Why "Neo Axial?" The Death-Burial-Resurrection Cycle of Religious Faith

The Neo Axial Age, Part 7

“When you know better, you do better.” — Maya Angelo

When God sent the wise men from the East (and there were very likely more than three), it was more than merely fodder for quaint Christmas nativity scenes or pageants portrayed by children on church stages each December. It was, actually, a Divine declaration that a revolution was coming to the Jewish faith. For here were the Jewish people, oppressed under the thumb of Roman rule, pulling together under their religious leaders for solidarity and comfort, to help them make meaning of their enslaved state, and of the profound silence of God that had lingered like a dark cloud over them for the previous 500 years. But they had the Torah. They had the prophets, They had the books of wisdom. All of which foretold the coming of the Messiah. They placed their hope in these. They held on, as any of us would, waiting for Divine deliverance from the oppression of Rome.

But when Jesus arrived, not one leader in the Jewish religious establishment saw him coming. Not one interpreted the prophecies to expect this sort of messiah to appear. Not one expected Jesus to be … well, Jesus.

But other men did. 

These “wise men” from the East were mystics who searched for answers to life’s mysteries in the stars. Today, we might call them astrologists, though that label would not be exactly right either. But they were definitely not members of “God’s chosen people.” They were outsiders. They were pagans. They were not a part of “the people of God” … at least, not in the way the Jews of those days understood that concept. 

Yet they did read the signs correctly — their “pagan” signs, using arts forbidden, or at the very least frowned upon, by their Jewish contemporaries. Not only did they understand what those signs meant, they pursued their fulfillment. The star they saw called for a great king to arise in the land of the Jews, so they went on a quest to find him, so they might honor him with their best gifts. 

This journey probably took three years. That’s how old Jesus was when they finally reached him. Consider for a moment the level of faith such a quest required of them. These men were not following this path on a whim. They believed what they were doing mattered. When at last they did locate the child their prophecies foretold, we should also consider how terribly unlikely it was for Jesus to seem anything like a kingly figure to them: A boy born to the peasant class, living in a backwater town that no one liked. “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” was the common saying of the day. Yet these wise men who were not Jews came to the Jews to declare a change that would rock the Jewish faith, and the world, forever. 

I point this out — to my fellow Christians mainly — to remind us of the fact that it is well within the practice of God to use voices from “outside the camp” to tell the world he’s about to do a new thing … especially when it seems no one “inside the camp” is really listening.

Whatever message God was trying to send by the manner of Jesus’s arrival, it’s clear that it had something to do with the total upending of all the status markers and forms of rank the current systems of religion and government held so dear. This new “king” would usher in a system unlike anything that had previously been seen on the earth, one that was not built on rank or prestige or status or power over others, but rather on being a nobody, from nowhere, having nothing, with no earthly power at all. His kingship, which is to say his authority, would be built on something else entirely. 

The wise men were harbingers of a new age. Christianity came through Jesus, and because we humans are what we are, Christendom followed fast on its heels. But Christianity, in its purest form, endured. It endured on the fringes of the earthly kingdom Christendom built. It endured in the broken ones and the humble ones, in the no names, and the nowheres. It endured in the addicts and the inmates and the lost souls who knew they were powerless and sought only love. It has endured to this day in just this Way. Even now, it thrives, and even in this current madness, it is not at risk. It is only Christendom — that is, the earthbound “kingdom” humans have built with Christian branding — that is under threat. Indeed, that kingdom has already fallen, though those under its spell have not yet realized this, or been willing to see it, and stand even now over its corpse, defending it as if it were alive. 

But it is dead. It bears the stench of death. We all recognize this. All but those who are still clinging to its rotting religious structures, which can no longer support us, or make sense of the world, or carry us where we need to go.  

We humans get very attached to our worldviews and traditions, and while that is certainly not at all a negative trait in us, there are times when we must let go of known systems that, while imperfect as all human systems are, perhaps once sustained us, but now hold us back from taking steps of growth essential to our survival and our thriving as a species. Religion at its best is meant to free us from our fears and call us forth to become all we are meant to be. The moment religion ceases to perform that function, and becomes instead its opposite — a restrictive power that reinforces our fears and holds us back from the good we might yet become — it must be thrown off, deconstructed and reformed until it can be refounded as something larger, deeper, richer, and truer than anything it was before, able to hold all that we’ve now become, all that we now know and realize we do not know, and the full breadth of the challenges we now face that our mothers and fathers never conceived nor could have imagined.

In a way, Einstein and his fellow scientists were like the wise men of old, seekers who looked deep into the stars and through their discoveries told us that everything about the way we see the world was about to change. They were harbingers of a new age, too, what I am calling the Neo Axial Age — an age, like the first Axial Age, from which new systems of spiritual belief and practice will emerge that will shape the path of humanity for generations to come … provided, of course, we don’t self-destruct first.

How Einstein Broke the Story of Everything

To be clear, I am not saying that Christianity in its pure form, as Jesus lived it and taught it, is in any way at risk. As I asserted earlier, that faith has continued to endure and advance across nations and generations since the time of Christ, carried forward in the hearts of the humble, broken ones who reject the fortunes of the world in favor of serving only love. God is not worried about the flourishing of his Kingdom on earth, and neither should we be. 

What I am saying is that the way Christian faith looks and thinks and behaves in the world will be very different, needs to become very different, from the earthbound, power-driven forms we see displayed in the Christian religious complex today. Christendom has made a mockery of Christ, raised to such ridiculous levels of buffoonery as to proudly exalt men who embody in nearly every respect the exact opposite of all that Jesus is and everything he taught. 

It’s the humble, and not the proud, who will show us the way forward. It is by love, and not by force, that the world will be rescued from its darker impulses. It is by laying down our lives for one another, and by our own choice “taking the form of a servant” and lifting up our fellow humans that we will overcome our differences, and repair the world. This is the Way of Christ. It is the Way he modeled, It is the Way he taught. This pure Christian faith is not only worth keeping in this dark time; it is in fact the light we need most right now. It is the Way forward.

And it will survive, as it always has. But as Christendom falls, Christianity will emerge in new forms and in new ways that will not look much at all like the Christian Religions of the Modern Age. And that, I say, is a necessary and very good thing. 

The Divine Presence — what we call God — is an Unfolding Revelation. How could something infinite be anything less? There is no end to the unfolding of his beauty, no final climax to the revelation of her love. God is borderless. Eternal. Never ending. Transcending every word we use in an attempt to describe them. He cannot be contained. God is like a river tumbling down a mountain toward a distant sea we cannot fathom. The landscape changes, and the water conforms to meet it. But the nature of the water remains the same. 

Any religion that tries to “freeze frame” the River at a particular juncture in its flow and proclaim, “This is it! This is the ultimate, absolute, correct form for the river, and any form other than this form is heresy and blasphemy!” is completely missing the point about what the River is, or what the River is for. 

The River we call God is for union, you see. God is after Oneness. He wants you, and me, and everything and everyone everywhere to jump in the River, to become one with the Water of Life. “The summing up of all things in Christ,” as the Apostle Paul put it. With that as God’s aim, the forms of our religion certainly matter, but they are not what matters most. What matters most is the living interplay between the Living Water and us. The River that is God is constantly unfolding Himself to us, revealing Herself to us, inviting us to join in communion with Them in ever-deepening levels of intimacy, beauty, and adventure. Of course those forms must change over time. Of course they must develop as we grow. Of course what worked for us in the past will not work for us forever. A change in paradigm doesn’t mean what you have believed up to now is wrong — just that it was incomplete. A 5 year old girl has a very different understanding of her father than she will when she is 35. But that in no way means the 5 year old is wrong about her dad. 

We are in a wilderness time. A spiritual desert. But we are also in a thin place, a holy, sacred moment in history, where God is breaking through all around us, doing new things in new ways, far afield “outside the camp,” and inviting us to participate and partner with the Spirit in this great work if we are willing. All we need to do is open our eyes to notice where the Divine is active and join Them right there in the middle of it, no matter where it is or with whom it is or how it looks to our traditional minds.

How to Navigate the Wilderness

Right now, questions of essence are more important than questions of form. How do we want Life in this new age to feel for all of us? Not how should it look or be structured or categorized — we must stop trying to name things before their time. We Americans, in particular, have always been too quick to categorize and catalog the unknown as a way to tamp down our fear and make a show of our savvy. In the process of our rush toward domination and control, we have devastated entire cultures, destroyed ecosystems, and generated a painful list of problems — consequences that arose as a direct result of charging ahead too quickly because of our fear, pride, or greed — that continue to plague us to this day.

Not this time, my friends. Not this wilderness. It’s wonder and curiosity, not fear and the rush to control, that we need as the North Star to guide us now.

So, instead of fear and self-protectionism, here’s the way I recommend:

Cultivate presence. Practice being right here. Then, follow the joy breadcrumbs that come across your path. Look for simple connections, easy opportunities to love, to reach across the gulfs of difference that divide us. Don’t just be human; practice being humane. See the other as yourself. Let go the impulse to look away, to self protect, to defend your righteousness, to be entitled, to be too busy or too important. Instead, lay down your life … in tiny, tiny ways. Be curious. Ask questions. Be vulnerable. Be okay with not knowing. Be open to being changed by another person’s story. Let yourself become something more than you are. 

Above all, believe there’s a better story waiting for us on the other side. 

We really can find our way through this. But only together. And only if enough of us choose love over fear. 

I, for one, have made my choice. 

What’s yours?

(Note: This is the 7th installment in a series of essays. You can find all the entries by following these links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, and Part 8.)