I think it is about time to start making a move toward shutting down the Fight Club series. (Won’t Michael Vick be disappointed? Oh wait. We don’t do dogfighting here at the Fight Club, so what does he care?)
This time I would like to address the issue of spiritual formation.
I waited until the end of the series to address this because I believe that spiritual formation is the most fundamental of all the issues that I wanted to address. An awful lot of the trouble that I see in the world of evangelical Protestant-dom has to do with the kind of believers and disciples that we are, and the forces and influences within our evangelical culture that make us into the kind of disciples that we are.
So what is spiritual formation? Spiritual formation is the process by which we develop as believers and disciples over the course of our Christian lives. Now, a lot of this is the work of God inside of us as He directs our lives and experiences in order to transform us into the image of Christ. As you read the Bible, you will see quite clearly that there are certain things which God has promised to do for us in order to affect this transformation inside of us.
But there is a human component to the process of spiritual formation as well. This is clear when you see that different believers progress spiritually at different rates. Some will show incredible growth in a short amount of time, while others will go for long stretches of time with no apparent signs of growth at all.
This is also clear to see when you look at how different believers respond to similar situations in life. Notice, for instance, the difference in how a Catholic and a Baptist would react to the prospect of a night at the theater with dinner and drinks beforehand. Or the difference in how a charismatic of the health-and-wealth variety and a hard-core Calvinist would react if a close family member were to become critically ill.
The human component of spiritual formation tends to get passed over by us as evangelicals, largely because of the language and images we use to describe the process. To us, it’s simply a matter of “Ask Jesus into your heart and He will change you from the inside out.”
I’m sure a lot of you are familiar with the painting of Jesus standing and knocking at a door without a doorknob. You’ve probably heard that that door is the door of your heart. The doorknob is on the inside, which means that the only way Jesus can get through it is if you open it for him, or if He breaks it down and forces His way inside–and we all know He isn’t going to do that.
Preachers who make mention of this painting usually do so within the context of an altar call in which you are strongly encouraged to “give your heart to Jesus”. “Here I am, I stand at the door and knock”, says Jesus (Revelation 3:20). Just go on and open the door. Let Jesus into your heart, and He will change you from the inside out.
So what happens after Jesus comes into your heart? Judging by the way we evangelicals talk about it, you would think that it is simply a matter of Jesus changing you from the inside out. You don’t have to do anything to advance your own spiritual growth; Jesus does it all. And it happens from the inside out, so don’t be surprised if you go for long stretches where it seems like nothing is different. Of course, if nothing is changing in your life that could also mean that you aren’t REALLY saved, that you didn’t REALLY accept Jesus into your heart, but that’s another matter entirely.
Here is a Michael Spencer post that I commend to your attention which addresses the painting, the Revelation verse, the altar call, and their implications for our view of spiritual formation.
Contrast this with the Catholic view of spiritual formation. The Catholic Church is very intentional about the human role in the process of spiritual formation. Within the Catholic tradition there is the acknowledgement that God has promised to do certain things for us in the process of spiritual formation, but there is also the belief that as believers and disciples, we are who we make ourselves to be. Thus there is a lot of emphasis on conscious, intentional spiritual formation through such disciplines as silence, contemplation, prayer, service, and engagement with the community. There are many resources available to facilitate this process of spiritual formation. Many of these have been around for centuries, such as the Rule of St. Benedict, Of the Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis, and the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, just to name a few.
This is in stark contrast with the situation in evangelical Protestant-dom. The only distinctly evangelical resources available for anyone who wishes to engage in an intentional journey of spiritual formation are The Purpose-Driven Life, The Prayer of Jabez, or the discipleship/evangelism course at your local church. Beyond that, there just isn’t that much out there.
And yet, we are all upon a path. We are all upon a journey of intentional spiritual formation, whether we are willing to acknowledge it or not. Daily our words, our actions, and our choices are transforming us into one kind of disciple or another–whether we are willing to admit it or not. And the ultimate results are obvious to anyone who cares to look.
Consider, for example, the heroes of the Catholic faith: men such as Augustine or Thomas Merton. These men are known primarily as contemplative types who gave a great deal of attention to forming themselves into what they believed that God wanted them to be. They had a great deal to say to the people in the world and time in which they lived, but they are known chiefly as men who were more interested in working on themselves than working on the outside world. Could it be that they were trying to earn their salvation by good works because they were not cognizant of the fact that we are all justified by faith in Christ? Or could it be that the process of spiritual formation is just not the instant, automatic affair that we have made it out to be?
Now contrast this with the kind of disciple that you are likely to find in the world of evangelical Protestant-dom. The defining characteristic here is talk. Lots of it. It seems like everybody has an opinion on the political issues of the day and is all too prepared to spout whatever they heard from Rush Limbaugh or whoever their favorite conservative political commentator happens to be. It seems like everybody can tell you that you are living in sin and need to repent. It seems like everybody can tell you why their way of doing things is right and yours is wrong, and give you the Scripture to back it up.
Also notice that there is a very high level of hostility to the sort of contemplative prayer that is a distinctive mark of Catholic spirituality. Note the alarm bells that go off in the evangelical world at the mere mention of contemplative prayer, or anything which even remotely resembles it. Read most evangelical books and blogs–especially those of the Reformed variety–and you will see that there is not enough bad to say about silence or contemplation or anything having to do with the imagination. (Why, these things are of the devil! The New Age is infiltrating the Church, and it must be stopped immediately!!!) As proof of this, note the high level of hostility in many evangelical circles toward the Emerging Church, a recent spiritual movement which emphasizes many aspects of contemplative prayer as a means toward a more authentic spirituality.
(An interesting side note: Within the past two decades there has been a high incidence of conservative evangelicals defecting to the Catholic Church. Given the high level of evangelical hostility toward contemplative prayer, it is interesting to ponder what implications this might have for the future of contemplative spirituality in the Catholic Church.)
I believe that the human element of spiritual formation is largely determined by the choice of who and what we allow to influence us. The Catholic Church is highly cognizant of and intentional about this; thus there are several monastic traditions, each with a distinct vision of what the disciple of Christ is supposed to look like, a rule (or way of life–as in the Rule of St. Benedict) for implementing that vision, and a community of followers dedicated to living out that rule.
On the evangelical side of the fence, we claim that there is no “rule” except the Bible alone. But the reality is that there are many unspoken, unofficial “rules” out there which are formulated by the accepted authorities of evangelical Protestant culture and transmitted by the media which supports those authorities. This is evident when anyone ventures to look at the numerous sects, denominations, and other varieties of evangelical Protestant-dom, all of which claim to “just read the Bible”.
Just as the different monastic rules within the Catholic Church produce distinct types of disciples, so the different “rules” within evangelical Protestant-dom produce distinct types of disciples. As noted earlier, one of the common elements here is talk–lots of it. There are many strains of evangelicalism where polemic is a strongly valued expression of discipleship. The mature disciple is one who knows the Scriptures backward and forward and can use them with skill to back up his arguments. The role of the disciple and of the Church at large is to confront and correct error–theological error, moral error, ecclesiastical error–in the lives of individual believers, in the Church, and in the world at large.
Then there are the seeker-sensitive strains of evangelicalism where the focus of discipleship is upon using your gifts to grow the church. There are also the fundamentalist strains where the focus of discipleship is upon upright, godly living in the face of the culture war. Each of these emphases produces a distinct result in terms of the prayer, worship, and community life of these churches and the believers in these churches. These distinctives are obvious to anyone who observes from the outside, but invisible to most who are on the inside.
There is also an internet spirituality. This is a relatively recent development, in which people express themselves on their own blogs and are formed by reading other blogs. It is so easy in the world of internet spirituality to get swallowed up in all the perceptions of reality that run rampant on the internet, and to get caught up in the illusion that our arguments matter, that all of this matters. Feel free to count me as guilty in this regard.
To sum it all up:
When you go back to the ancient paths of spiritual formation, to the disciplines of silence, solitude, and contemplative prayer; when you seek to model your life after those in the Church who practiced these disciplines, you will get one result. When you base your spiritual life upon the authorities of evangelical Protestant-dom and all the things that they prioritize–church growth, the culture war, or the latest challenge to Calvinism–you will get another result entirely.
So as I move toward the conclusion of this post, and ultimately toward the conclusion of the Fight Club series, here is where I come down on all of this:
Just shut up. Sit down and shut up. Find a place to get away from all the noise of the evangelical circus. Turn it all off and tune it all out. Get alone with yourself and let the awareness of your incompleteness and inadequacy wash over you. Let it drive you into ever-deeper dependance upon Christ. Make space for God in your heart and in your life, and then just shut up and let Him speak to you. Let Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, and others of their ilk be your guides upon this journey. (I just read and reviewed a book by Henri Nouwen that I believe will be immensely helpful in this regard. I would love to read something by Thomas Merton at some point, but with my schedule being what it is, it will probably take me a while to get to it.)
Just shut up, people. Just sit down, shut up, and let God speak to you.
In closing, here is another Michael Spencer post which outlines his take on the issue of spiritual formation, for those of you who are interested.
