We need personal wholeness. Those who study the topic sometimes refer to it as holistic so as to give it the specificity that relates to the individual person. The reality of wholeness relates to truth, integration, righteousness, and person so consistency in action. It is important to recognize its reality, making whatever adjustments and changes needed to make sure we are singular. We are not hypocritical in that integrated person we ought to be. He or she is most whole in the perception of God’s righteousness who: is free of self- division; is consistent in thought and action; is oriented to self-improvement; and, is genuine to other persons and to God’s created world. This relates to integrity in a person’s morality. For the Christian, there is added sanctification which calls for the best cultivation of the consistent Christian pointing toward immortality. Spiritual wholeness includes common grace but adds more that relates to God’s grace. For example, the common hypocrisy of persons in nature is unsatisfactory. We can destroy self when confused in the natural world, or we can make quite a life of it. In spiritual context the lack of personal holistic life may be damning to a relationship with God, so bears large mortal/immortal meaning.
Mahatma Gandhi, the great soul of India, was referred to for this day in Volume 1 of Pages. He was highly regarded in the world of his day, winning support of the poor (such as the untouchables of India); the lovers of peace (opposed to warfare); and, the friends of decline in colonialism (such as the British rule in India). Those factors are seen as virtues in modern interpretations. A closer look at Gandhi raises large questions about his personal life, his fads, his little cruelties, his disregard for some realities, his treatment of persons like the untouchables, and so on, and so on. The long litany of Gandhi’s peccadilloes, contradictions and self-serving approaches is recited in Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi And His Struggles With India, by Joseph Lelyveld. They have been known from the time of Gandhi, but the world did not care to review the facts and causes at work to tell an objective story. Gandhi was seen as a holy hero. History books are full of cherry picking facts and movements that tell only part of the real story, and some distort it almost entirely. Common persons ought to know how God evaluates us. God helps us by making his judgment personal. Gandhi was a great man of peace for political peace and right, but not holistic in his personal life. In the contradiction there is some explanation of many public heroes, and misunderstanding of the motivations of others. This also appears in reverse, where a public enemy may be a personal/private angel to his family.
Thomas Jefferson is a major voice for persons who believe in God and those who do not. He did not admire the Bible as a whole, so prepared a document using only Jesus’ words. He cut and pasted from Bibles before him, leaving out all the other narrative, except Jesus’ words alone. By this gimmickry of cut and paste he believed he gained the real story. (He would have the essentials of redemption’s story in that process.) However, to deplete Scripture by such a clever ruse is to betray the veracity of Jesus in the use of the Old Testament. What would Jefferson do with the admission of the Old Testament to Jesus’ and Apostles’ preaching? What is meant when he would say to persons, after communicating with them, that the person go to the Temple and fulfill vows given by Moses? What then would we do with the words of Jesus to the disciples, that after he departed, they would do this or that? We should have no difficulty in admitting Apostles John, Peter and Paul ahead of Jefferson on the meaning of Scripture – all of it.
We are admonished to self-examination and prayer in this holistic context. One of the secrets to finding truth, even redemption to immortality, is in wholeness. I am the explorer of myself to the one whole (integrated) person that God means for me to be in fulfilling his education for my life. I find that person in the virtue of the holiness of God; in the model of Christ and his most faithful (righteous) followers; and in the belief that he who made me is most competent to form me into the person he means for me to be. It is not finished until I live it out in a model to others, without ostentation, but with the humility that is found in the Apostle Paul who encouraged others in following Christ, as he meant to follow Christ. If Paul could do it, as Paul believed he could, then others could also see and follow the Christ model. In life we need to recognize in the salvation of Christ we become whole in spiritual/physical being. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020