The Maranatha Community has for a long time promoted a teaching of wholeness and shalom. They teach about healing society as well as individual’s bodies, minds and spirits.
In the growing clamour to find wholeness, personal peace and social cohesion we also need courage to reject some of the error which is being infiltrated into common thinking, such as Mindfulness which is a serious counterfeit – it’s actually Buddhism. (A thorough and balanced review of Mindfulness is available from Maranatha on their website.)
Maybe we need to rethink our approach to healing people and society, and surely we need to go beyond government expenditure? More money in health and public spending does not seem to have brought social inclusion or increased the health of our society. As I reflected on this over the past week I was delighted to discover that Jean Vanier was honoured this year with the Templeton prize for his work with weak and vulnerable people. He has tirelessly shown over decades of work with L’Arche that it is the ones who are weak who help to engender a just and balanced society.
For a generation we have seen the acceleration and promotion of the philosophy of death and acceptance of a culture of death. Since our society started to buy the lie from Nietzsche that “God is dead” we have begun to accept every argument that destroys family life and community cohesion and people’s identities have been stolen at a personal as well as community level. Aborting children for convenience has devalued life to the point that society has started to accept abuse of children after birth. One example of this was the way that the Paedophile Information Exchange gathered momentum in the 70’s and 80’s on the back of ‘social liberation’. Similarly, Marxist humanist thinking which has been intentionally used to attack the traditional family led to the acceptance of broken families as inevitable. Marx actually wanted to see the traditional family broken. The result? A fractured society which exacerbates mental illness, poverty and insecurity.
Recently a group of us have been led to develop a community project which has at its heart a desire to see whole person healing and growth. Family and community are the route to oneness and wholeness. Disconnection in our society has led to disintegration which is the start of the death process. Christians are called to reverse this process and to bring life. Life is found in wholeness, oneness, and integration. Life flows from the life giver, the Creator. May the whole church seize our calling to be carriers of life! The good news of Jesus Christ is not a philosophy designed to get people into buildings and then organise us into an institution! The good news is that the Creator has a plan for humanity. From Him comes the design of family, the glue of society, the redemption of our failure, and propagation of life. This good news is the very basis for rebuilding our society, laws, community and personal wellbeing.
Jean Vanier has given his life to the nurture, enabling and learning from the weak and vulnerable. The culture of death so highly promoted in our nation would have these same people aborted for ‘the greater good’. We need to rethink what wholeness really looks like.
We need to actively promote integration to reverse the disintegration; To bring wholeness as the antidote to brokenness; For the lonely to be joined into families. Jesus said that if anyone
comes to him, out of their innermost being would flow rivers of living water. Centuries before Jesus said this, the writer of the proverb wrote in anticipation: Guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.
For more information on Mindfulness – www.maranathacommunity.org.uk/resources.aspx
For more information on the Maranatha Community www.maranathacommunity.org.uk
John D Manwell's Blog 
The Corona Effect – What will life look like?
April 18, 2020We all want to know what will get back to normal and what has changed. Of course, only a fool can predict with certainty, and many fools are speculating – talking as though they actually know!
Some points are currently observable, and may have some predictable consequences:
Our households have been reminded with a jolt that keeping some stocks of basic food items is a good thing to do. We’ve been too long deceived by the convenience of supermarkets and corner shops that are open 24 hours a day. Our grandparents were wise in keeping dry goods, salt, pickles and potatoes in hand.
We have suddenly realised that Just-In-Time manufacturing and super lean supply chains are dangerous, as is the ultimate cost reduction of transferring consumable manufacturing to Asia. We are likely to see renewed interest in local manufacturing.
The economic shock is making us instantly more open to prudence and thrift. We are now looking again at what we buy and ‘need’ with fresh eyes.
The value of family and companionship is has been highlighted. The fragility of this life is suddenly in the limelight. This is making us aware of the need for healthy, forgiving and tolerant relationships. I have this week heard of a family that has been in bitter battles and clashes throughout three generations and multiple cousins. The crisis led one man in the centre of it all to create a massive WhatsApp group with everyone in the extended family and make them all face up to the reality that we might not have each other for long – so let’s put the past behind us and start being a family!
The social distancing has made us all suddenly appreciate liberty, to start thinking about freedoms and how much we appreciate being able to travel and gather. Suddenly the meaning of totalitarian and repression has some measurement scale, and we see the value of open spaces in our community and the need to associate freely. Human nature makes us prone to wanting what we are told that we cannot have!
We have become super sceptical about politicians and within a month some of the distinctions between conservative economics and socialism have been blurred beyond recognition. Party voting may never be the same again. Added to all this political re-calibration, we have had our eyes opened to the manipulation and self-seeking nature of the mass media. The mainstream, traditional media are suddenly exposed as negative, unhelpful and biased in a way that the ordinary people do not appreciate!
Interest in spiritual insights and what the Bible has to say about the world has been amplified dramatically over a few short weeks. We are told that Bibles are in high demand. Politicians are talking about prayers on a daily basis in governmental briefings. The biggest shift that is happening in front of our eyes is that secularism is evaporating in the heat of the trauma.
All these aspects combine to create the ingredients for a new breath of fresh air in our communities and society. We can optimistically expect an increase in collaborative, community minded business. We are likely to see a breakdown in the old assumed boundary between charities and businesses. We may well see a whole new approach to what church and congregation mean, as online, global and personal communication mature from the current fumbling attempts to recreate the old wineskins of congregational gathering.
The new wineskins are being prepared. They will be filled with new wine. The name of the wine is shalom!
[Shalom is a Hebrew word meaning profound wholeness; everything in its place and unbroken; right with God and creation]
Tags:Bible, Community, conservativism, family, just-in-time, media, post-coronavirus, prayer, prudence, secularism, shalom, socialism, thrift
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