Human Wholeness

A Spirituality of Relationship

Mark G. Boyer, Matthew S. Ver Miller

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781498220361, 9781498220385
• eBook ISBN: 9781498220378
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Imagine a rope braided out of seven strands of twine, forming a circle so that even the ends of the rope are woven together. That is an image of human wholeness. This book proposes seven aspects to human wholeness: intellectual, psychological, emotional, physical, sexual, spiritual, and aesthetic. After examining each of these aspects, this work presents a spirituality of relationship. It also explores how human wholeness is a basis for relationship. Two people relating to each other out of each person's wholeness provide the occasion for an experience of the divine. All relationships begin with some connectivity to an aspect of human wholeness. As both parties enter more deeply into their relationship, more connectivity is achieved. By reflecting on the experiences of one's life in dialogue with a trusted friend, a person discovers the freedom to be who he or she is in the presence of the other and receives back the gift he or she offers to the other in total freedom. This transcendent aspect of a relationship can enable friends to discover God in each other, as each other. Jesus serves as a model for human relating; in him all aspects are woven together into a whole human being.

Chapter 1

Human Wholeness

A Definition

Imagine a rope braided out of seven strands of twine, forming a circle so that even the ends of the rope are woven together. This is an image for the concept of human wholeness. A person functions most wholly when all seven strands of the aspects of his or her life are braided together tightly. These seven aspects of human wholeness form one complete person who is greater than the sum of his or her dimensions. We examine these seven aspects separately in order to come to a deeper understanding of each of them, but in the final analysis they are not disconnected. A person is not composed of aspects; a person is a whole being created in the image and likeness of God.

Human wholeness is a process of becoming. When a person is not becoming or growing, a knot occurs in the rope of human wholeness. That knot affects an aspect of human wholeness, but because of the interconnectivity of the person, it affects the whole person. Because human wholeness is a process of always becoming, it affects the person and all of his or her relationships.

A healthy relationship, one which is in the process of always becoming, not only brings to each of the two people relating a sense of wholeness, but it also fosters the wholeness of their relationship. Wholeness is a sense of well-being that permits people to flourish and find fulfillment in all of their seven primary dimensions: intellectual, psychological, emotional, physical, sexual, spiritual, and aesthetic.

The process of relating helps each person integrate these dimensions of self and realize wholeness. Relating is the process of living that reaches fulfillment by connecting with other people through the primary dimensions of being whole. It enables each person in the relationship to see himself or herself “embedded in the matrix of a grander entity, and to intuit connections to all other living things.”1

Fowler, in his Becoming Adult, Becoming Christian, says, “. . . Human . . . wholeness . . . is . . . a way of being and moving, a way of being on pilgrimage.”2 Later, he says that wholeness is “the response a person makes with his or her total self to the address of God and to the calling to partnership.”3 Indeed, that is the realization of those who are friends, namely, that they are on a journey of self-discovery as they simultaneously discover the other, and, through the self and other, they discover God and enter into cooperation with each other and God.

The Matthean Jesus addresses wholeness when he tells his crowd of listeners, “Be perfect . . . as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt 5:48). The Greek word tam, translated as perfect refers to the wholeness of God. So, what Jesus tells the crowd is to be whole, like God is whole—not perfect in the usual sense of being without flaw.

As already stated above, we do not experience ourselves as dimensions or aspects, but in order to understand how one person connects to another we will explore the dimensions of human wholeness separately. We are not composed of pieces, like body and soul, body and spirit, sacred and secular. Each person is a whole human being. And his or her unique definition of wholeness will vary from all others. This is to suggest that each person integrates differently these dimensions of a whole human self. The seven aspects interact to form wholeness in each person which resembles the wholeness in no one else.

The opening image invites the reader to image human wholeness as a rope circle braided out of seven strands of twine. Also, the seven aspects of wholeness are like circuits on a computer chip. To achieve optimum function, they must be integrated, experienced together as parts of a whole. We specify the dimensions of wholeness only to write about them. In the end, we must always return to wholeness. All we can do is name those primary aspects of human wholeness in an effort to explore the ways that they are distinct and yet connected to each other.

As people relate, they come to a deeper awareness of God’s presence. Fowler, calling the process synergy, says:

Synergy means the mingling of divine love with our capacities to love, guiding them and grounding them in the grace of God. Synergy means the release of a quality of creativity and energy that manifests our likeness to the restored image of God in us. Synergy means human beings fully alive and using the gift of our strengths and virtues in the service of the realization of the commonwealth of love.4

For us, then, wholeness is best understood as the lifetime process of cooperating with each other and God to bring these seven dimensions of ourselves into a unified human maturity. Integrated, the dimensions of self converge to form a wholeness, the self that one identifies with and offers to another in relationship, which flows outward to others and back again to those who engage in the process of relating.

Dimensional Convergence

The dimensions of human wholeness overlap with each other in multiple ways, in varying degrees, and converge with each other in the process of integration toward wholeness. The amount of overlap differs from one person to another. However, even with the convergence, we can say that wholeness is greater than the individual alone. It is greater than one’s personal wholeness because one’s personal wholeness, which can never be complete, is always in the process of becoming—even beyond self. Shlain puts it this way: “Many of us have had experiences in which we seemed to glimpse other dimensions, or realities, and these epiphanies inspire the belief that there is an existence greater than the one commonly described.”5

Human wholeness implies that each person in a relationship has a good understanding of his or her own possibilities and limitations imposed by personal endowments and the constraints and supports of environment. This is to suggest that each person has an identity, according to Fowler,

an accrued awareness of oneself that maintains continuity with one’s past meanings to others and to oneself and that integrates the images of oneself given by significant others with one’s own inner feelings of who one is and of what one can do, all in such a way as to enable one to anticipate the future without undue anxiety about “losing” oneself.6

Covey calls this a “changeless core.” He says, “The key to the ability to change is a changeless sense of who you are, what you are about and what you value.”7

Wholeness flows out of each person to the other through relating because God calls each person to a wholeness which is greater than anyone can even begin to imagine. That wholeness is God’s grace, the Holy One’s self. In Fowler’s words, we come to understand “that things are organically related to each other” and we attend “to the pattern of interrelatedness in things.”8

Intellectual Aspect

The intellectual aspect of human wholeness is its mental facet, usually associated with the brain. It is the human need to study, to learn, to read, to reflect, to discuss, and to think about challenging ideas, and enhance or alter previously held concepts. When two people connect intellectually, they exchange ideas. They may read a book together, attend a class or lecture or educational program. They may watch a program on TV and discuss it or listen to a radio show and share ideas about it. A film may present the opportunity to engage in intellectual exchange.

Before two people can connect in the intellectual dimension, each must have progressed from a learning-for-the-sake-of-learning point to a learning-for-the-sake-of-self point. In the former, what a person studies doesn’t penetrate him or her. It doesn’t effect change. In the latter, what is learned is put into practice and integrated. The person is always in the process of changing because he or she is simultaneously in the process of learning. The former is often referred to as memorizing. The latter is learning that enables one person to teach another how to learn.

An important part of the intellectual connection is dialogue, not mere conversations, but genuine openness of each person to the concerns of the other. Dialogue implies that both people are actively listening and attending to what each says, not attempting to impose ideas or correct what the other speaks. Each person internalizes the viewpoint of the other in order to enhance his or her own and their mutual understanding. Ideas are reformed and distilled through dialogue. Because each person brings a unique point of view or perspective to the relationship, through dialogue each comes to respect the other’s point of view, even if he or she doesn’t totally grasp it at the time nor have the experience to validate it or agree with it. Indeed, disagreement does not inhibit the intellectual connection, but enhances it. The bottom line is that two people can agree that they disagree.

As information is shared, instead of seeking closure through dialogue, two people realize there are many perspectives on the idea, issue, or concept being shared. Probing, questioning, and the free exchange of ideas allows each person the freedom to learn from the other. The idea, issue, or concept may remain open for dialogue throughout the relationship. In other words, ambiguity is embraced and leads to endless exploration.

Dialogue...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Human Wholeness
• Chapter 2: Friendship
• Chapter 3: Transcendence through Relationship
• Chapter 4: The Dialectic of Enrichment and Diminishment in Relationship
• Chapter 5: Jesus
• Bibliography