{"id":1300,"date":"2010-12-18T10:22:18","date_gmt":"2010-12-18T10:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2010\/12\/a-normal-christian-life--part-three.html"},"modified":"2010-12-18T10:22:18","modified_gmt":"2010-12-18T10:22:18","slug":"a-normal-christian-life-part-three","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/12\/a-normal-christian-life-part-three.html","title":{"rendered":"A Normal Christian Life—- Part Three"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Thumbnail<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

John Wesley was getting
\naggravated with his Moravian friends because of their quietistic tendencies.   <\/span>They were having some heated discussions in
\nLondon about the means of grace, and there were some Moravians even arguing
\nthat ‘grace happens’ according to God’s preordained plan, and that there was
\nnothing we humans could do to prod God into giving it sooner or later— no
\nspiritual exercises, no fasting, no earnest praying, no taking of the
\nsacraments— NOTHING.   <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

            <\/span>Wesley was completely dissatisfied with their answer that
\nthey must just sit in their chairs and wait on the grace of God to descend from
\nabove, like waiting for God to send the rain (which in London seemed to appear
\nmore frequently than grace in these Moravians’ views).  <\/span>Finally, 
\n<\/span>Wesley threw up his hands and said to the Moravians—  <\/span>‘You should wait actively<\/i> for the grace of God! 
\n<\/span>Go take the Eucharist!”   <\/span>These
\nwords came naturally to a man who did his best to take Holy Communion every
\nsingle day of his life, if possible. He had also urged ‘constant communion’ on
\nhis followers, on the theory that we always could use more grace and presence
\nof God in our lives. <\/span><\/p>\n

            <\/span>This little story, which is a true story, speaks volumes
\nabout John Wesley’s approach to what we today call spiritual formation.  <\/span>In many ways, it stands at odds with some of
\nthe models of spiritual formation we hear so much about in our era— models
\nthat promote extreme introspection, individual isolation and individualistic seeking,
\nand spiritual athleticism of various sorts, even spiritual navel gazing of a
\nsort. Sometimes when reading some of this literature it seems almost as if
\nordinary Christians are being told ‘get thee to a nunnery’ if you want to be
\ntruly spiritually formed. <\/span><\/p>\n

What
\nhas happened in the age of narcissism and ‘me first’ is that spiritual
\nformation exercises and inventories have all too often taken on the character
\nand ethos of the age, including the radical individualism of our culture.   <\/span>When you take a spiritual inventory that
\nkeeps asking questions about your feelings
\n<\/i>about God, or how close you personally feel
\n<\/i>to God, there is a good reason to become uneasy.   <\/span>The language and praxis of modern psychology
\nand psychological counseling has crept into the discussions of spiritual
\nformation as if emotions were some sort of good guide or gauge to the state of
\nsomeone’s soul or their relationship with God.    <\/span>But in fact, this is often far from the truth.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

            <\/span>A person’s visceral feelings are in fact, more often than
\nnot, subject to the whims of your health, your circumstances, how much sleep
\nyou’ve had, whether you’ve taken your medicine or not, whether you are employed
\nor not,  <\/span>and a thousand other such
\nfactors.  <\/span>Feelings, as Eugene Peterson once
\nsaid, are remarkably unreliable guides to the state of your relationship with
\nGod, and indeed seldom very reliable as a guide to the state of your
\nrelationship with others.   <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Think
\nfor a minute about the great commandment— Love God wholeheartedly and neighbor
\nas self.   <\/span>I have seen days when my wife
\nhad a migraine headache and we had company coming and she felt terrible, but
\nthere she was being a gracious hostess and no one but myself knew that she was
\nloving them in spite of how she felt. <\/i>  <\/span>Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against
\nfeelings, I am just saying they are not very good litmus tests of where we
\nstand with God.  <\/span>Just because at a given
\nmoment I don’t have warm fuzzy feelings about God doesn’t mean I am, or sense I
\nam distant from God!     <\/span>In any case, love
\nin the Bible is an action word— doing loving deeds is what the great
\ncommandment is about.    <\/span>I am rather
\ncertain that the greatest loving deed of all time, Jesus’ dying on the cross
\nfor all of us, was not accompanied by warm fuzzy feelings.  <\/span>On the contrary, the story in the Garden of
\nGethsemane suggests that Jesus faced that prospect with dread.  <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

            <\/span>The concern of these posts is to help us get away
\nfrom certain unhelpful models of spiritual formation, and head in a more
\nWesleyan direction.   <\/span>There are two
\nconcerns I want to stress. Firstly, the primary form of spiritual formation in
\nthe Wesleyan mode focuses on activities, and more specifically on group <\/i>activities and even more
\nspecifically on the activities of the body
\nof Christ<\/i> gathered— activities like worship, shared teaching or Bible
\nstudy sessions, fellowship meals and times, taking Holy communion, works of
\npiety and charity undertaken together, and the like.  <\/span> <\/span>I
\nbelieve that primary<\/i> spiritual
\nformation happens during the times two or more are gathered, Christ is present
\nas well, and we are all caught up in love and wonder and praise.  <\/span>For example, for a Wesleyan, congregational
\nsinging is one of the primary means of spiritual formation, as opposed to
\nsomeone singing to themselves in the shower or in their prayer closet.  <\/span>Saying the Lord’s Prayer together is a means
\nof grace.  <\/span>Saying the Apostle’s Creed
\ntogether is a means of grace, and so on.<\/span><\/p>\n

Secondly,
\nspiritual formation in the Wesleyan tradition is not primarily an individual’s
\nlonely personal quest for spiritual transcendence and growing closer to
\nGod.  <\/span>It is not about looking inwards so
\nmuch as it is about looking outwards at creation, at other creatures, at the
\nCreator. It is not about becoming more self-centered, more self-focused, indeed
\nit is about becoming more self-forgetful. 
\n<\/span> <\/span>It’s about knowing God and in
\nthat quest, as a by-product, one comes to know yourself.  <\/span>It’s not in the first instance about taking
\nSocrates’ advice to ‘know thyself’ much less taking the advice ‘to thine own
\nself be true’. <\/span><\/p>\n

            <\/span>Too often in spiritual formation literature certain kinds
\nof extreme monastic models of piety are held up to the ordinary Christian’s
\neye, which, apart from sporadic spiritual retreats, they could never live up to
\nor into.  <\/span> <\/span>Who exactly is capable of ‘praying without
\nceasing’ if by praying one is referring to specific spoken or unspoken
\npetitions to God?   <\/span>If you are not a
\ncloistered monk or a hermit with someone else providing you with food, shelter,
\nand clothing, and with no family responsibilities, this sort of spiritual
\nathleticism is beyond the scope of the life of the ordinary or normal
\nChristian.  <\/span>My primary concern in this
\nstudy is to talk about spiritual formation for the normal<\/i> Christian life, to talk about ordinary spiritual formation,
\nas well as extraordinary spiritual formation. 
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

            <\/span>This book has arisen out of some frustration with a good
\ndeal of the literature I have seen, even the Methodist literature, which has
\nadopted and adapted certain ascetical and medieval monastic models and forms of
\nspiritual formation, baptized them for normal modern Christians, and called
\nthem good, indeed called them necessary if you want to be a ‘spiritual’
\nChristian.   <\/span>I’m afraid that this is largely
\nan exercise in futility rather than fertility. 
\n<\/span>Like ambitious New Year’s resolutions it leads in the end to spiritual
\nfrustration, feelings of inadequacy and guilt, and little real progress in
\none’s Christian life.   <\/span>And besides as
\nBob Dylan once said— ‘the times, they are a changing’.   <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I
\nwas at the monastery of Gethsemani near Bardstown Kentucky where Thomas Merton
\nonce was a monk, sitting quietly in the gift shop, waiting for my mother to
\nfinish shopping (that Gethsemani fudge is pretty delicious).  <\/span>Sitting next to me was a monk who was so ancient
\nI assumed he had arrived when the monastery had been built, decades and decades
\nago.   <\/span>I knew that the Trappist monks
\nwere famous for taking a vow of silence, talking to no other human beings, devoting
\nthemselves to things like silent prayer, fasting, working in the garden, and
\nthe like.   <\/span>The Trappists were, so to
\nspeak, trapped in a very quiet place. <\/span><\/p>\n

As
\nyou might imagine, I nearly jumped out of my skin when this ancient monk began
\nto strike up a conversation with me out of the blue!  <\/span>In fact he talked a blue streak about Thomas
\nMerton and how he himself had arrived at the monastery before Merton, with a
\nlittle prompting and questioning from me.  
\n<\/span>He informed me ‘we’re not as silent as we used to be.’   <\/span>Clearly not!  <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

My
\npoint is this–I would like to offer in this little study a workable model of
\nspiritual formation in a Wesleyan mode for the normal Christian life, that does
\nnot put people on unnecessary guilt trips and does not encourage them to indulge
\nin spiritual navel gazing or focusing on their feelings.  <\/span>I think there is much to be said on this
\nsubject, and so this study will be divided into two major parts—- collective
\npractices that spiritually form us, and more individual practices that do so,
\nwith the emphasis on the former.  <\/span>Modern
\nWestern Christians don’t need spiritual encouragement to be more
\nindividualistic and self-centered.  <\/span> <\/span>To the contrary, they need more encouragement
\nto be integral parts of the body of Christ working and serving together. <\/span><\/p>\n

In
\na day and time when the Methodist movement is often seeing declining membership
\nat least in the West, it is time to do a rethink and a rewind on the subject of
\nspiritual formation.  <\/span>We can’t just keep
\nwalking down the road to Emmaus forever and think such retreats will cure all
\nour ills.  <\/span>As valuable as such retreats
\nare, and indeed they are valuable and formative, they are not the stuff of day
\nto day spiritual formation and its praxis. It’s time to take the road less travelled
\nby.    <\/span>The good news is it involves our
\njourneying together, not merely journaling alone.  <\/span>Won’t you join in the journey?   <\/span>I promise it will lead somewhere and to
\nSomeone.  <\/span>  <\/span>      <\/span>   <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span>     <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Wesley was getting aggravated with his Moravian friends because of their quietistic tendencies.   They were having some heated discussions in London about the means of grace, and there were some Moravians even arguing that ‘grace happens’ according to God’s preordained plan, and that there was nothing we humans could do to prod God into…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nA Normal Christian Life- Part Three - The Bible and Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/12\/a-normal-christian-life-part-three.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Normal Christian Life- Part Three - 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A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. Witherington has also taught at Ashland Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt University, Duke Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell. A popular lecturer, Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and biblical meetings not only in the United States but also in England, Estonia, Russia, Europe, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Australia. He has also led tours to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Witherington has written over thirty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today. He also writes for many church and scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to the Beliefnet website. Along with many interviews on radio networks across the country, Witherington has been seen on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&E, and the PAX Network.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/author\/bwitherington"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1300\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}