Tag Archives: obedience

Being outside of God: Thoughts on being in

A life in the Spirit, Doing Theology, Film/TV, Psychological growth, Spiritual direction, , , , , , , , , , , ,

I attended a psychology conference recently with a large contingent of Evangelicals among the presenters and participants. All day long, as people explored the meaning of faith, there was an intrusive theme I kept hearing, “I am on the outside getting in.” God may be welcoming us in. Or we may be struggling to get in. But the existential reality with which most seemed to agree is that we are all on the outs with God.

I felt outside of their “outsideness.” My “other” existential reality never dawned on me so acutely. I have not stopped thinking about it ever since. I really do feel I am in with God, in Christ, right now. Undeservedly but absolutely inside.

All weekend long I kept taking issue, in my own thoughts, at least, with the extreme sense of autonomy some people were stuck with. It is a dilemma. For psychologists, autonomy is a fundamental truth to be protected. For Christians, it is a good thing but not THE thing.

Autonomy

You can get a definition of “autonomy” by watching The Pitt. The doctors on that TV show are protecting it all the time; it is a main element of their ethics. They painstakingly hold back their opinions and even advice so the patient can exercise their freedom to choose. On one episode the ER gave a dying woman a long time in a scarce bed to make up her mind about how she was going to die.

As a result of all this painstaking, the doctors end up very much like God, I suppose, letting us unfold without bossing us around. Of course, the opposite is true, too. The doctors are often portrayed as having no choice at all, constrained by science, protocol, profits and time. They are constantly complaining about being trapped by the needs of the emergency room, enslaved to their paperwork, and subject to their foibles and their relationships. They seem to feel they have no autonomy at all.

The definition of autonomy is, simply, the capacity to think your own thoughts and take action on them, not be dominated by someone else and enslaved to their will. We’re all committed to it, all feel we don’t have enough, and all feel subject to something or someone that thwarts it all day.

As a psychotherapist, much of my work is to help people exercise their autonomy to think and feel as they desire and make new choices accordingly.  Mostly, my clients want to be free of what ties them up so they can love and be loved, and so they can contribute to society and receive from others.

The Evangelical clients tend to have a further dilemma, because they believe if they think anything but God’s thoughts it is a sin, and if they feel their feelings (most of which are immoral or prone to be), it is likely a sin. They seem to be determined to take orders from Jesus the King, which releases them from the need to listen to themselves and change. It is a theological nightmare. They are strangely condemned to be in charge of their future, very autonomous and alone, but they are totally subject to someone else’s will, which is quite beyond their ability to accomplish but which is a life and death matter to accomplish, nonetheless.

For instance, the last verse of the version of O Sacred Head Sore Wounded we sang on Good Friday had this final verse:

My days are few, O fail not, with thine eternal power,
to hold me that I quail not in death’s most fearful hour;
that I may fight befriended, and see in my last strife
to me thine arms extended upon the cross of life.

Did I hear the theology right? This seems to be the gist of it: “I need God’s power to hold me (I pictured a tractor beam) because I am on the other side of death; I’m outside of the place Jesus lives. I have to fight to stay on my quest to be inside, where Jesus, one day, will greet me with open arms.

My friend protested on Facebook on Good Friday: God doesn’t love us because Jesus died. Jesus died because God loves us. Even though this is common New Testament, many of the Christians at my conference were still working out a transaction. Jesus died for me, so I have to die for him to seal the deal and get into eternity. Jesus died for me so I could gain the power to do my assignment and so be good enough to get into heaven.

To sum it up: Evangelical Christians often feel “outside” God’s presence due to a performance-based spirituality that equates grace with legalistic obedience rather than a free gift. This mentality stems from a “sin-fixation,” whereby believers constantly scrutinize their actions to measure their spiritual standing. This approach often leads to a cycle of shame, where failing to meet high behavioral standards feels like losing God’s favor, creating a perpetual need to get back in.

Let’s unpack the elements of that a bit.

Performance

A twenty-something friend told me she could not attend Jr. High summer camp as child because she had not yet spoken in tongues. She faked it. I still marvel at this. How could someone make the ecstatic experience of tongues, totally uncontrollable by definition, into a criteria for getting into camp? I understand the delight of having the Holy Spirit “come upon me.” And I think tongues were, in the Bible and continue to be, a sign of God’s presence. But make the experience a general rubric for goodness or acceptance? Teach the junior highers the need to perform the trappings of faith well? 1 Corinthians is an argument against people who would do such a thing. But if we are all outside, we will likely invent a criteria for getting in —  and, unfortunately, for keeping people out.

Measurement

Many evangelicals define their standing with God by how well they obey set rules—such as church attendance, tithing, and avoiding specific sins. When they “stumble,” they feel as though they have fallen out of grace, confusing sanctification (the process of becoming like Christ) with justification (being declared righteous). People measure their sanctification to prove their justification as if they were in charge of their salvation!

I went to a conference session by a Christian Psychologist (who I love) and he was using research models to measure love, since why should God be outside the religion science has made for itself? It was a nice attempt to put measurement back where it belongs.

Self-control

An intense focus on personal sins can lead to “creeping legalism,” where believers spend more time obsessing over controlling sin than experiencing the freedom of grace. This “sin-fixation” results in a constant need to apologize for being human, leading to a feeling of being “outside.” It often results in the need to control oneself, others and the world which never goes well.

Self-control is one of the fruit of the spirit. There is a long history of people using the word to keep themselves undefiled, especially by sexual impurity – because they want to get in. But a more accurate meaning of the fruit is: the healthy empowerment one feels when they experience autonomy, the gift of being one’s true self. In Greek philosophy, self-mastery was basically the best one could do, it was the best to which one could aspire in a cosmos full of impersonal, often irrational gods. But Christians live in a world given by a Creator who loves them and leads them, day by day. Self-control is the calm capacity to give as grace has been given to each of us.

Permission

Some evangelical teachings can create a mindset where grace is viewed as permission to sin, but simultaneously, “unmerited favor” feels fragile and easily lost. People are in a balancing act between feeling good about where they are and waiting for the other sin shoe to drop. This dichotomy leads to anxiety about one’s standing with God. The idea is, “Once I’ve given in to sin I am tainted.” This leads some people to fake being in, even when they feel tainted. It leads others into self-exile, since they know they will never be fully in.

One serious teen I knew became a Christian and showed up exhausted to talk to me one day. When I asked him why he looked so tired, he finally revealed. “I have to stay awake because I have a lot of sins to confess. I especially don’t want the sun to go down on my anger.” He really loved the idea of not getting away with anything, but he could not permit God be in charge of the forgiving. He was perpetually in charge of making the right choice to get permission to come in.

Promises

The gap between the promise of a transformed life and the reality of human brokenness creates a sense of disillusionment. The idea is, “If all the promises are not being fulfilled in me, I must be out.” Validating their own authenticity according to God’s performance can make it difficult for believers to accept they are already “inside” God’s grace. Especially when we are sick in body or mind, we assess our well-being according to what we think ought to be true. For many believers, any sin or suffering mars their perfection in Christ.

Assessing ourselves according to how well the promises of God are realized in our life is a recipe for being perpetually out of the exquisite feeling of swimming in the ocean of grace into which we were launched at birth. If the test tube truths the religion of science teaches dominate us (which are often disappointing in their own limited universe), God is regularly disappointing and we are usually disappointed or disappointing, depending on how we respond. We can end up loaded with a false guilt about how bad I must be for God not to fulfill in me what he fulfills in others!

Obedience

Dallas Willard explains how many Christians mistakenly see Christ’s teachings as laws to obey to gain grace, rather than as reflections of the life that comes to them through the new birth. This fundamental misunderstanding keeps believers striving to “get in” to a kingdom they are already part of.

This misunderstanding is so universally assumed that the TV show The Good Place could have it as a central premise. Kristen Bell does not believe she should be in the (what comes to be revealed as an ersatz) “good place” because she is selfish. It seems almost everyone is convinced that salvation requires being good enough to deserve it and obedience to arbitrary rules is key to achieving it.

In Christ

I guess I should not blame the Evangelicals for falling into heresy, since it seems like from the Middle Ages onward, Europe was a long road to re-centering humans. Christianity was reduced to a penance system long before they got there.

DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man put’s the idea of the dangerous kind of autonomy into a picture. The circle represents divine or spiritual perfection (cosmos), while the square represents the material, earthly world. By bridging both, the figure highlights the human body as a microcosm of the universe. Humans are central, especially men.

According to DaVinci’s chart, I am autonomous. I am innately free to choose. In relation to God, I am exiled or welcomed in. I relation to others I can make relationships or end them.

But how did I get out of relationship if I were never in? From the beginning to the end of the Bible (the Evangelicals purportedly love), our sense of being out is a matter of being removed from where we were. Being in with God is our natural human state.

Paul is always referring to being “in Christ.” The phrase is a spatial metaphor which signifies the believer’s renewed sense of being safe at home as opposed to their previous uncertainty before faith and baptism. Being our true selves in Christ or our false self in our autonomy is Paul’s version of being  in our out. The way Paul sees it, Jesus was at the creation of the world and we all bear his image. And according to Jesus, we are all are touched and called into abundance by God’s love. We are all in the love of God whether we think we can choose that or not. God sees us according to who we are in Christ. We have the freedom to turn away. But that is not natural or inevitable.

Being outside where nothing but the power to do “righteousness” proves our worth and where our successes give God the glory he craves results in the psychopathic Pete Hegseth and the infamous prayer he prayed at a meeting last week:

“Almighty God, who trains our hands for war and our fingers for battle, you who stirred the nations from the north against Babylon of old, making her land a desolation where none dwell, behold now the wicked who rise against your justice and the peace of the righteous.”

I think it takes little convincing to admit “the peace of the righteous,” as Hegseth describes, has nothing to do with Jesus and nothing to do with peace. The U.S. has NOT been at war, undeclared or declared, for about 15-20  years since 1776. If you can’t get into heaven, you make yourself a god on the earth, right? At least that is what a lot of people who would like to follow Jesus are struggling with in the United States.

A pilgrim or tourist disciple?: What will I be like at fifty? (2004) 

A life in the Spirit, Spiritual direction, , , ,

My Jesus Collective group was talking about spiritual formation this week, as their churches are re-forming after the pandemic. I think some of my past thinking in this speech might contribute to the subject.

I’m like a frog in the world’s pot

It is a wonder any frogs grow up. I wondered how threatened they must feel the other day when Helena, my three-year-old friend, showed me the frog she caught at the Love Feast. He looked like a twenty-something in frog years, certainly no tadpole. He was just hopping around checking out the world, and then he was in the clutches of a toddler. He was exploring on a nice, humid, July day in Philly, as happy as can be, and then, “Doh! I’m in the pocket of a little sun dress! How the toad did I get here!” But by then it was too late, he was about to meet death by caress. It seems similarly shocking, but I know a lot of people who got to fifty and said, “Doh! I’m fifty! How in the world did I ever get here and what am I doing in this pocket?”  Let’s talk about that.

First let’s talk about feeling like the world has you in its pocket. It is hard to put one’s finger on what is wrong in the world, especially when it’s caressing you but you’re not dead yet. The following analogy gets used for everything, and I’ve never tried it to see if it is true, but…the temptation of settling into the world is often compared to the proverbial frog in the pot. They say if you throw a live frog in hot water (no, I do not know who would do such a thing) the frog will try to escape before he dies. But if you put one in swamp-temperature water and then slowly turn up the heat, the cold blooded frog will enjoy the warmth until  the temperature goes over a tipping point and she is cooked. This could happen! We gradually gets used to what should have seemed wrong; we slowly acclimate, like a frog heating up in a pot, and then we’re cooked.

You know how this works. When does a young musician who hangs with the drug users and drinkers during performances wake up to the fact that he’s become one of the gang? When does the young woman who took the job to make money realize that she became a corporate lackey with debts to trap her there the rest of her life? The ways of the world are an atmosphere, almost like a mood. Spiritually aware people get an uneasiness that not all is well, but every time we define the illness we feel uncertain and stay put. We often sense the environment we are in is eroding our faith; it is wearing out our hope and proactivity; it is corrupting and blunting our love — then, “Doh!”

What you are now is a step toward who you’re becoming

How you go through the world as it has formed itself in your era, right now, will define what you are when you are fifty. Some of us care about this. Some of us are looking at thirty and realizing, “I needed to do more during my twenties – this could be serious!” Some of are fifty and wondering, “Is this it? – I should consider how to die well, not just die.” I’m trying to speak into those thoughts because people are asking good questions.

The little part of Hebrews I am highlighting shows how to do make our way. The writer is winding up the big finale of his message in chapters 11 and 12 with a call to faithfulness in the face of pressures from the world to shrink back in fear and not go the whole way with Jesus on His way. The famous chapter 11 lists all the great heroes of faith by name and by action. The writer calls us to follow in their footsteps. Of these people of faith she (it could be a she!) says,

“the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.”

And they did a lot of other amazing things that showed their faith.

With these examples, she calls each of us to imagine how and where we want to wander. Many of us are following the ways of our time and trying to line our pockets with as much brick and mortar, bank accounts and power as we can. In the face of similar circumstances, the writer of Hebrews in our reading 11:38-12:3 is saying, “Imagine another way. Remember the amazing people who didn’t go the way of the world, but went the way of faith in God and his Son, Jesus.” And I’m thinking of it more like, “Imagine — What do I want to be when I am fifty?”

Pilgrim or tourist?

Let’s dare to ask ourselves and God, “Do you think I could become a spiritual someone?” A full-fledged someone probably has their full development going by fifty, at least, wouldn’t you say? Spiritual maturity takes time. I’m fifty – did I make it? In some ways, yes, in other ways I’m just very adept at seeing how far I have to go. But one thing I did, which I feel very blessed about, is, at about 19, I made a definite decision to take the journey by faith, and that has made all the difference.

50 on May 2

To be a mature person of God when you’re fifty, to be going somewhere in the Spirit, will mean you’ve taken the journey seriously. Just like the writer of Hebrews says, you realize that the world as it has fallen is not worthy of your submission. You don’t quite fit. You recognize the water is too hot and get out before you’re cooked.

As such, believers are the perpetual pilgrims, wanderers; they’re followers; they’re the ones who went out. If you want to get somewhere with God by fifty (or eighty), be a good pilgrim, starting now. Some of the colonizers who came to America to settle were so serious about this wandering they called themselves the Pilgrims. They were spending their lives going somewhere, going home to God, putting their feet to responding to Jesus when he says, “I am the way. No one comes to the Father but by me” 

They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.

On the journey of life, faithful people are on a pilgrimage to a sacred place, and God is eager to welcome them into it when they get home. To decide where you will be later depends on how you are travelling now. Are you a pilgrim or are you a tourist?

A long obedience

Think about the next verses in today’s reading. A maturing faith is a journey of long obedience, not instant or merely experiential.

These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.

Pilgrims sustain a long obedience, even when they don’t get everything they want right now. Tourists want something instant; they are always looking for the next immediate experience. It is axiomatic that we are all so conditioned by thirty-second commercials we have no ability to sustain interest in something for very long.

I went on my first trip as a pilgrim a couple of years ago, and now I try to figure out how I can make every vacation a pilgrimage rather than a mere tour. I would have liked Spain as a tourist, too – seeing everything, getting in line to do all the things I heard everyone else already did, having some extreme experience that would make a good story. But I made up my mind to do the pilgrimage to Santiago and it reaffirmed something important.

It’s a long story, but my pilgrimage did not work out like I had planned. I did not receive what the trip promised; it kind of fell apart. But I kept going and found another way to do it. I love doing sights, but a pilgrimage isn’t about sights, it is about following God with my body and soul and mind and strength. For example, I was quite surprised by what happened  when we got to kind of an sad village, a deserted place no tourists bothered to visit. We made a habit of stopping to pray at the town’s church. So in this out-of-the-way place we labored up to a rather ugly church, expecting it to be locked. We found ourselves the only ones there for a long time. We rested and prayed. As we stood to leave, I was moved to sing in this echoey building: “I know my redeemer lives.” We’ve never forgotten how God met us there. It was moment pilgrims get that tourists miss.

Eugene Peterson quotes Frederic Nietzsche, of all people, who got this right. He said:

The essential thing in heaven and earth is…that there should be a long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.

Being determined to develop faith, not settling in the world as it is but obeying the vision, believing the promise, trusting the Way — that makes you something that is worthy of living at fifty.

Lifelong apprenticeship

Look at the next set of verses. Learning the life God gives is a life-long apprenticeship in the same thing, not just a search for something novel or the next big thing.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

Tourists are just visiting. They are always looking over your shoulder at the next thing. They are just tasting and planning their itinerary to get a novel meal tomorrow night, too. Pilgrims have more of a life-long mindset. They are going somewhere. It doesn’t matter how far away it is, they know where they are going. They are traveling with their Master in a loving and learning relationship – disciples, apprentices. It is a whole worldview.

It seems to me that religion is captured by the tourist mindset these days. It is understood as a visit to an attractive site when we have the leisure to get there. Some go to church. Some go to big services held in arenas or watch them on TV. Some like religiotainment – from one retreat, conference, rally, seminar to the next, complete with the latest personalities and controversial topics. There is always something new: podcasts, yoga, being purpose-driven, medieval liturgical revival, holy laughter, or a Unitarian taste of them all. We’ll try anything, go anywhere, until something else comes along.

Disciples, in contrast, are sticking with an apprentice relationship with Jesus. We’re learning the skills of faith as we go – not sitting in a classroom getting info. We’re walking with him, going where he goes and how he goes. It takes a lifetime. We aren’t learning to hammer a nail straight, we are learning to live straight. We are learning perseverance.

I love the point in a cell (or whatever circle you are in) when things gets boring — when people are over the novelty and have to make a relationship with someone they might not really like all that much. Then real love, faith and hope will have to show up. The church we built was set up to torment people with that reality, and we did torment them. Some fled.

The assumption we’ll have to keep learning has made a lot of people suffer around here. Because they realize that to get anywhere they will have to stay and commit. For instance, we use the word apprentice to describe the comrade of a cell leader. The use of this old-sounding word was well-debated. It takes a lot of humility to be an apprentice – we all want to be co-leaders and never learn anything or aspire to more. What’s more, the word implies that you are sticking around – when the cell multiplies, you will become the next leader nurturing the next apprentice. A lot of people just cannot honestly become an apprentice cell leader because they can see that Circle of Hope (and your church) will soon lose its novelty and they will want to move on – they’ve already heard about a church in California that is cool. Thomas Szasz, the therapist, says,

What we call “sanity”…has a great deal to do with competence – earned by struggling for excellence, with compassion – hard won by confronting conflict, and with modesty and patience – acquired through silence and suffering.

Having a race set out for you and running it with perseverance builds something into you that looks good at fifty.

Patiently keep faith

Finally, look at those last sentences. Getting where Jesus is leading means also being a pioneer with a long view, not hurried or impatient.

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Tourists are right in with the world’s passion for the immediate and the casual. Pilgrims are like those pioneers in our country who called themselves by that name. They are authors of life in unknown, even hostile territory. You don’t have to have the famous Pilgrims’ catastrophic view of the native people in Massachusetts or Africans to admire their faith, the same way your real or potential faults do not ruin yours (at least your sins don’t have to ruin you). Pilgrims have the long view of what can be built, what will be, which includes themselves.

Not uncommon

The world is going for short cuts – “Tell me how to be a mature Christian in 20 minutes – if you take an hour I’ll have to go because I made a date for dinner.” We want instant credit. We are impatient for results – blow up Iraq and build a democracy in a year – heck, we can barely get a Thrift Store going in that time! We are impatient for results in ourselves and others, too – “You went to the therapist for six months, so what did all that money go for?” We live in fear of the world — if it doesn’t happen now, it won’t pass muster with the world (which it won’t). Spiritually, that touristy way is a disaster. We can’t get into life in Christ by hitting the high points of the Bible, or go to the sacred places like we are driving by on the bus tour – “And on your left, there is Henry Nouwen suffering for thirty years to understand the prodigal son; now on you right we have Mother Teresa….”

We, as a people, are trying to be rather strange in all this. We purposely don’t try to win a person with a meeting that will wow them with one pass. You’ll have to stick around and relate, or we have nothing to give. I think God is like that, too. He knows what is best and she is not in a hurry.

Picture yourself at 50 (or 80)

To end up a holy person, a sane person, a loving person, a pioneer person, a person who didn’t get boiled in the world, here’s the way:

  • Let us fix our eyes on Jesus – settle in with Jesus and don’t take your eyes off him.
  • Jesus is the author and perfecter of our faith, — he’s the generator, the pioneer, the way-clearer, the light in the dark, the welcoming hand at the end of the long tunnel. Start at the beginning, or restart.
  • He is the one who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. – he’s been everywhere you might go, even death, and he made it to God. Endure your dying and heap scorn on the world when it tries to lure you into its pocket.
  • Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. – keep your faith in Jesus and follow his way, even when the road seems long.

Picture your church 50 years from now – bunch of tourists? A ship of fools? Can you even imagine lasting that long?

Picture yourself as you, the pilgrim, at 50 (or if you are already there, pick a date you’ll likely die). How many years will it be until then? What can you do with that many years? To what do you aspire to be in your heart and in your life with the author of our faith by your side? What do you want to learn to be? Through what would you like to go and come out the other side with the perfecter of our faith?

If you need a practical step to take in that direction, why not live in today’s reading and keep journeying with them this week. Obey what God says to you in them, learn the depths of them, make a pioneer’s house with them in the middle of this world.

[T]he world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.

These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. (Hebrews 11:38-12:3)

 

 

 

 

Long obedience: Encouragement for not giving up

A life in the Spirit, Leadership, , , , , ,

I have been thinking about how wonderful it is that Circle of Hope has a few hundred people at the core who have been committed for a long time. Many of them will be at the Love Feast again recommitting their hearts to the long haul. Whatever success we have in meeting our goals is based, to a large degree, on their capacity to stick with it! In gratitude for them, I offer you a paraphrase of some parts of a good book on the subject of sticking with it: Eugene Peterson’s A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.

Instant or sustainable?

One aspect of the world I have been able to identify as harmful to Christians is the assumption that anything worthwhile can be acquired instantly. We assume that if something can be done at all, it can be done quickly and efficiently. Our attention spans have been conditioned by same-day delivery, instant messages and last-minute texts. Our sense of reality has been flattened by fifteen-second commercials and thirty-page abridgments.

It is not difficult in such a world to get a person interested in Jesus; it is terrifically difficult to sustain their interest, much more difficult to build the church, live as a missional community and gain the prize of maturity in Christ! It is hard to achieve our goal of nurturing fifty-year-old radical Christians.

Immediacy or patience?

Millions of people in our culture still make decisions to follow Jesus, but there is a huge attrition rate. Many claim to have been born again, but the evidence for mature Christian discipleship is slim. In our kind of culture, anything, even news about God, can be sold if it is packaged freshly [2018 retailer news]; but when something loses its novelty, it goes on the garbage heap [2015 novelty foods]. There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness.

Orlando’s Holyland Experience — click for website (it’s a real place)

Religion in our time has been captured by the tourist mindset. Religion is understood as a visit to an attractive site — a visit made when we have adequate leisure. For some, religion is a weekly jaunt to church, for others, occasional visits to special events. Some people, with a bent for religious entertainment and sacred diversion, plan their lives around special events like retreats, rallies and conferences [Joyce Meyer is still my favorite (Wiki page is not so nice to her)]. We go to see a new personality, to hear a new truth, to get a new experience and so somehow expand our otherwise humdrum lives [KLOVE fan awards]. The religious life is defined as the latest and the newest: Zen or anything Eastern [9% of U.S. practices yoga], faith healing, Kabbalah, human potential, parapsychology, prosperity, choreography in the chancel, Armageddon. We’ll try anything–until something else comes along.

The aspect of the world that makes the work of leading Christians in the way of faith most difficult is what Gore Vidal has analyzed as “today’s passion for the immediate and the casual.”1 Everyone is in a hurry. They want shortcuts. They want church leaders to help them fill out the form that will get them instant credit (in eternity). They are impatient for results. They have adopted the lifestyle of a tourist and only want the high points. But the church is not a tour bus.

Friedrich Nietzsche, who saw this area of spiritual truth at least with great clarity, wrote, “The essential thing ‘in heaven and earth’ is . . . that there should be long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.”2 It is this “long obedience in the same direction” which the mood of the world does so much to discourage.

For recognizing and resisting the stream of the world’s ways there are two biblical designations for people of faith that are extremely useful: disciple and pilgrim.

  • Disciples are people who spend their lives apprenticed to their master, Jesus Christ. We are in a growing-learning relationship, always. A disciple is a learner, but not in the academic setting of a schoolroom, rather at the work site of a craftsman. We do not acquire information about God but skills in faith.
  • Pilgrims are people who spend their lives going someplace, going to God, and whose path for getting there is the way, Jesus Christ. We realize that “this world is not my home” and set out for “the Father’s house.” Abraham, who “went out,” is our archetype. Jesus, answering Thomas’s question “Master, we have no idea where you’re going. How do you expect us to know the road?” gives us directions: “I am the Way, also the Truth, also the Life. No one gets to the Father apart from me” (John 14:5-6). The letter to the Hebrews defines our program: “Do you see what this means–all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we’d better get on with it. Strip down, start running–and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in” (Hebrews 12:1-2).

Levelled or upward?

We are disciples on pilgrimage. The pilgrim songs from Pslams 120-134 are helpful encouragements along our way. These fifteen psalms were likely sung, possibly in sequence, by Hebrew pilgrims as they went up to Jerusalem to the great worship festivals. Topographically Jerusalem was the highest city in Palestine, and so all who traveled there spent much of their time ascending. But the ascent was not only literal, it was also a metaphor: the trip to Jerusalem acted out a life lived upward toward God, an existence that advanced from one level to another in developing maturity–what Paul described as “the goal, where God is beckoning us onward–to Jesus” (Philippians 3:14).

This picture of the Hebrews singing these fifteen psalms as they left their routines of discipleship and made their way from towns and villages, farms and cities, as pilgrims up to Jerusalem has become embedded in the Christian devotional imagination. It is our best background for understanding life as a faith-journey.

Meanwhile the world whispers, “Why bother? There is plenty to enjoy without involving yourself in all that. The past is a graveyard–ignore it; the future is a holocaust–avoid it. There is no payoff for discipleship, there is no destination for pilgrimage. Get God the quick way; buy instant charisma.” But other voices speak–if not more attractively, at least more truly. Thomas Szasz, in his therapy and writing, has attempted to revive respect for what he calls the “simplest and most ancient of human truths: namely, that life is an arduous and tragic struggle; that what we call ‘sanity,’ what we mean by ‘not being schizophrenic,’ has a great deal to do with competence, earned by struggling for excellence; with compassion, hard won by confronting conflict; and with modesty and patience, acquired through silence and suffering.”3 His testimony validates the decision of disciples who commit themselves to make the climb as pilgrims and look for their true selves on the journey home.

1 Gore Vidal, Matters of Fact and Fiction (New York: Random House, 1977), p. 86.
2 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Helen Zimmern (London: 1907), sec. 188.
3 Thomas Szasz, Schizophrenia, the Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry (Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, 1978), p. 72.