Blank Spaces

In one of John Wesley's addresses ("An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion") he writes:

"And, indeed, it is obvious that the earth, as it is now constituted, even with the help of all European arts, does not afford sufficient employment to take up half the waking hours of half its inhabitants."

I've always been intrigued with this claim, because it is so obviously false in today's culture. He claimed that in the blank spaces that were a matter of course in 18th century life, people were forced to reflect on themselves and the futility of life apart from God. Such reflection, I'll claim, is an important (I'll almost say, essential) component of being a rational creature.

TV, Ipods, internet, etc., do pretty well at filling up all the blank spaces in life today, and it is pretty easy for people to go through life and never have to reflect at all, but merely react to the constant stimuli they encounter. I'll almost claim that makes such creatures less human.

Final Flesh

I think I've decided that the blog is not the venue for expository philosophizing. I think the journal article and the monograph evolved because of the need for sustained argumentation.

My last few fleshly posts have been like rocks skipping across the surface of an ocean of metaphysics underneath (still trying to decide on the aptness of that metaphor...), and I can see the eyes rolling back into their heads.

So, let me wrap this up with another of the marquee passages of scripture relevant to spiritual formation and our bodies. Paul writes in 1 Cor 9:

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one wins the prize? Run in such a way as to win the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to gain a crown that will not last. We do it to gain a crown that will last forever...

What is the "it"? Strict training. Strict train is what those who have intended to grow spiritually enter into. He continues:

Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly. I do not fight
like a man beating the air. No. I beat my body and make it my
slave.

I think the last sentence should be read as follows: instead of being a slave to my body and its desires, I make it my slave. That way it can work in service to me. I train it to do the things that I want to do.

The Flesh Again, With Fasting as an Example

OK, so I'm fully aware that there is a bit of revisionist history going on here, but I'd like to claim that among the early ascetics, those who got it right were the ones who saw that the way to spiritual maturity was not to transcend (or mortify) their flesh, but to transform their flesh. And the transformation process is one of reprogramming.

Let's take fasting as an example. I used to think that fasting was some means of bribing God (like people who go on hunger strikes to protest various causes). I want God to do something really bad, so I'll quit eating to show him how serious I am. And I don't want to discount the "fast and pray" injunctions and the relation between the two.

But my understanding of the practice of fasting has been transformed by the model of flesh and spirit I've been propounding. On this model, fasting is like doing spiritual calisthenics. My flesh is programmed to want food three times (or more per day); I don't have to have food for about 30-40 days, but I've been habituated to it. By fasting, I am practicing to let my spirit/person/soul have sway over the desires of the flesh. It builds up the "spirit muscle" so that when other kinds of fleshly desires may rear their ugly heads, my spirit has had practice at saying 'no' to such things. I see it very much along the lines of junior high basketball players practicing dribbling around chairs and crossing-over their dribble. This develops in them a skill, or a natural predilection, that is immediately transferable to the game situation.

I have found in my own life that when I am fasting consistently, I seem to have more spiritual power. I am "in shape" in spiritual life. When I don't fast, I tend to get a bit flabby and lazy and out of shape.

Flesh is neutral

The last post could leave the impression that the flesh is bad. On the interpretation I'm trying to articulate, flesh in itself is not bad. Christ became "flesh" -- the same Greek word the NIV translates as "sinful nature" most of the time in Paul's letters.

What I'm claiming is that flesh itself is neutral. Flesh can be trained or "programmed" to be a positive or a negative in our lives, because it is so capable of sustaining habits (see earlier post on this). The issue is that given the tendency to sin that we've inherited and given the fact that we exist in a very fallen culture which encourages the development of certain habits, the "flesh" for most of us is something we have to overcome when we become Christians.

The point of the spiritual disciplines, then, is to retrain the flesh to sustain positive habits. This is what Jesus did (WWJD). His flesh was a boon to his spiritual life, rather than a bane.

More to come...

(this bonus post for the day is brought to you by the fact that Red Sox are on TV again and I'm sitting here with the laptop!)

Spirit and flesh redux

OK, let's try this again. Galatians 5:16f in the NRSV (not the NIV, because it translates sarx as "sinful nature" rather than "flesh"):

Live by the spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the spirit, and what the spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other to prevent you from doing what you want.

Does this speak to anyone's experience other than mine? Or we might go to Romans 7:

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate... But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right but I cannot do it.

Here again we're talking about two different agendas at play. "I" (my spirit/soul that has been regenerated) want to do what's right, but this flesh that is also "me" seems to want other stuff that conflicts. Paul goes so far as to say that it is not "I" that do the bad stuff, but the sin dwelling in my flesh.

This is tough stuff to explain unless we have recourse to the actual, physical flesh that has become habituated in certain ways. Remembering that our brains are part of that, and that the neural pathways that have been formed govern (they don't dictate completely except in extreme situations) my thoughts, attitudes, emotions, etc. Here, then, is why spiritual formation must pay attention to our fleshly existence.

Spirit, flesh, and Mona Lisa

"The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." So said Jesus about the disciples when they couldn't stay awake. There is a consistent ontology of flesh and spirit in Scripture. Some argue about this, but I see it pretty plainly. And I think the best argument for it is that such an ontology best explains the data of spiritual formation.

If this were a philosophy paper, I'd have to get a lot more sophisticated, but I don't think we lose too much by claiming that human beings are spirit and flesh. These are not two different parts that make up one whole (the way it takes hydrogen and oxygen atoms to make water molecules). Rather, there is an essential substance (the spirit/soul/person) and a mode of its existence (human flesh).
By way of analogy (and it's only an analogy), consider the Mona Lisa. The picture to the left is the "Mona Lisa" in the medium of crayon. This is possible, because there is something that IS the Mona Lisa, and that thing can be represented in different media.

So, we might say that the thing that is me (my spirit/soul/person) is currently "represented" in human flesh. It seems possible, then, that it could be represented in something else, like a spiritual body (the soma pneumatica of 1Cor. 15).

OK, lots of objections come to mind here (Could I be "represented" in beetle flesh? No. You couldn't. Perhaps I'll get to that in another post. Am I not essentially human? Hmmm... Let's just let that sit for a bit.) The point I want to draw out is that even when I'm "born again", my spirit may be reborn, and I genuinely desire and will to do the right things, but I'm still enfleshed. And we know what flesh means: habits. God doesn't seem to take away the habits of the flesh for most of us at conversion. The good news is, we don't have to be slaves to the flesh any more, and with the assistance of the Holy Spirit we can retrain our flesh.

Whoa... too much to digest. We'll let this sit and try again tomorrow. There's really some very important stuff for spiritual formation in all this.

Wishing, Desiring, Intending

I wish I had a million dollars; I wish I were snorkeling in the Caribbean; I wish the Sunnis and Shiites would quit blowing each other up. That is, I can form a positive mental image of the object of my wish. When I conceive of it happening, I have good feelings about it.

I desire to learn to speak Spanish. I desire to run a sub-20 minute 5k. I desire to organize my office. That is, beyond forming a positive mental image about these things, every once in a while I engage in a flurry of activity that has something to do with achieving these goals. I consistently want to do them, and have resolved (several times, in fact) to make these things happen, but none of them are currently achieved (nor, if I'm being brutally honest, do I expect them to happen any time soon).

I intend to write a book. I intend to go camping at Cornerstone again this year. I intend to pay off the van loan by the end of the summer. That is, beyond wishing for these things, and beyond desiring them and resolving to accomplish them, I am currently engaged in practices which have reliably shown to lead to the intended goal. I am committed to seeing them happen and have prioritized accordingly.

Wishing, desiring, intending... If we asked Christians where on that scale would the goal of "Becoming more like Christ" fall, I fear that for most of us it is somewhere between wishing and desiring.

Equally we might ask about "Becoming spiritually mature" or (to use Willard's blunt example) "stopping sinning", or to link an earlier post, "learning to obey all that Jesus has commanded". What does this tell us about the depth of Christianity as practiced in 21st century America?

Spiritual Formation Recap

Here are the claims made so far in my spiritual formation series:

1. There is a gap between what we are called to be and what we too often are. Here


2. There is a role for us to play in the process of spiritual maturation. Here


3. The contemporary church has largely omitted the command in the Great Commission to teach people how to obey all the commands of Jesus. Here and Here


4. We can’t expect to do what Jesus did unless we train like Jesus did. Here


5. A discipline is any activity we can force our selves to do which indirectly brings about a change in us that we couldn’t bring about directly. Here


6. At the basis of character are habits. Here

Stay tuned for future posts as the case continues to be built.

Habits

Continuing with the spiritual formation posts: we're at the point now where one of the most important points must be made. At the basis of character lies habits. And if we are attempting to take on the character of Christ, we must take on his habits. Character is the long-term description of us--not individual actions, but over the long-haul how we tend to act.

We can learn much from the pagan, pre-Christian philosopher Aristotle in this regard. He claimed (almost paradoxically) that only a patient person can truly perform patient acts; but then that a person becomes patient by practicing acts of patience. In other words, much like I claimed last week about disciplines, you can force yourself to do some individual acts, and over a period of time those form in us certain skills or habits. The analogy again is easily seen in athletes or musicians training their muscles to work in certain ways.

OK, so just as I can train my fingers to switch between guitar chords smoothly and naturally, the claim here is that I can train my person, my soul, to do or react naturally in certain ways.

When Peter denied Christ, I'd like to claim that he wasn't exercising his free will. When they said to him, "You were with him," Peter didn't stop and consider his options and then decide what to say. Rather, he reacted: "No I wasn't!" Now this doesn't exculpate him; he is responsible for the way he reacts because his reactions are the result of habits that were allowed to form in his life. He had become the kind of person who would react that way in those circumstances.

The key, then, for being able to obey the commands of Jesus (like loving enemies, blessing those who curse us, etc.) is forming the right habits so that those things become the things we do naturally.

Spiritual Disciplines

So unless other noteworthy things happen and need blogging about, I'm continuing to work through the main points of my spiritual disciplines class. By way of review, so far we covered:

1. There is a gap between what we are called to be and what we too often settle for.


2. There is usually not some divine ZAP from on high that turns us into mature disciples; rather, we have a role to play in preparing the soil for God to grow his holiness in us.


3. Most of our churches have not done that great at Jesus's last injunction in the Great Commission: Teach them to obey all that I have commanded.


4. We can't expect to do what Jesus did unless we train like Jesus did.

OK, today's installment: A discipline is any activity I can force myself to do that brings about in me a disposition I can't just force myself to adopt.

This is a general definition that does not pertain only to spiritual disciplines. These, however, are more easily seen as a type of the more general group. Again, examples about from the world of sport. Athletes like to talk about muscle memory. They do a particular task over and over and over again, until it becomes the natural thing for their bodies to do. Or consider musicians playing scales on the piano or the guitar. It takes lots of (tedious) work to get your fingers to do that naturally. But then once the flesh has been formed, it does it naturally. That is, it is disposed to react in a certain way in a given set of circumstances.

The spiritual application becomes clear. Spiritual disciplines train our flesh (in the biblical sense) to respond in certain ways. Then our automatic or natural responses can become positive and life-giving, rather than life-sucking.

WWMJD?

At its essence, the WWJD movement is right on target. We are to be emulators of Christ, we should be doing what Jesus would do if he were in our shoes. It seems to me, however, that there is a big problem with this. Let's motivate it with a story.

Pretend that I am playing basketball in game 7 of the NBA finals. My team is down by 1 point with 15 seconds to go. The coach calls a timeout. In the huddle he says, "Stump. We're giving the ball to you. Win the game." But coach, I was cut from my high school basketball team. I don't know what to do out there. "No worries, Stump. When you get the ball, just pause for a moment and think to yourself, 'What would Michael Jordan do?' and then just do that."

Is it any less absurd to think that when I get into a "game situation" in life, I can just force myself to do what Jesus would do in this situation? In the first place, life usually comes at us too quickly, and we react rather than choose. And our reactions are a product of how we've trained ourselves. When someone cuts us off in traffic, do we ponder for a moment how Jesus would respond? No. We react. Certainly there are times that we have some time to decide on a course of action, but most of life is running on autopilot.

Second point: Back to the analogy: MJ doesn't really think about what he does on the court (OK, I'm sure I should be talking about Carmelo Anthony or someone more current, but I haven't followed NBA in quite some time and I don't know who's who anymore). It comes naturally because of the years of training.

It may be objected that the analogy doesn't hold very well because there is this thing called talent in basketball (I wasn't cut because of a lack of effort!). Is there an analogue to talent in the spiritual sense? That's a great question, and worthy of exploration in the future. For now I'd like to claim that it may in fact be easier for some people to do the right thing than for others (perhaps due to environmental factors), but certainly we are all given the raw talent we need to succeed in life when we are born of the Spirit.

So, moral to the story: be careful before putting the WWJD hitch cover on your truck. We can't expect to do what Jesus did unless we train like Jesus did.

Venezuela

I'm headed for Venezuela tomorrow. There is a conference going on there this week for representatives of all of the denominational affiliates in the Americas. I've been asked to come and talk about issues surrounding education accreditation.

I guess many of the would-be-pastors in other countries need to take some courses to satisfy the licensing requirements, but their countries don't have accredited institutions that offer those kinds of courses. So, we're going to talk through some possibilities for how Bethel might help.

I've never been to Venezuela, and my Spanish is not that great--in fact it is not good at all. It is one of those things that I've desired to learn, and I've even gotten tapes and listened to them a couple of times. But I've never put together the reliable action plan to make it happen.

I use this as an example in my spiritual formation presentations. I suspect that most Christians are in the "desiring" stage with regard to becoming spiritually mature (and learning how to do all the things that Jesus commanded). We sure wish we were spiritually mature, and even do something about it every now and then. But not many make it to the reliable action stage. More on this later.

There is supposed to be a guy in Caracas at the airport with my name on a piece of cardboard. I'm supposed to go with this guy to a hotel room, then Thursday morning he'll see that I'm put on the correct bus for a three hour ride to Valencia, where the conference is. I trust that I'll make it back here Friday night and not become some political prisoner of Hugo Chavez!

Teach them to obey

"Teaching them to obey all that I have commanded." I talked about this briefly on Thursday. This is the last of those participial phrases in the Great Commission. The verb of the sentence in Greek, of course, is not "go", but "disciple" as in "to disciple". So a very literal translation might be something like,

"(As you are) going, therefore, disciple all the ethnic groups, baptizing them into the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit, teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you."

So, he's talking to the eleven disciples here. So the operative question should be, what were the things that he had commanded the disciples?

The first thing Matthew records Jesus saying is to John the Baptist, convincing John to baptize him. If if we construe John to be one of Jesus's disciples, it doesn't seem that this would be one of the commands we're to teach would-be disciples to obey. Jesus has already been baptized, and we don't have to do it again.

The next conversation in Matthew is with Satan in the desert. So these commands again are not the ones we're to teach people to obey. Then he begins his public ministry, proclaiming (to anyone who would listen?) "Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near." I'd still like to claim that we're not yet talking about the commands in question, for this is more of a general call.

Then, he calls some disciples. This sounds promising. "Follow me," he says to Peter and Andrew. This was a fairly literal command, because these guys (and then James and John after them) stopped what they were doing and started following him around. I guess our challenge now is to translate this to our age: what does it mean to follow Jesus, and how do we teach people to obey it? I'd suggest that Jesus gives us some help here, because the next time Jesus's speech was recorded it is the Sermon on the Mount. And I guess I always had this idea that this was a sermon to a whole bunch of people. But the text is a bit ambiguous on this. For there were crowds around him, it says, and when he saw them he went up the mountain and sat down. Then his DISCIPLES came to him and he taught THEM.

If we take the unity of the book of Matthew seriously, I'd suggest that we ought to take very seriously the commands found here as the prime candidates for what Jesus wanted his disciples to be teaching his future disciples to obey. We'll explore what this might mean in the future.

Is the Church Held Accountable for its Mission?

I spent the whole day at work schlogging through our institution's self-study. Once every ten years (if all goes well) the regional accrediting agency comes around to check to see whether we're doing what we say we're doing. In advance of this we have to prepare several hundred pages of documentation and reflection on how well we're doing. It's really a pain in the posterior, because tending to your mission is different than documenting or proving that you're tending to your mission. However, there is something about having someone check up on you that makes you do things better and more responsibly.

I got thinking, "What if churches had accrediting agencies?" I guess those that are part of denominations in some sense do have a regulatory body, but I'd bet that there is not a lot of rigor with regard to the expectations.

What if Jesus showed up occasionally to see how we're doing with regard to the mission he left us? The Great Commission in Matthew has four components to it as normally translated:

1. Go into the whole world;
2. Make disciples of everybody;
3. Baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit;
4. Teach them to obey all that I have commanded.

When people talk about the Great Commission, they rarely make it to #4. What if the accrediting agency came around to our churches to check up on this one? Disregarding for the moment all of those people who aren't in the church (whom we're supposed to be going to, discipling, and baptizing), could we demonstrate that those who are in our churches have been taught to obey all that Jesus commanded? Notice that this is not just teaching them what the commands of Jesus are (though we might not do so well on this easier task either). Rather, we have been charged to teach people to obey.

I'd even like to claim that it is not just declaring to people that they ought to obey the commandments. If I were writing a Message-esque paraphrase, this passage would be rendered, "Teach them how to obey all that I have commanded." For that is the sense of what Jesus is expecting. And these were pretty tough commandments: Love your neighbor, love your enemy, bless those who curse you, turn the other cheek, be perfect, etc. Have we been teaching people how to do this stuff? This is the beginning of spiritual formation.

Gap but no Zap

My son got a kite today--a prize for practicing the piano a certain number of times this month. Wouldn't you know it, there's no wind. We just got back from running around the grassy field by our house trying to get this thing to fly. As long as the person with the string was running, the kite stayed in the air. But when the running stopped, the kite went down. It took a lot of effort.

What a nice segue into the sequel from yesterday! (Mind the Gap) Dallas Willard has gotten a lot of mileage out of saying, "Grace is not opposed to effort, just to earning." Premise 2 from yesterday's post is that we have a role to play in our spiritual maturation. This does not mean that we somehow earn our salvation or sanctification, nor that we can make ourselves holy. But it does mean that there is some effort required of us.

I come from a theological tradition that is keen on using the terms "entire sanctification" or being "filled with the Holy Spirit." These are well-intended concepts that I'm afraid have wandered some from their biblical moorings. In practical, everyday language it is often preached, "You've made Christ your Savior, now it is time to make him Lord of your life." The more theologically astute might say something like, "Subsequent to salvation the believer will have a crisis experience, fully surrender, and God will fill her with the Holy Spirit in a second act of grace." At that moment the believer is fully sanctified.

OK, so I'm not going to quibble about terms, but the impression is given that we have no role to play in this apart from giving God permission to fill us up. A recent speaker at my place of employment claimed that all we must do is "Let go and let God. We have no part, it's all his part." (This is almost verbatim, by the way, from The Christian's Secret to a Happy Life.) That is to say, we must just sit back and let God zap us into holiness.

Perhaps that is a caricature, but it the message that many of the college students are hearing. And many of them resolve (sometimes year after year) to make Christ Lord of their lives, but find themselves back in the old patterns after the spiritual high has gone away. I know quite a few of these who end up saying, "Let's be honest. This is not working." And they jettison what vestiges of faith they once had.

The biblical story, I believe, and the one that is true to our experience, is that it takes some effort on our parts to become holy people. Again, that doesn't mean we're making ourselves holy, but rather that we're putting ourselves into the position where God makes us holy. No one (except the extreme 5 pointers) would argue that there are things we can do that hinder our spiritual development: if I consciously decide to spend my time on the internet looking up soft porn, I am doing something that impedes my spiritual growth. So, by listening to a baseball game instead (go Red Sox), I am "doing" something that is better for me and contributing to my spiritual state. It is not too big of a leap from there to understand that there are other positive things that I can be doing that will help to move along the process of becoming more like Christ. There is no Zap that does this for me.

More on this in the future. If you've read this far, you must have enough time on your hands to skip over to Knee Deep in Life and read the May 7 posting. Good reflection on labor involved in getting something done.

Mind the Gap

It was a lovely spring weekend in Northern Indiana. I spent a lot of time sitting on decks--both my own and some friends'--enjoying the weather. I sure enjoy the change of seasons. Those living in San Diego or Quito, Ecuador can make a decent argument about constant pleasant temperatures, but I'll take the ups and downs. Too much of the same thing becomes numbing after awhile.

I'm back to writing about spiritual formation. I mentioned in an earlier post that I recently taught a six-week class exploring the spiritual disciplines. The integrity of such a class rests on (at least) these two premises:

1. There is a gap between the mature Christian state we are called to, and the state in which most of us Christians currently find ourselves.
2. God does not zap us into that maturity without our cooperation; we have a role to play.

The gap-premise seems obvious from the letters of Paul to the Christians of those early churches, and this is distinct from what is called justification in most of the the classical theological systems. This latter idea has been emphasized too much in my opinion. I suppose there is some change in standing with God, some legal transaction that occurs, when I repent and my sins are forgiven. But when I read the Bible, the overall emphasis seems rather to be on where I'm going once I've repented (literally, "turned").

If as a non-Christian I am running away from the Kingdom of God, when I repent, I stop and turn around. But if I just stand there looking, I'm not entering the Kingdom. So, if the goal is for us to enter that Kingdom fully by having everything in our lives go the way the king want them to be going, most of us have a ways to go. That is to say, there is a gap between where we are and where we are called to be.

Tomorrow: the N0-Zap-Premise.

Spiritual Disciplines

I just finished teaching a six week class on the spiritual disciplines at NMC. It was designed to be a sampler class, exposing people to various disciplines with assignments to practice a different one each week. I've done such a class several times now, and it never ceases to amaze me at the outset how few of the evangelicals who've spent their whole lives in the church know much about the substance or purpose of the spiritual disciplines. By the end, though, I've yet to have a member of such a class believe the spiritual disciplines not to be worth pursuing as a component of a life of discipleship. Thoughts about the spiritual disciplines will be a prominent feature of future Stump Speeches. I believe them to be crucial.

For now, here's a quote from Amma Syncletica, a fourth and fifth century Desert Mother:

“It is dangerous for someone not ‘formed’ by experience of the ascetic life to try to teach; it is as if someone whose house is unsound were to receive guests and cause them injury by the collapse of the building… For the mere articulation of words is like the inscriptions painted in perishable colours which a very short period of time has destroyed with blasts of wind and splashes of rain. Teaching that is based on ascetic experience, on the other hand, not even all eternity could destroy. By chiseling away the rough edges of the soul, the spoken word bestows on the faithful Christ’s everlasting image done in stone.”

The Life of Blessed Syncletica, trans. Elizabeth Bryson Bongie (Toronto: Peregrina 1999) v. 79, 50.