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KEN WILBER: INTEGRAL THEORY MEANS EVERYBODY’S RIGHT

November 22, 2008

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Sanctify them by the Truth; Your Word is Truth. (John 17:17, KJV)

Caution: Truth May Be Even Bigger Than You Believe

In his book A Theory of Everything philosopher and quasi-Buddhist Ken Wilber, whose work is held in high regard by Emerging Church icon Rob Bell, explains:

In this Theory of Everything, I have one major rule: Everybody is right. More specifically, everybody—including me—has some important pieces of truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished, and included in a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate embrace, a genuine T.O.E. (140)

Unfortunately this pie-in-the-sky dream of some kind of human utopia—another Tower of Babel—hits a dead end in the Risen Christ Jesus of Nazareth. In what follows I’ll show you why these mystic dreamers are so desperately trying to get rid of the critical reasoning skills inherent within so often vilified “Western thought.”

The above is essentially a summation of Ken Wilber’s integral theory (IT) of mankind, which he developed from the work of Dr. Clare Graves. The idea at its core is to integrate i.e. bring together all of mankind by turning them from egocentric (self-centeredness) to global-centric (world-centeredness). You’ll even hear Bell talk about this in his October 18, 2008 sermon Beware the dogs.

You see, the idea that “everybody is right” and everything (including all religions) “has some important pieces of truth” does appear true at first; and in a sense it is. Be careful to stay off this rabbit trail: “So, as a Christian you are saying there’s no truth outside your religion and the Bible.” But we aren’t saying this at all.

Of course there are things outside the Bible that are true; certainly other religions have some teachings within them that are true, but as Christians we also know that everything in the Bible is true. And as such, all truth is to then be measured by what God as Creator has revealed in His Word (see—Acts 17:11; 1 Thessalonians 5:21).

Here’s where IT and its phony tolerance completely disintegrates. The Apostle John, an eyewitness, quotes Jesus of Nazareth as saying that Holy Scripture inspired as it is by God the Holy Spirit—His Word—is Truth. And in His Word we find John 14:6 where Jesus says —“I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”

Note Jesus, as God in human flesh, proclaims that not only does He teach truth; Christ is, in very fact, the Truth in Person. This is precisely why the genuine Christian can never agree with Wilber and his myth of some integral approach to mankind.

And it is because only Christianity, which is not religion but rather a relationship with God in Christ, teaches that Jesus is the way and the truth and the life—and no one can have a relationship with God apart from Him—that it can never, ever, be integrated with the religions of mankind.

KEN WILBER: INTEGRAL THEORY MEANS EVERYBODY’S RIGHT

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