Silence: The First Language of God – by Ron Martoia
Before I invite you to wade into deeper waters with Ron Martoia I thought it might be helpful to quote to you a few potently dangerous things Alice Bailey said in her demonically inspired book “The Externalization of the Hierarchy” (which is simply the New Age equivalent of “The manifestation of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth”) to demonstrate how the post-modern Emergent Church is acting out her directives and, of course, that of the demon who inspired her to write her books. Bear in mind that she was inspired by an entity called Djwhal Khul (1 Timothy 4:1).
When we come to consider religion in the new world order, we are faced with a far more complicated problem and yet, at the same time, with a far easier one. The reason for this is that the subject of religion is one which is studied and somewhat understood by the majority of men. On theological interpretations there are wide differences; on a widespread recognition of a universal divine Intelligence or of God (by whatever name the all-embracing Life may be called) there is a general similarity of reaction. Forms of religion are so different, and the theological adherents are so fierce in their loyalties and partisanships, that the emergence of a world religion is necessarily of profound difficulty. But that emergence is very close at hand and the differences are relatively superficial. The new world religion is nearer than many think, and this is due to two things: first, the theological quarrels are mainly over non-essentials, and secondly, the younger generation is basically spiritual but quite uninterested in theology.
The intelligent youth of all countries are rapidly repudiating orthodox theology, state ecclesiasticism and the control of the church. They are neither interested in man-made interpretations of truth nor in past quarrels between the major world religions. At the same time, they are profoundly interested in the spiritual values and are earnestly seeking verification of their deep seated unvoiced recognitions. They look to no bible or system of so-called inspired spiritual knowledge and revelation, but their eyes are on the undefined larger wholes in which they seek to merge and lose themselves, such as the state, an ideology, or humanity itself. In this expression of the spirit of self-abnegation may be seen the appearance of the deepest truth of all religion and the justification of the Christian message. Christ, in His high place, cares not whether men accept the theological interpretations of scholars and churchmen, but He does care whether the keynote of His life of sacrifice and service is reproduced among men (to be poured out like water from a pitcher in service to mankind); it is immaterial to Him whether the emphasis laid upon the detail and the veracity of the Gospel story is recognized and accepted, for He is more interested that the search for truth and for subjective spiritual experience should persist; He knows that within each human heart is found that which responds instinctively to God, and that the hope of ultimate glory lies hid in the Christ-consciousness.
Therefore, in the new world order, spirituality will supersede theology; living experience will take the place of theological acceptances. The spiritual realities will emerge with increasing clarity and the form aspect will recede into the background; dynamic, expressive truth will be the keynote of the new world religion. The living Christ will assume His rightful place in human consciousness and see the fruition of His plans, sacrifice and service, but the hold of the ecclesiastical orders will weaken and disappear. Only those will remain as guides and leaders of the human spirit who speak from living experience, and who know no creedal barriers; they will recognize the onward march of revelation and the new emerging truths. These truths will be founded on the ancient realities but will be adapted to modern need and will manifest progressively the revelation of the divine nature and quality. God is now known as Intelligence [The Sage from heaven; Wisdom] and Love. (Emphasis and “to be poured out like water from a pitcher in service to mankind,“ “The Sage from heaven” and “wisdom” parenthesis added)
Compare this to what Ron Martoia said on a conference held at Conover, N.C. on January 29, 2007.
Despite decades of tweaking evangelistic methods, there is little evidence that many Christians are experiencing true life change, Ron Martoia told church leaders Jan. 29.
. . . that failure is because Christians in the Western world have been prone to think of salvation as a “point-of-sale” transaction that focuses on getting to heaven instead of appreciating that Jesus came to fulfil the Old Testament promise of shalom, a concept that suggests wholeness, wellness, and peace.
Preaching about forgiveness from sin becomes increasingly ineffective in a postmodern world where a sense of guilt and obligation is less often operative. In contemporary American culture, one can no longer assume that people identify themselves as sinners in need of grace.
“People may not think of themselves as sinners going to hell, but they seek wholeness and recognize they’re not there,” he said.
Martoia’s observation that “one can no longer assume that people identify themselves as sinners in need of grace” is an understatement. Since the very beginning mankind has increasingly denied its need for God’s salvation and His undeserved grace because fallen man believes he can gain salvation through sacrificial living and selfless service (good works). In essence this is the way of Cain of which we read in the first chapter of the book of Jude. Despite God’s curse on the soil of the earth (Genesis 3:17), Cain chose to please God in the sweat of his brow (a consequential metaphor of the cursed ground and his good woks) by offering the fruit of his toil and hard work — the fruit of the cursed ground. This has remained the pattern throughout the history of mankind which is characterized by a staunch and dogged denial and rejection of God’s way of redemption through the forgiveness of sins which is obtained through the shedding of an innocent victim’s blood. No wonder the Lord Jesus said that “men loved the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds were evil,” their evil deeds not necessarily being all the bad things that they do but their own good works in sacrificial living and selfless service to obtain for themselves entrance into the Kingdom of God (salvation). Let’s face it, man’s best works are but filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6).
John 3:18-22 He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. “For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. “But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.
Ron Martoia explained the process of “getting there” (to obtain wholeness) in his presentation which he called “Silence is the first language of God.” He started off by connecting to Trevor Hudson’s presentation of the lamp and the pitcher of water, wanting to talk to his audience how the lamp (i.e. the light of the world) can help us with the water (sacrificial service to mankind by the libation or pouring out of yourself). He began by saying”
I want to talk to you about Juan de Yepes Alvarez who was born in 1542, who became known as San Juan de la Cruz and we know him as Saint John of the Cross, and he was the one that said “silence is the first language of God.” . . . Why is silence important and what kind of silence actually are we talking about? . . . We are invited in a couple of different places in Scripture to really think about what does it mean for us to come to quiet and what kind of silence are we actually talking about? I want us to talk this morning about Psalm 46: 10 silence. In all of my conversations with pastors, spiritual formation people within the church; when I ask them . . . how do you guys do Psalm 46:10 silence, “Be still and know that I am God?” One of the things that’s really interesting is I find people not talking so much about being still and knowing that He’s God but sitting still and knowing He’s God. They sort of get there’s an exterior silence that’s necessary but not so much how do we come to this interior silence peace. . . .
The Hebrew word “raphah” means “to sink down into as hay into a flame,” to get enveloped, to come down into this silence space where life on the exterior world becomes no conversation in our . . . and where even my interior dialogue shhhhh, sinks and disappears. . . . many of us are very familiar with exterior silence . . . we talk about we are going on retraits, we are going to shut out ipods, no cell phones, maybe even no text and we’re just going to free associate; . . . we’re going to let the external world, and we’re just going to begin to reflect inside of our heads. And that’s ok, that’s a kind of silence. But I’m not convinced that exterior silence without interior silence can create the sort of dramatic transformation that will allow us to pour water out, to pour our lives out. . . . I think the goal of being the light that lights the world is that eventually you and I will come to a place that we really can do that kenosis thing, you know, pour ourselves out, the selfless outpouring. So how do we actually do that? It seems to me that Psalm 46:10 alludes to a different kind of silence. I don’t think its talking about sitting still and knowing that He’s God. . . . I think Psalm 46:10 is inviting you and I into a very different kind of silence, a silence on our inner space that allows us to stop the dialogue inside of our heads. I want you to think about this for a moment. Most of us live our lives in a constructive reality that is going on inside our heads in what we call our ego; the ego is the thing that makes sense of Ron-ness. Ron’s Ron-ness is all about the story Ron tells himself in his head. . . . more often or not it is a a very inaccurate reflection of reality, its very constructive. And I wonder if God isn’t inviting you and I to allow that constructive reality of who I think I am to just drop. . . .
We live on auto-pilot in our lives. . . . constructing our reality in our heads. And I think the thing that Paul is inviting you and I into is he says ”I want to be crucified with Christ in such a way that I no longer live” and the last word in the Greek language is the word “ego.” The “I” in Greek is “ego,” it’s the construction of who I am and Paul says “I wanna let that thing go,” because what I realize is the more I tell the story in my head the more I construct a false sense of self. The real me is not in my head but its constructed through this egoic storytelling I tell myself about who I am and the world I’m interacting with. And most of the times its not all that healthy. Its either much more inflated that it needs to be or its more depressed that it needs to be. So Its not really an actual depiction of who I am. And I think what God invites us into . . . is that our reality, who we really, really are is rooted in the very core of how God has made us and that is the IMAGO DEI, the Image of God.
Ron Martoia went on to say that God wants us to allow the ongoing storytelling in our heads (a constructed false self or ego) to drop out and to allow the Imago Dei, my life is hid with Christ in God, I no longer live but Christ lives within me, to allow that thing to live. “Because when that lives I’m not so worried about what people think. I’m not so worried about posturing myself and positioning myself and making sure you think I’ve got it figured out and I got all the answers and you’ll think good of me. I’m not sleuthing around (checking things out in dictionaries, commentaries and even the Bible) trying to make sure I’m well-positioned. The ego does that, the Imago Dei, doesn’t care.” (Parenthesis mine)
Very impressive and very well articulated but there’s one thing missing in Ron Martoia’s selfless and detoxified egoic presentation thus far and that is the cross of Jesus Christ. What I find so fascinating about the emergent fraternity is that they love to quote Paul when it suits them just fine but when it does not fit into their agendas they conveniently “move far beyond trite (commonplace, stale, hackneyed, corny) bible verse quoting and engage with the deepest reflection on what it means to self-lead our own deep change and then understand how to help others do the same.” (Parenthesis mine). What that means in layman’s lingo is that we should stop reading and quoting corny Bible verses and engage in deep silent meditation (centering prayer) to orchestrate our own deep change (a false salvation) and to help others to fall into the same ditch. Paul emphatically ALSO said:
1 Corinthians 2:2 For I resolved to know nothing (to be acquainted with nothing, to make a display of the knowledge of nothing, and to be conscious of nothing) among you except Jesus Christ (the Messiah) and Him crucified.
1 Corinthians 1:18 For the story and message of the cross is sheer absurdity and folly to those who are perishing and on their way to perdition, but to us [who are saved and know that they are] who are being saved it is the [manifestation of] the power of God. (Parenthesis mine)
Why, for the sake of a sound and alert mind, does Ron Martoia need his life to be hid with Christ in God and no longer live because Christ lives within him when he is able to self-lead (the essence of “selfism” or the ego is to do it my way instead of God’s way by a process of “self-leading” yourself and others) his own change and help others to do the same? I would have thought that Christ, the Hope and Glory within every believer, is sufficient to increasingly manifest the change that He alone has already accomplished in their lives. In fact Paul said that believers have already been crucified with Jesus Christ (they are already brand new creations in Christ – 2 Corinthians 5:17) and therefore they should reckon (use their God-given intellects and minds) that they are indeed dead to sin and their own egos (Romans 6:11). Not so! saith Ron Martoia. You are not supposed to reckon anything. You should synthesize your exterior and interior silence to the extent that even your interior silence shhhh’s (shuts) down and disappears.
The neurophysiologist, John Eccles, who received a Nobel Peace Prize in 1963 describes the brain as “A machine that a ghost can operate.” Now this, to me, explains Paul’s words in 1 Timothy 4:1 perfectly: “BUT THE [Holy] Spirit distinctly and expressly declares that in latter times some will turn away from the faith, giving attention to deluding and seducing spirits and doctrines that demons teach.” How do the deluding and seducing spirits transmit their doctrines into the minds of the emergent fraternity? Well, that’s easy! The first thing the seducing spirits do is to inspire you to “move far beyond trite bible verse quoting.” That’s just soooo (yawn) boring and typical of the fundamentalists. No! rather get them interested in yoga, meditation and cenetring prayer and teach them how to shut down completely their thoughts (interior dialogue) — shhhhh it down until it sinks like hay into fire and disappears. And voila! “That’s exactly where we want them,” saith the seducing demons. “Now we can silently drop our ‘truths’ into their empty and blank minds.” Benjamin Creme, the so-called John the Baptist of the Maitreya Buddha, has repeatedly said”
The Day of Declaration will be the outstanding event of this century. On that day the radio and television networks of the world will be linked together. We shall see this extraordinary face on our television screens but he shall not speak. His words will drop silently into our minds in our own language. (Emphasis added). (Watch youTube video here).
“Admittedly, Ron Martoia mentions the phenomenon of being crucified with Christ but have you noticed that he deliberately changed Paul’s words when he said “he says ‘I want to be crucified with Christ in such a way that I no longer live.’” Allow me to explain. We should constantly bear in mind the the Emergent Church is on an endless journey or a pilgrimage in search of the truth. Ron Martoia underscored this once again when he said “I’m not so worried about posturing myself and positioning myself and making sure you think I’ve got it figured out and I got all the answers . . .” ”I am crucified with Christ” denotes finality, arrival, conclusiveness, surety, security, warranty, and a sense of having found the answers already. “I want to be crucified with Christ” on the other hand, denotes the very opposite. It is something not yet accomplished and is therefore something you must aspire for, and the way to seek it is through mystical practices such as centering prayer because it is the way to let “that thing go” (the ego). Having the answers is like a festering wound in the eyes of the emerging church because it is supposedly part and parcel of the egoic false self. It supposedly undermines the Imago Dei. Paul never said or even implied that he wants to be crucified with Christ. He said: “I am (present continuous tense) crucified with Christ.” Neither did he say he no longer lived. He said: “ . . . nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”
What does Ron Martoia mean when he puts these words “I want to be crucified with Christ in such a way” into Paul of Tarsus’ mouth? Well, him having spoken so eloquently on the magical silence or silent space one enters into, it is obvious that the phrase “in such a way” does not refer to the power of Christ Jesus’ cross but to the practice of centering prayer, meditation, and even yoga.
Over the years my workout has morphed. I used to be an avid runner. But my joints just don’t like pavement pounding like they used to. Seven years ago I started down the yoga trail. Ashtanga Yoga is the power yoga, get a hard sweaty workout type of yoga. Some of you hear the word yoga and all sorts of red flags go up. Get a grip and do some reading. Yoga practice does not require you to be Buddhist, so relax. My nearly daily practice has improved so much. Yoga’s interface with a centering practice is actually a very interesting interplay. (VelocityCulture) (Ashtanga Yoga).
Now, now Ron, you just said “I’m not so worried about posturing myself and positioning myself and making sure you think I’ve got it figured out and I got all the answers and you’ll think good of me. I’m not sleuthing around (checking things out in dictionaries, commentaries and even the Bible) trying to make sure I’m well-positioned. The ego does that, the Imago Dei, doesn’t care.” And yet you claim to know better than God who said:
2 Corinthians 6:14-16 Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? [What communion has the light of the lamp and the water pitcher with darkness?) And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God. (Parenthesis mine)
But then again, why would you be concerned about what God thinks when you pooh pooh trite quoting of Bible verses? Ashtanga Yoga might not require you to become a Buddhist but it does teach you how to flood your mind towards the Self.
Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, Ashtanga Yoga's Founder, said here:
"If we practice the science of yoga, which is useful to the entire human community and which yields happiness both here and hereafter - if we practice it without fail, we will then attain physical, mental, and spiritual happiness, and our minds will flood towards the Self."
You want to let go of the constructed self (egoic self) so that the pristine Imago Dei may be fashioned in you and yet you do Ashtanga Yoga that encourages you to let your mind flood towards the Self. What is it to be, Ron? The Imago Dei or the flooding towards your egoic Self? You cannot have your bread buttered on both sides.
Someone once said, “The absence of context breeds pretext” which simply means that ignorance of the entire context of a documented story (fiction or truth) presents you with an opportunity to put forward or to conceal a true purpose or object. This is precisely what Ron Martoia intended doing when he said that Psalm 46:10 “is inviting you and I into a very different kind of silence, a silence on our inner space that allows us to stop the dialogue inside of our heads.” His real but concealed intention becomes clear when you take the whole context of Psalm 46 into account. Exterior circumstances such as poor health and financial deficits, often trigger off feelings of anxiety, fear, hopelessness, despondency, depression and even unbelief in the minds and hearts of believers. How are believers supposed to deal with these problems?
Let’s first look at the context. The context of the entire Psalm may be summed up in the words “complete trust and rest in the Lord.” To do this the believer must let go, be relaxed and not put forth any fretful, nervous or restless exertion or efforts but to leave matters with God. We find the same principle in Exodus 14:13 where Moses encourages his people not to be fearful but to “Stand still, and see the salvation of God.” Barnes writes:
In this place the word seems to be used as meaning that there was to be no anxiety; that there was to be a calm, confiding, trustful state of mind in view of the displays of the divine presence and power. The mind was to be calm, in view of the fact that God had interposed, and had shown that he was able to defend his people when surrounded by dangers. If this [was] the divine interposition when Jerusalem was threatened by the armies of the Assyrians under Sennacherib, the force and beauty of the expression will be most clearly seen. (Emphasis added)
“And know that I am God” is the core message of Psalm 46 and not to invite you and I into a different kind of silence. There are many evidences in Scripture of all the mighty works that God has done to save, protect and care for his children. These awesome and mighty works are the things we need to take as a reminder that He and He alone is God and that He alone can do these mighty works. Korah who wrote the Psalm knew how to trust and rest in the Lord of which the first verses are sufficient proof.
Psalm 46: 1-3; 7 and 10 God is our refuge and strength, A very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change And though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea; Though its waters roar and foam, Though the mountains quake at its swelling pride. . . .
The Lord of hosts is with us; The God of Jacob is our stronghold.
Cease striving and know that I am God; (New American Standard Bible, 1995)
And now, the pretext which unfolds when we continue to listen to Ron Martoia. He then asked how do we do the Psalm 46:10 sort of interior silence and link it to the pouring out of water from the pitcher. To be the light of the world and experience interior transformation one needs to live a contemplative life but if that kind of interior silence does not fund a transformed life then its just nice window dressing, he said. To explain why the interior silence is so important he took his audience on a short reflective journey right back to beginning of all things. From what Martoia said, it is evident that he does not hold to a biblical interpretation of the Fall but to the Eastern Orthodox rendition thereof. The latter does not see the Imago Dei (Image of God in us) having been defaced by the infractions of God’s Law but by our primary infection which is pre-eminently the inherited gene to judge between good and not good (evil). In the medical world “primary infection” is defined as “The original outbreak of an illness against which the body has had no opportunity to build antibodies; the originating infection.” God alone has the prerogative to judge between good and not good. Here’s what Ron Martoia says on his blog velocityculture which he also reiterated at the congress:
Acknowledging everyone is imago dei is a return to some observations about the garden.
The narrative pattern and rhythm of Gen 1-2 was God naming things, separating, and pronouncing them good. There is one “not good” thing and that is that Adam is alone. So God makes for Adam a mate. Interesting in the narrative is God’s invitation to Adam to name and separate the animals. The intimation seems to be that Adam is being invited into the very activities that had in the previous narrative been the domain of God alone.
One thing however Adam IS NOT invited to do and that is to pronounce things “good” or, for that matter, “not good.” In fact God is so concerned that Adam and Eve NOT make such pronouncements that he tells them to do whatever they want in the garden, to eat at any restaurant and order off any menu, except one . . . . the tree of knowledge of good and not good (evil).
In other words God has reserved the pronouncement of good and not good, of judging between, of drawing boundary lines of in and out, the domain of God alone. It is not something humanity has been invited to share.
You know the story. Adam and Eve eat of the tree of good and not good and instantly become judgmental.
From the garden forward in the narrative the story of humanity is the problems inherent in the drive to judge, exclude, divide, draw lines etc… The very next narrative is the Cain and Abel story debating whose sacrifice is good and whose is not good. Death ensues when they can’t agree.
A few quick observations.
The Fall was not perpetrated by an infraction of God’s Law but by the infection of a “judge men-ailment-tality (judge mentality)? Really? This was precisely the “not-guilty” protective mechanism Adam and Eve put up when God confronted them with their disobedience. “Not Guilty Lord! ‘The woman whom You gave to be with me . . . gave me from the tree, and I ate.’” “Not guilty Lord! ‘the serpent deceived me, and I ate.’” Any infraction of God’s Law is an inner motivated or innermost determined rebellion or disobedience. Jesus said: “It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man. . . . those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man.“ (Matthew 15:9, 17-20). It is not the out-to-in that defiles man but the in-to-out. An infection is an outer infused or induced influence which kind of leaves you guiltless because it invades your life uninvited; it penetrates your being from without making you an innocent bystander and giving you the leeway to declare: “Not I Lord, but the thing over there and over there and over there (not in here) is the real culprit.” Indeed, God’s primary goal was to usurp the role of judging and disallowed Adam and Eve to know good from evil before He had thoroughly tested their love for Him. True love never forces itself upon anyone and therefore God placed Adam and Eve under a time of probation. Jesus once said: “If ye love me, keep my commandments. . . . If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him (Johan 14:15, 23).” God’s commandment was simple and easy,“but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” and yet Adam and Eve dismally failed the test. The result was death (eternal death) and not just an infection with an ill judgement gene or mentality. If God had made judgement an off-limits zone for mankind, He would never have wanted believers to have the mind of Christ which unequivocally has the ability to discern between good and evil, right and wrong, in and out, holy and unholy, defiled and undefiled etc.
1 Corinthians 2:14-16 But the natural, nonspiritual man does not accept or welcome or admit into his heart the gifts and teachings and revelations of the Spirit of God, for they are folly (meaningless nonsense) to him; and he is incapable of knowing them [of progressively recognizing, understanding, and becoming better acquainted with them] because they are spiritually discerned and estimated and appreciated. But the spiritual man tries [judges] all things [he examines, investigates, inquires into, questions, and discerns all things], yet is himself to be put on trial and judged by no one [he can read the meaning of everything, but no one can properly discern or appraise or get an insight into him]. For who has known or understood the mind (the counsels and purposes) of the Lord so as to guide and instruct Him and give Him knowledge? But we have the mind of Christ (the Messiah) and do hold the thoughts (feelings and purposes) of His heart. (Emphasis added)
The emergent fraternity would like you to think that they are great conversationalists but they don’t seem to know what it means to have a conversation with someone. According to Martoia Cain and Abel entered into a heated conversation or debate about whose sacrifice was good and whose was not good. The only conversation that took place subsequent to God having rejected Cain’s offering of the fruit of his toil and the cursed ground, was between Himself and Cain when God tried to prevent him from murdering his brother:
Genesis 3:6, 7 And the Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry? And why do you look sad and depressed and dejected? If you do well [obey Me], will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well [disobey Me], sin crouches at your door; its desire is for you, but you must master it [by being obedient to Me]. (Parenthesis mine)
As we all know, Cain did not act obediently on the divine counsel. Had he done so he would not have talked to his brother (verse eight) and clandestinely lure him into the field to kill him. There was no conversation between Cain and Abel as to whose sacrifice was good and whose was not good. Cain had already decided that his was the acceptably good one and summarily killed his brother Abel. If we have to pin the judgement gene on someone, we will have to accuse Cain, and not Abel, of being judgmental. Like the sheep who was led to the slaughter, Abel did not utter a single word against his brother. There was no need for Cain and Abel to enter into a conversation or debate about whose sacrifice was good and whose was not good. They both knew perfectly well what kind of sacrifice God accepted and what kind He rejected. I have already pointed out to you earlier that a bloodless, self-produced, works orientated sacrifice is the way of Cain and all religions, except the Christian faith, are based on a works orientated salvation. Cain, like his brother, knew perfectly well that God only accepted a blood-sacrifice as a propitiation for one’s sins; his mom and dad taught them this lesson after God had slain an animal to make for them coats of skin instead of allowing them to wear their self-made (“self-lead”) aprons of leaves to cover their nudity.
Ron Martoia is doing some illegal biblical inlay work and he knows it. And why? Because he desperately wants to do away with doctrinal correctness in much the same way as Stephan Joubert who said: “When you follow Jesus as the Sage, not as the religious professional, as the guy with all the rules for right and wrong, but as the Sage from heaven . . . “ Listen again to Ron Martoia from his blog velocityculture.
This propensity to judge is precisely what puts us at odds with the world around us, and usually under the pretense of false holiness or DC (doctrinal correctness) Until we can return to the place where we see our commonality of being imago dei as far greater than our differences, we will always be barrier creating people.
Jesus prayed we would be one. And since the doctrinal constructs we are so often hell bent on maintaining weren’t in Jesus mind, then it wasn’t doctrinal ones he was praying for. I wonder if the oneness he was seeking had to do with the affirmations we could all make about are sameness.
You may be able to fool some people some of the time but you cannot fool all the people all of the time. The Jesus Ron Martoia is speaking of cannot be the Jesus of the Bible who inspired the apostle of love to write one of the most potent passages in Scripture:
2 John 9 Anyone who runs on ahead [of God] and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ [who is not content with what He taught] does not have God; but he who continues to live in the doctrine (teaching) of Christ [does have God], he has both the Father and the Son.
The interior silence which is a very specific practice will actually fund dealing with our infection of a judgmental mentality, Ron Martoia said. Paul advised us to walk in the spirit and not to fulfil the desires of the flesh — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self control — but how do you do that,? he asked. How do we deal with this in practice? How do we get to the place where love is more automatic than judgment, where patience is more automatic than impatience, where love and patience is my default in stead of judgment and impatience? The reason God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and not good, according to Ron Martoia, was because they did not have the capacity to ultimately know good from not good. As an example, he referred to circumstances in your life that may seem to be not good at that particular time but later you realize that it was for your own good and you thank God for it. I doubt whether this was the kind of good and not good (evil) God was referring to? He did not speak of good and bad (pleasant and unpleasant) circumstances but the very essence of good and evil. When God created Adam and Eve, evil in the person of Satan and his angels were already in in existence but God in his awesome wisdom did not disclose it to Adam and Eve. Disobedience to God is the very essence of evil and therefore He chose to test them by giving them a simple and easy command in stead of warning them against Satan and his wiles.
To say, as Ron Martoia, that we simply do not have the capacity to judge between good and not good and that God forbad them to eat of the tree of good and not good because it pleased Him to withhold the capacity to know good from evil from them (to make sound moral choices), is not good at all. In fact, he’s contradicting Jesus Christ who once said, “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” (Luke 11:13). To be in a position to give your children good gifts you must of a necessity be able to discern between good gifts and not good (bad) gifts. Woe to our children if we as fathers were unable to distinguish between good gifts and evil gifts, although some of our parents wilfully and deliberately expose their children to evil spirits by sending them on retraits where the emergent facilitators teach them to live contemplatively through silence, labyrinths, contemplative or centering prayer and meditation. Through practices such as deep silence they are teaching their children to open their minds to demonic influences. Even Dr. Willem Nicol who teaches meditation admits this. If God did not want us to have the capacity to judge between good and evil, He would never have commanded us to test the spirits and to discern whether they proceed from God or not (1 John 4:1). That which proceeds from God must be good because “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17). That which does not proceed from God, must be evil and we ought to be able to judge (discern) between the two, good or evil.
The Bible Commentator, Barnes, wrote”
Man has now come to the second step in morals—the practice. Thereby he has come to the knowledge of good and evil, not merely as an ideal, but as an actual thing. But he has attained this end, not by standing in, but by falling from, his integrity. If he had stood the test of this temptation, as he might have done, he would have come by the knowledge of good and evil equally well, but with a far different result. As he bore the image of God in his higher nature, he would have resembled him, not only in knowledge, thus honorably acquired by resisting temptation, but also in moral good, thus realized in his own act and will. As it is, he has gained some knowledge in an unlawful and disastrous way; but he has also taken in that moral evil, which is the image, not of God, but of the tempter, to whom he has yielded.
A divinely acquired knowledge between good and evil was what God had in mind for Adam and Eve but first He had to test their love and obedience toward Him by giving them a simple command. In stead they acquired an occult inspired knowledge of good and evil when they disobeyed God. As Barnes said, the Imago Dei in Adam and Eve would ultimately have resembled God not only in knowledge but also in moral perfection, knowing good from evil God’s way and not Satan’s occult (hidden knowledge) way, if they had stood the test of their temptation. The saddest thing about the Emergent Church is that they are acquiring occult knowledge through mystic practices such as silence, meditation, labyrinths, lectio divina, contemplative and centering prayer, believing that they are obtaining new divinely inspired knowledge.
Now listen carefully to what Ron Martoia said about the “judger gene,” the knowledge which he acquired through . . . . . . yes, your guess is as good as mine . . . . through deep silent meditation or contemplation. This is what he had to say.
So God says to Adam and Eve: “I don’t want you to think you have the capacity for the good [and] not good thing, so don’t eat that tree.” Right? Adam and Eve eats of the tree and you know what happened. What’s the very first thing they did? They note in looking at each other that there are differences that presumably existed before they ate of the tree of good and not good, but they instantly judged, that’s the operative word, they instantly judge that their difference is not good. . . . Here is our infection. From that time onward in the biblical narrative, this might be a slightly new theological reading for you of Genesis, but from that point in time, what has happened is that the judger gene, we have this genetic disposition now, to judge. The very next narrative of Genesis 4 is Cain and Abel fighting about what? Who’s sacrifice is better, mine or yours? Mine not yours! I’m better you’re not! I’m in, you’re not! And what is happening? The judger gene becomes raging in them, to the degree that violence [ensues], and this is what always happens when judgment [becomes the problem], violence of some level [follows] and death results – there’s murder. The quintessential judger gene on steroids, it is in full swing in Genesis 4 and you take a look at the rest of the biblical narrative all the way into the New Testament where we have the main characters Jesus is in conversation with, what’s their earmark? JUDGEMENT! — good, not good; Its their main deal . . .
The ability to note the anatomical differences between the male and female bodies, which is hardly sinful or judgmental, is not a moral issue but a physical one; it is the looking (desire, wantonness, covetousness, lust) that constitutes the moral defect. I’m not suggesting that Adam’s desire for his wife was wrong. What I do say, is that the awareness of their nudity (“their eyes were opened”) was the immediate result, not of their ability to differentiate between their physical form and body parts, but of Eve’s desire (wantonness, lust, covetousness) to take of the forbidden tree that was pleasant to the eyes. This is, not the infection of the whole of mankind, but the very essence of mankind’s sinful nature. The entire psyche of “Self” is coached in wantonness, lust, desire, and covetousness. Throughout the rest of man’s history his desire and lust to take for himself whatever he wants have been the bedrock of his sins such as wars, murders, thefts etc. James, the brother of Jesus, knew what he was talking about when he said: “From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?” (James 4:1). Lusting after women and vice versa is the direct result of man’s egoic wantonness. It even led to murder when a man after God’s own heart, King David, looked upon the naked body of a woman, desired her for himself, lusted after her and wilfully and unlawfully took her for himself. No wonder Job said: “I have made a covenant with my eyes; How then could I gaze at a virgin?” (Job 31:1). Being aware of he anatomical differences between a man and a woman has nothing to do with it; James summed up the real problem when he said: “ . . . each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.” (James 1:13-14). Where did this lust come from? Where did it have its origin? Well of course, it all started when Eve looked at the forbidden tree, saw that it was pleasant and lusted to take of it for herself and also gave some to her husband. No wonder Jesus said that the act of adultery is not always in the doing but in the looking, the desiring, the lusting in your heart and mind after a woman or a man. The egoic self is not a constructed phenomenon but we’ve all inherited it from Adam and Eve. There is only one effective antidote for it and that is to deny your[SELF) (your Garden inherited lusts, desires, wantonness, covetousness), take up your cross [die to your(SELF)] and follow Him. You are not going to die to your{SELF) by doing some mystical practices such as surrender meditation, centering prayer or contemplative prayer. If you try to do it that way you are wilfully contravening Jesus’ command in Matthew 16:24. All forms of mediation, including Yoga, do not enable you to let go of your so-called constructed egoic self; it rather nourishes it to become even bigger ego’s, as Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, Ashtanga Yoga’s Founder, himself said “ . . . if we practice it without fail, we will then attain physical, mental, and spiritual happiness, and our minds will flood towards the Self.”
Ron Martoia continued to say:
If you and I cannot experience spiritual formation due to our spirituality practice that begins to shift the judger gene, spiritual formation is impossible, because I will always try to measure myself against you. And every single time I slip into measuring myself against you I in fact create a barrier between you and me, automatically . . . The command is love my neighbour as I love myself. I can’t do that! I’m to busy judging you. The judger gene, in full swing.
If your kid is on drugs and you forcefully place him in a rehab institution, are you judging him? No, of course not, you’re judging the habit that’s killing him and not him. In fact you are proving your love for him by judging his dangerous filthy habits. To get to the nitty-gritty of Ron Martoia’s so-called judger gene we need to remind ourselves of what really happened when Cain and Abel brought two different kinds of sacrifices because, you see, Cain’s murder of his brother was not just about measuring himself against Abel and vice versa; it was not just about posturing themselves and positioning themselves and making sure they thought each of them had it figured all out and that they had all the answers . . .” It involves the essence of a divinely inspired religion which is expressed in absolute obedience to God in the way we are permitted to approach Him, the One and only infinitely holy God. When God commanded Moses to build an altar he said: “And if you will make Me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stone, for if you lift up a tool upon it you have polluted it (Exodus 20:25).” Any effort on man’s part to please and appease God with his own cleverly devised (beautifully hewn) altars (good works) is polluted. It cannot please God in the very least. Cain’s offering, having been the produce of his own toil and sweat from the ground which God had cursed, was polluted. Abel’s offering, on the other hand, was not a bloodless one like that of Cain, but the sacrifice of an innocent victim’s life (which is in the blood – see Leviticus 17:11). Did you notice the essence of God’s only acceptable offering? (Hebrews 9:22) “It is the blood that makes an atonement for the soul” and not man’s own silly devised efforts to accrue spiritual formation by means of a contemplative lifestyle or the practice of silence. I shudder to think that Ron Martoia has shunned God’s only acceptable sacrifice for the atonement of our sins, i.e. the bloody cross of Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 1:18). May God open his eyes to his folly and grant him the grace to repent of his evil ways. He is on a path that looks right but the end thereof leads to destruction (Proverbs 14:12). By the by, his verse totally destroys Stephan Joubert’s notion that Jesus Christ never linked onto the priestly or holy story of who is in and who is out but onto the wisdom story in Proverbs. The road that leads to destruction is the “out” road. Guess what’s the “in” road? (Matthew 7:13, 14)
Before I continue, I want to focus your attention on Ron Martoia’s words: “The judger gene becomes raging in them, to the degree that violence [ensues], and this is what always happens when judgment [becomes the problem], violence of some level [follows] and death results – there’s murder.” Nowhere in the Genesis narrative are we told that Cain and Abel engaged in an argument about whose sacrifice was the best and who was in and who was out. In fact, we are told that God himself decided whose sacrifice was acceptable to Him and whose was not, who was in and who was out (Genesis 4:4 and 5). If, according to Martoia, God alone has the capacity to judge between good and not good and withheld the ability to judge between good and not good from mankind, why does‘nt he accept God’s judgement of Cain and Abel’s sacrifices, which He judged as being not good and good respectively? Surely, if we cannot trust our own judgment between good and evil we should at least trust God’s judgement between good and not good and the only way to do it is to know his Word. We are admonished to prove all things and hold fast to that which is good (1 Thessalonians 5:21). How are we going to hold fast to the things that are good if we are not able to judge between what is good and what’s not? How do we do it? There’s only one answer – through His infallible and immutable Word. (2 Timothy 2:15).
Finally, Ron Martoia comes to the point where he presents his audience with a solution to the problem of the judger gene. Well of course one could have anticipated that he would say that “Inner Intentional Silence,” a term he probably inherited from Cynthia Bourgeault whose book “Centering prayer and Inner Awakening” he promotes as one of the best on the subject, is the key. He distinguishes between two kinds of spiritualities — kataphatic of which we have quite a lot and apophatic. Kataphatic spirituality relies on images, text, ideas, creation to come to know God. Lectio Divina is a kataphatic spiritual practice. All of this is very mental and imaginative, according to Ron Martoia. Apophatic spirituality uses no thought, no text, no image, no idea, to connect to God, to come to know God, to connect to God through the spirit. He expands his definition of the two kinds of spiritualities into three types of meditational prayer.
1. Concentrative methods of prayer which is the most known an practiced. This entails concentrating on an exterior object such as a verse, a word, a candle, a cross etc.
2. Awareness methods of meditation. This is also known as insight meditation where you align yourself with your inner observer and simply watch the thoughts and the emotions that arise.
3. Surrender methods of meditation. This kind of meditation is even simpler than the others. As thoughts arise they aren’t observed or labelled, they are simply released and you let them go.
The surrender methods of meditation are completely different from all the others because they are “prayers” (a misnomer) where you do not say anything to God and neither is the objective to hear anything from God, Martoia continued to say. So what’s the point? The point is, according to Martoia, to sit before God and as thoughts arise in you to let them go. You do not analyze them and you do not think about them. Daydreaming is usually our biggest detractor in prayer and we don’t have the ability to turn off the daydreaming and to shut down the imagination. The Desert Fathers believed that imagination was the playground of the devil while many Christians believe that complete thoughtlessness (a complete passive mind) opens you up to demonic influences. It demonstrates how the pendulum swings from one opinion to the next throughout the Christian tradition. The issue is, said Martoia, that we do need kataphatic spirituality but what we do not have as part of our repertoire is an apophatic practice. This means that you should sit still before God for about twenty minutes every day and when thoughts arise to let them go. “So what’s the point?” Martoia asked again. “The whole point of this centering practice is that the practice of surrender, letting go of those thoughts when they arise, that that practice of surrender would become a pattern of surrender and the core gesture of my soul.” The purpose of practice is to accomplish through training what we previously could not do through trying, as Dallas Willard coined it. Thus the muscle of letting go is trained very slowly but distinctly so that when you experience the judger gene wanting to come to the fore you can let it go. And suddenly the infection with which you are so deeply infected is rooted out. As Thomas Keating said, you’re not supposed to hear anything but to be still in the presence of God so that in the gap between thoughts, in the moment of complete silence, God can do deep, deep down in your ego what you cannot even understand. Thomas Keating calls it “divine therapy.” When your false self, ego or shadow is deconstructed by the practice of centering prayer and deep silence you realize that judgment, envy, lust, impatience, your default settings slowly disappear. You’re exercising the muscle of letting go and the infection of the garden begins to be dealt with in a very specific and concrete way.
If Adam and Eve and subsequently all their offspring (Cain and Abel and all the inhabitants throughout the antediluvian world) were infected by the judger gene and the surrender method of meditation (exercising the muscle of letting go every thought that feeds the false and self-constructed egoic self) was the only way to deal with their primary infection in a very specific and concrete way, why didn’t God at least make an attempt to tell them what the solution would be for their disastrous dilemma? Surely, such a terrible infection that poisoned the whole of the human race warrants the know-how of an effective antidote, especially when the God Ron Martoia speaks of is a God of love who wishes his imago dei to reside in every single human being. Why didn’t He rather allow Adam and Eve to remain in the garden of Eden and through deep exterior an interior silence (apophatic surrender meditation), which usually takes more than five years to master, (1) teach them to “let go” of the egoic false self’s judger gene infection? Adam could easily have surpassed the magical five year period of a novice; he reached the hoary, antediluvian old age of 930 years which was probably enough time to master the apophatic surrender method of meditation. If the apophatic surrender method of meditation was able to disinfect Noah and his family of their primary infection with the judger gene, why didn’t God intervene when he brought a sacrifice on an altar of every clean beast that was with him in the ark immediately after the great Flood and say to him? — Noah, I cannot stand the sweet savour of your offering. Come here and let me teach you how to get rid of your judger gene. (Genesis 8:20, 21). Why didn’t He, when He wanted to test Abraham’s love for Him and ultimately remind him that the substitutionary death of His only Son would finally settle the problem of sin, remind him of the apophatic surrender method of meditation in stead of commanding him to sacrifice his son Isaac to Him?
God always works within the parameters of Christ’s cross; He never circumvents or bypasses the cross when He deals with man in the act of salvation and sanctification. Christ’s cross is the power and wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:18). Full stop! Any other way, practice, method, mode, system, technique or whatever man has devised to accomplish what God alone has already accomplished through the cross of his Son, is equal to the way of Cain. God cannot accept it and has no other option but to reject it because, like Cain’s offering, it is polluted. The notion that Adam and Eve’s Fall was not an inward (interior) act of rebellion and disobedience toward God (in short, sin) but an outward (exterior) infection of the Imago Dei, is not only highly deceptive but an outright rejection of the cross and everything it represents — blood, faith, propitiation, forgiveness, salvation, sanctification. Having conveniently dispelled of all these necessary things, the only thing left for you to do is to sit before God, go into a deep, deep trance of nothingness and let go every thought that enters your mind so that God can get a chance to do deep deep in your ego what you cannot even understand. This implies that God depends on the right conditions you have created for Him before He can do his profound work in you. Indeed, you become the initiator in a long process (five years and even more) for God to restore his Imago Dei in you.
Salvation, in biblical terms, at its very core is God having made his abode in a repentant sinner’s quickened spirit and who has been washed and cleansed in the blood of Christ (Revelation 3:20). The emergent fraternity have discarded the biblical way of salvation and introduced a contemplative kind of redemption. The following quote is an excerpt from “Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening” by Cynthia Bourgeault.
Thomas Merton said: “At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our son-ship. It is like a pure diamond blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it, we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely. I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.
Notice how deftly Merton navigates the tricky theological waters here. His words are bold, in that he claims — to my knowledge more clearly than any other Christian mystical writer – that at the center of our being is an innermost point of truth which shares not only the likeness, but perhaps even the substance of God’s own being. And yet, following the bent of Christian tradition, he makes it absolutely clear that access to this center is not at our command; it is entered only through the gateway of our complete poverty and nothingness.
The divine indwelling is the cornerstone of contemplative prayer. Thomas Keating refers to it as “our personal big bang,” for it reveals the Source of our own being — the explosion of divine love into form which first gave rise to our personal life. It also reveals the direction in which our hearts must travel for a constantly renewed intimacy with this Source. As we enter contemplative prayer, we draw near the wellspring from which our being flows. (Emphasis added)
There is no cross, no blood, no conviction of sin, no faith, no forgiveness of sin, in this so-called divine indwelling which is supposed to be in everybody. Ron Martoia mentioned that Paul taught us what we should do to walk in the spirit so as not to fulfil the desires of the flesh but that he did not give us any instructions on how to do it. Well, of course, the solution for our deep egoic problems will slip through your fingers when you substitute a mystical contemplative technique for the cross of Jesus Christ. I suggest that he begins to alert his mind to discover the one and only antidote for our sinful nature (Adamic nature) which we find in Jesus words:
Luke 9:23 And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.
Paul expressed this truth as follows:
Romans 6: 10-19 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be! Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.
In Romans 12: 1 Pauls says: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” The word for reasonable is “logikos” which means to “pertain to your reason and logic.” Ron Martoia says, no, we must empty our minds by means of the surrender kind of contemplative prayer where we allow no thought, no idea, no image, no text to enter our minds (apophatic spirituality). You don’t need that Ron. All you need is the cross, a willingness to deny yourself and take up your own cross (die to your yourself) daily, follow Jesus and to foster an alert mind. But first, you need to repent of your ways. I’m talking about a biblical metanoic experience.
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(1) Ron Martoia said that he has been doing surrender mediation for about five years which makes him a mere novice. It takes much longer to master the art of letting go your thoughts in this kind of apophatic meditation. Is that the reason why we need to believe in evolution that developed over a period of billions of years? Surely that would have been sufficient for billions of people to master the apophatic or surrender method of meditation.
