Jesus + Darwin

We had a great time with Michael Dowd the other night at the Integral Center (see previous post for more on Michael).

The first half of our talk focuses on the intersection between the Wilberian lineage of evolutionary theory and Michael’s own lineage, which is a continuation of the work of Thomas Berry. We line up some of the key concepts and work out some of the kinks.

It’s the second half of our talk where Michael goes a little more off the reservation — sharing about about a new prophetic ministry that is expressing itself through him. As we point out, a prophet is not here to win an argument, he’s here to tell us what the fuck is up. Michael does it with both fervor and humor. It’s fun to see a real spiritual innovator at work in the prime of his life. Give it a click!

Also, here are transcriptions of some of my favorite parts of Michael’s message:

I draw a line in the sand in terms of what I’m willing to debate, and if someone is on this side of the line in the sand they can have whatever metaphysical belief, whatever spiritual belief, but if they’re on that side of the line I’m going to do everything I can to convert them, whatever they are.

And the line in the sand simply is: do they have deep-time eyes? That is, do they have evolutionary understanding; do they have an understanding of reality that goes back millions and billions of years, not just thousands of years, and into the future? I mean, somebody that believes that Jesus is coming back in the next twenty years and the end of the world is going to happen does not have deep-time eyes.

Do they have a global heart, and a global commitment? In other words is their commitment just to their own enlightenment, if they’re on the eastern side of things, or their own salvation if they’re on the Christian side of things? In other words, is their commitment to the health and well being of the larger body of life that we’re a part of?

So…deep-time eyes, a global heart, and a valuing of evidence as in some very real way divine communication. Whether you call it scripture, God’s word, whatever, it doesn’t matter. But do they value evidence over ancient texts?

And if somebody had deep-time eyes, a global heart, and they value evidence over ancient texts, I’ll give them whatever metaphysical belief they want to have, and just bow to it.

But if they have a short-time perspective, lacking deep-time eyes, if they’re commitment is just to their own sort of ego self or one of these smaller circles, or if they are dissing evidence, then I’m going to do everything I can to sort of invite them into a sacred evolutionary understanding.

[hr]

The archetype that I’ve been living in for the last twenty years has been minister-evangelist, and I now feel compelled to step into a very different, complimentary, but a different evolution. The archetypes that I now feel most closely aligned with are not minister-evangelist anymore, it’s prophet-reformer. And by prophet I mean simply somebody who is speaking on behalf of reality and doing so with sort of divine authority.

I asked myself this question: if I have one message left to communicate to the world what would it be? And I just sat with that. And what emerged into my consciousness was: show religious people how the new atheists are God’s prophets.

Prophets, contrary to popular opinion, are not people who are channeling an otherworldly entity, nor were they predicting the future. Prophets were those who saw what was real, who sensed what was emerging, and then spoke a word of warning to the people that went basically “get right with reality folks, or else”. Like, we need to align with reality or perish. That’s the stance of a prophet.

I believe that we are in the early stages of what will eventually be known as the evidential reformation. ~Michael Dowd