The Church Invisible
The Church visible/invisible, and the Gospel visible/invisible.
I’ve been church-shopping the past month or two with a couple of dear friends, and I’m very glad to be going back to churches, because I can feel something working in me again that I haven’t felt in a while — warmth, light, life. An energy that reminds me of the reality of shalom — the harmony that comes from everything abiding its appropriate nature, effort, and lawfulness. An energy that reconciles self-abdicating kenosis and healthy self-advocacy into a perfect, organic harmony. A life that is law, that is love, that is life. I’ve come to understand this energy as the energy of the living Christ, and I’m pretty sure this energy is working in me more now because I’ve been going back to church.
I first heard the idea the “church visible” and the “church invisible” in one of M. Scott Peck’s books — I think it was the first book in the People of the Lie series. A priest recognizes Peck, a therapist, as a member of the “church invisible” — the body of people who are committed to doing God’s work, whether or not they explicitly belong to any religious denomination. The idea goes way back, arguably to the beginning of Christianity — and arguably, in some form, before that.
I am attending church “visible(s)” and in the process I am reconnecting with the church invisible. To me, the church invisible is the true church, but the church invisible and the church visible depend on each other. The church visible is a container that kindles and protects a portal to the church invisible. Also, the church visible is the lava crust that cools as the bright magma of revelation spreads on this entropic plane. You don’t have to attend the visible to be a member of the invisible, and you’re not guaranteed to be a participant in the invisible by attending the visible.
I think the main purpose of the church invisible is to work toward a kingdom here on earth — toward a world of justice and mercy; toward a world where, as predicted by the prophets, there will be no war or sorrow, and harmony will reign. Is this an attainable goal, ultimately? I don’t know that that’s important. But I do think it’s important to think and act like the kingdom is real.
In the NDE literature, people often say that the world is place of experimentation and creativity, and there are spiritual movements — Christian Science, New Thought, Law of Attraction, modern-day “prosperity” gospel — that emphasize that we can learn to use our consciousness to create positive experiences for ourselves in life. All of this makes sense to me, but I also think earth is a place but where we’re invited, eventually, to set aside our essentially self-serving fantasies, and to get serious about doing our part to create a world that really works for everybody.
Washington, DC is a place where people like to be big, and to flex themselves. There’s a lot of competitiveness in the world right now, there’s a lot of competitiveness in America, and there’s a lot of competitiveness in DC. People want to feel powerful and important. When observing people who seem to feel powerful, I think it’s an interesting practice to ask (in one’s head): “Ah, yes. But are you working to build the kingdom?”
A couple of weeks ago I went to a church in DC and afterward I went grocery shopping. Many people seemed especially friendly and alert to one another in the aisles. The cashier was making a vocal effort to be extra helpful. That’s how I felt, too. I thought, “It feels like a lot of people in this place went to church earlier today.” If true, I find that fascinating. It was like watching the kingdom being built in real time. I imagined weekly pulses like this adding up to the historic Christendom, and I could appreciate why fundamentalists sometimes act like “more church” is a reflexive, quick fix to social problems.
I think it will always be part of the work of the church invisible to reform and renew the church visible. (This is baked into the gospel itself, in Jesus’ clashes with the religious authority of his time.) The language, the propositions, and the habits of the church visible are important. It seems clear to me that some of the things said regularly in the church visible already are true and generalizable. God loves, and God loves the way rain falls — on the just and the unjust alike. God saves, and God’s kindness leads to turning (back) to God. Relationship with Jesus is a path to salvation — a path to optimal orientation personally, interpersonally, systemically, spiritually toward one’s best-fitted slot in the kingdom project. (Maybe not the only path? But a good one, to be sure.)
Also, the church visible can get stuck. I believe there’s Iron Age chaff in scripture that can be accidentally carried forward. And in any organization there’s an inevitable, tidal pressure toward norms — and then masks, compartmentalization, even attachment. The church invisible isn’t like that. Any specificity is merely approached asymptotically. Any culture is merely indicated — as though in flickers. We’re always on the way. And at bottom, the church invisible requires you to bring every last cell of your psychic anatomy into the light, both divine and beast, both scripture-identified and not. It’s clear to me that it’s only when you feel all of this loved, in divine sunlight, in the deep, fluid, reactive goodness of divinity, that you can really begun to understand Christ, and really begin to understand the Cross of our incarnate experience.
Not even the gospels are quite the Gospel, I would say. There’s a dynamic and a nuance that defies even the most well-chosen language. There’s a healthy restlessness in the harness of church(es) visible.
And I think there is still an underlying metaphysical system to feel into, too. A structure, a true Gospel — the deep order of the world. Human forms imitate this — including the written gospels — and help anchor it here. By whatever means we pull this signal from the noise, it’s vital to tap in.
And you know it when you see it. And the church visible can be a good way. Even a very good way.