For some, the essence of the Christian life is the practice of spiritual disciplines. It's a kind of machine-like approach to the Christian life: get your life enmeshed in the disciplines and spirituality will be the product. I exaggerate. But few will doubt that many focus spirituality on disciplines nor that the focus on spiritual disciplines -- like solitude, fasting, etc -- has arisen dramatically in the last twenty five years or so.
If we address this topic from a biblical perspective, we might be surprised:
[BTW: If you want to see the whole thread of comments, double click on the "comments."]
To begin with, the focus in the Bible is almost never on "my" personal, spiritual development and spiritual formation. No one seems to be much concerned with this question: "Where am I in my personal developing relationship with God?" Or with this one: "Where is my inner self today?"
Let's think together today on how Jesus, Paul, Peter, James, and John would understand spiritual disciplines and how they would understand the essence of spirituality. How did Jesus frame life? (Would he call it the "spiritual" life?) How did Paul frame the Christian life? How did James frame the Christian life? (Would he call it "Christian"?) How did John frame the Christian life? Do any of these discuss the spiritual benefits of spiritual disciplines? (Like prayer, fasting, solitude...)
This post was provoked by a new resource I will be dipping into on this blog:
Brazos Introduction to Christian Spirituality, The (Brazos Introduction)
by Evan B. Howard. This is one of the most complete textbooks I've ever seen on Spirituality: introduction, human experience, God, Christian experience, divine-human relationship, Christian transformation, Christian spiritual formation, prayer, care, discernment, and the renewal of Christian spirituality ... with lots of notes and bibliography at the back. A publishing coup.
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Scot,
Great post ... lots of good comments.
Thanks to Derek Lehman (starting at 4:10) for saying what I was thinking as I read. The point of spiritual disciplines in the New Covenant is to faithfully keep covenant (practice hesed) with God and with each other/the Body of Christ/neighbors. Faithful hesed is essentially the Jesus Creed -- loving God and loving others -- but it is firmly grounded in relationship.
This kind of relationship calls each other to responsibility. It stand behind and encourages. It defends and provides for those in need. It allows the Spirit to knit individuals (parts) into one Body (church) so that the world will know we are Christians by our love for one another. Too bad this is so hard to do, eh? ;^/
Our disciplines must be grounded in authentic relationship if they are to result in "doing justice, loving mercy (hesed), and walking humbly with our God."
Thanks for the conversation starter, Scot ... and to the Jesus Creeders for the thought-provoking comments. It is such a shame that so many of us want to formula-ize everything.... Sigh :^(
Hey, RJS!
Thanks for finding a way to identify comments: the time stamp! Way to go, sister :^) I think it is even better than comment numbers, because when someone's comment is delayed or deleted, all the rest of the numbers change ... and that can be very confusing. But the time stamp is not something that will change.
Hurray!
Simple pleasures ... I have to take them where I can get them.
while i share the same concern that the disciplines have become too individualized and benefit driven... i struggle with concluding they are to be done with no personal motive.
we see Jesus, Paul and James eating and drinking, but there is no emphasis on those things for the sake of enjoying their taste or the nourishment they provide. yet, we acknowledge that the tastebuds in our mouths are gifts from God that serve to bring pleasure to an activity that we need to regularly participate in to receive energy to love Him & others in tangible ways. certainly it would be gluttonous to eat purely or mainly for enjoyment. but i cannot separate the enjoyment from the activity.
an aging friend of ours is fond of saying that she no longer lives to eat, but eats to live. by "living" see refers to the ability both to enjoy life and more of it... but also to serve and help others. must we negate one?
having said all this... i acknowledge a time in my life when it seemed G*D took away all pleasure in order to help me follow him more purely. it was a dark night to be sure. but when he raised me from it, i began to look at life differently... with a greater freedom and better appreciation for his beyond me-ness. i had lived for intimacy... and still do in many ways thrive on it. yet now, i recognize that in that intimacy and friendship, i still am a man who must follow, obey & serve. the disciplines are not, however, something i necessarily stop and go do. i can no more separate them from my relationship of love with him than i can my tastebuds from eating a butterscotch sundae.
A cursory read of the first 33% or so of the comments here was dispiriting. The criticism of spiritual disciplines as "machinery" for "personal development" is a terribly unfortunate caricature of disciplines' modern proponents (Foster, Willard et al.). Not a single one of them - Ortberg (a Willow Creek product) included - would set forth a philosophy of spiritual discipline that leads to the hyper-individualistic cartoons being decried here.
Ortberg, for his part, once wrote in _The Live You've Always Wanted_ that if an immersion in [any particular one of] the disciplines does not make one a more loving person - by which he clearly means in particular instances with actual people who have names and stories and who may in fact be hard to love - then that discipline should be abandoned. Surely we are wise enough to see that such a result would indicate not that the discipline itself was to blame, but rather that the exercise of it had become corrupted in some way.
Willard has translated one of the Hebrew verbs in Deuteronomy 6 as "you will be muttering them..." in reference to the statutes and ordinances of God. It is not a stretch at all to view the entirety of Deuteronomy 6, as well as Psalm 119, as a reminder to immerse oneself individually, then in community, in those statutes and ordinances as a way of burning them deeply onto one's heart and soul.
Eugene Peterson has linked up with Webb, Foster, Willard, and Ortberg under the Renovare banner and will bring a fresh word of reminder to us that the gospel, the Shema, and all of the rest of what constitutes bona fide discipleship to Jesus are (and must be) lived out in concrete, daily life with actual people in a living, breathing, struggling, sinning, redeeming community of faith. But it will not be a *corrective* to Renovare's approach to discipleship, it will be a reinforcement of it.
Thus the disciplines, as propounded by those modern teachers, are not at all what they are being portrayed to be by some of us here.
To borrow a well-worn phrase from _The Blue Parakeet_, the idea of the spiritual disciplines could be reasonably known as reading the Bible *with* tradition, as many, many disciples throughout the ages have found them helpful in centering the mind and heart on those things that are central to apprenticeship to Jesus (including those aspects of discipleship that facilitate other-directed, divine love toward one's neighbors in the ordinary circumstances of life). One could argue, moreover, that the "Jesus Creed" is the didactic result of a deep, personal reflection on the Hebrew scriptures...which is difficult to distinguish from the spirit of _lectio divina_.
qb
First, a correction - Jesus is alive - not just was alive (I was referring to his life on earth....well, you get the point.)
Then, I agree with QB - placing ourselves before God is not to become individualistic or more-like-a-Pharisee - it is to learn to hear God's voice, learn God's ways, and follow Jesus. I like the 'Jesus Creed' linking to the Old Testament and to Lectio Divina....I need to ponder that!
That said, I need to approach the disciplines with a conscious focus on us/we/community - not me/I/mine like it is my penchant to do.
Thanks for raising the question, Scot.
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