use that language at the Walmart checkout and see how far you get.
On one forum this week, I found myself being put in a box without any supporting evidence, and then having the box set on fire. When we use these practices on each other, I think we miss our collective objective and blunt our message. There are those amongst us, who, realising their own mortality, and the deficit of years they have remaining, choose to leave those environs which least support their goal to use their experience, talents and focus, to leave this world a better place than they found it, and some of these people are our wisest elders.
While we have at least a modicum of humility, in agreeing that we, none of us, have yet “arrived”, then it behooves us to shed all signs of unremitting immaturity and focus on edifying one another in love as opposed to correcting one another as agenda based doctrine police. Let us focus on the wilful act of discovering new and effective ways to build each other up with love, and let the rest go.
Bearing in mind that the old ways seem to always persecute the new, let us ensure that we are not of that persuasion.