Presence: A Global Conversation for a New Earth.

We continue our look at cartography, moving from the past to the present. How did the interpretation of Christology by the Holy Roman Empire become a worldwide religion that is defined by division and denomination?  In this episode, I’m taking the principles that emerged in the very genesis of the story and showing how they played out in the history of Israel and then became the foundation for Christological interpretation.  Further, the interpretation of Christology as a new religion has prevailed for 2 millennia as an assumption. However, there are now numerous questions about the state of Christianity that are troubling. Could it be that the interpretation of Christology is poised to evolve into an integral worldview, leading to a radical shift or even an evolutionary leap? This is what we propose.

In episode 4 of our series on the Cartography of the Christian religion we discuss the root causes that have led to what we see looking at the current map. To do this requires starting at the beginning or genesis of the Narrative.  The story begins with Adam and progresses to Jesus who is called the last Adam. That sounds like a seamless story that defines a problem from its very start and then, over centuries of time, evolves into an entire paradigm identified as death. And whatever was the cause of death was removed by actions surrounding the role and function of Jesus the Christological individual and modeled by the Christological collective known as the body.  We now discuss questions raised by our interpretation of this evolutionary story. Did Jesus “kind of” defeat death? Was death defeated for a small percentage of the human race? What was the root cause of death to begin with?  And why does the story outline 2 possible identities starting with Adam and Abraham and evolve into a first century conflict between those identities that resulted in the coming of a new world paradigm? Why is universal God identity the outcome of the story? It’s all about Christology.

We continue to use the historical model of Spiral Dynamics to illustrate how worldviews and their evolution related to the interpretation of God identity.  The first 2 worldviews illustrated by the Spiral model are Archaic and Tribal. These 2 worldviews show up in the Biblical Narrative as Archaic Adam and Tribal Abraham. Both are in the Genesis of the story. These 2 figures set the stage for the evolution of spiritual consciousness with regard to universal God identity. Understanding how Adam and Abraham understood God identity is a necessary first step in the journey. We are proposing that the Biblical Narrative is actually one seamless story that traces the beginnings of spiritual consciousness all the way to our present day map. Spiritual consciousness with regard to God identity did not start with Jesus. To understand how we have a current map of separation, division and denomination in the world religion of Christianity we have to start at the beginning and then see if we can find where the interpretation of the story got off track along the way.

We are using cartography to view the Christian landscape via a map. The map helps define the great diversity of churches and denominations.  Our series explains why the result of 2,000 years of evolution led to such division. In this episode we use Spiral Dynamics to trace the history of the situation. The state of Christianity and the church must be understood from the beginning or Genesis of the God Identity story. So I show how everything preceding Jesus and the apostolic writers set the stage for an interpretation of Christology that led to a world religion.  From here we will propose a new future for Christology, one that results in world-centric unity.

The concept I’ll be using relating to map making is cartography. The audience for this series is any and everyone interested in having a global conversation for a new earth. All are welcome regardless of denominational affiliation or non-affiliation, Catholic or Protestant and those who are now post Christian or Trans-religious.  The series will address the map as it evolved from the past, meaning how the map took shape in the first few centuries and then expanded into a world religion of thousands of denominations and factions. We will then address the map as to how it looks today. And I’ll ask each of you to identify your place on today’s map.