“Be ready, be ready, be ready for change”
We chanted those words over and over during the two hour protest march through downtown Memphis, drawing attention to the murder of George Floyd and many others. In so many ways, that chant is the root of what early Christian leaders called “purgation.” They taught that in order to get from where we are to where we are intended to be, as individuals and as a people, three things are needed for the journey: awakening, purgation and illumination. Purgation is the logical consequence of awakening and illumination. The more clearly we see who we really are, what’s really happening in the world, and who God really is, the more we will want to purge ourselves and our society of those things keeping us all from God’s divine destination, which those early Christian writers called “union”–perfect and total harmony with each other and with God.
Change. Personal. Corporate. That’s what purgation is all about.
Purgation itself depends on what Carol Dweck calls a “growth mindset.” In her book Mindset she describes two very different mindsets which people tend to adopt: growth and fixed. While they play out at many different levels, one of the most fundamental distinctions between them is this: people with a growth mindset see the need for change and believe themselves and their world capable of change; people with a fixed mindset don’t. People with a fixed mindset would never chant “Be ready, be ready, be ready for change.” They would never chant “I am the change. I am the change.”
This presents a challenge for my religious troop, Churches of Christ. They are founded on a belief that restoration of the early church has taken place in contemporary Churches of Christ and that what’s needed now is the preservation of what has been restored. We are built on a fixed mindset rather than a growth mindset of always learning new things, always developing, always changing. It’s based more on thinking “We have arrived” rather than “We’re on the way.”
For us as individuals on our own spiritual pilgrimage, and for us as a people on our corporate spiritual pilgrimage, purgation is essential. Growth mindsets are vital. We have to be eager to constantly be looking at ourselves and purging whatever is needed from our hearts, minds, souls and bodies that keeps us from God’s divine destination. We have to be eager to constantly be looking at our culture and society and tearing down all that prevents people from attaining the goal and purpose for which God has placed them here on earth.
Peter points to this in his second letter:
8 For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. (2 Pet. 1:8-9 ESV)
There is a way of living characterized by no change. But this reflects blindness, a lack of awakening and illumination. And, there’s a way of living characterized by constant change–increasing measures of Christlike qualities. That’s the way of purgation.
Are you ready for change?
