Category Archives: Books

August 13, 2017 · 7:00 am

Book Review: Almost Christian

Book Review: Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church, by Kenda Creasy Dean. Oxford University Press, 2010.

Dean, a professor of youth, church, and culture at Princeton Theological Seminary, wastes no time getting to the point of this bracing book. She opens chapter one by writing:

Let me save you some trouble. Here is the gist of what you are about to read: American young people are, theoretically, fine with religious faith— but it does not concern them very much, and it is not durable enough to survive long after they graduate from high school.

One more thing: we’re responsible.

Dean is not speaking idly. Drawing on serious and careful research, she shows that American Christianity is currently in crisis, although it may not be the crisis we think we have. Faced with ever bolder and more vocal atheism, many churches assume that our problem is that teens are rejecting faith due to pernicious outside influence. The reality is this: teens are not rejecting faith; they never truly had it to begin with. And the cause is not a determined hostile world; it is a weak and listless church. The sad irony of this moment is that, on the surface, American churches are devoting more resources to young people than ever before: dedicated youth ministers, consistent Bible class programs, vibrant summer camps, and global mission trips. It certainly seems as though we are doing all we can—no previous generation of young Christians has been given this level of supposedly spiritually formative resources. Yet we are reaping a harvest of mediocre faith that often doesn’t last more than a few months after high school graduation. What is going wrong?

The primary problem is that even young people who regularly attend worship tend to think of church as a valuable extracurricular activity, like their school’s band or sport teams—and churches haven’t given them much reason to think differently. While teens are inwardly longing for a purpose to which they can devote their lives, many churches fail them by offering “a kind of ‘diner theology’: a bargain religion, cheap but satisfying, whose gods require little in the way of fidelity or sacrifice.” The ski trips and youth hangouts offer fun for while, but they aren’t acquainting teenagers with a holy God who calls them to lives of radical service. Worse, the things that churches do to try to build faith often harm the spiritual formation process by replacing traditional structures that were more effective at creating disciples. Faith is formed best in multigenerational communities where young and old serve, pray, and study together, yet most American teens have almost no opportunity to bond with faithful adults: their Bible classes, camps, and mission trips are often filled with nothing but young people and one youth minister, with perhaps a few adults sponsors present. They have almost no opportunity to see how mature Christians integrate their faith and their life, and so they struggle to see how Christianity speaks to their world. Lacking both clear theology and faithful examples, the religious framework of many young people consists of what sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Denton call “Therapeutic Moral Deism,” which says, in essence, that God wants people to be nice; the goal of life is to be happy and feel good; nice people go to heaven when they die; and God isn’t involved in my life except to help when I have a problem

If you have spoken about faith with many teenagers in the last decade or two, these beliefs probably sound familiar. They have taken root among American youth and shoved aside the core principles of authentic Christianity: that God was incarnate in Jesus Christ, that his life modeled how we should live, that he died to cleanse our sins, that the work of the Spirit empowers us to continue in the divine work to which Jesus calls us. Rather than seeking daily to imitate the servant spirit of Christ through the Spirit’s power, teens are content to be “nice” and only call in God in a moment of crisis.

How does the church respond to this crisis? Dean calls for vigorous formative rituals: daily encounters with the divine through prayer and study, intergenerational work and reflection, a renewed sense of mission in the world, which makes demands of all church members, from oldest to youngest. Give teens a purpose and a calling and they will rise to the occasion. Show them through tangible behaviors what Christ has meant to us, and Christ will come to mean more to them.

Yet the most significant factor, by far, is not the sort of faith formation practices found in a teenager’s church, but those found in a teenager’s home. While there are always some young people who build a mature faith in spite of their parents’ indifference, and some who lose it in spite of their parents’ devotion, the number one predictor of enduring faith in a teenager is enduring faith in his or her parents. In her terms: “You get what you are.” The chief difference between an uncommitted teen and her parents is often that the lukewarm teen no longer feels the need to engage in the pretense of church attendance. “In the end, awakening faith does not depend on how hard we press young people to love God, but on how much we show them that we do.”

Almost Christian is one of the most important books I have encountered. At turns disheartening, pragmatic, and hopeful, it lays out clearly the spiritual crisis before us and, in its own prophetic way, call for revival—not among the teenagers whose fate so deeply concerns us, but within the parents and church leaders whose own shortcomings are being reflected in our youth. This book is a clarion call. May it not fall on deaf ears.

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June 18, 2011 · 12:23 am

William Abraham on Evangelism

I want to write something soon about how we move past the pervasive individualist paradigm in America, and what should replace the failed model of personal evangelism among our churches.  But the best things I have to say on that topic have come largely from trying the think William Abraham’s thoughts after he has already thought them.  The Logic of Evangelism is a brilliantly insightful book which has influenced me enormously.  (And I suppose I should add a positive review on Amazon to balance the fairly critical ones that are there.)  A good overview of his argument appears in his article “The Theology of Evangelism: The Heart of the Matter,” which you can read here in PDF format.  His general conclusions from that article appear below:

We now need to think through the connection between
evangelism and the evangel. How are the two to be
linked? If the gospel centers on the arrival of the
kingdom of God in Jesus Christ, how are we to construe
the relation between evangelism and the kingdom
of God? This is a pivotal matter.

The favored position for some time has been to
insist that the natural connection is through some
kind of speech act. Thus evangelism has again and
again been construed as the proclamation of the gospel.
In some cases this has been extended to include
teaching the gospel or persuading someone to believe
the gospel. In other cases it has been expanded
to the proclamation of the gospel in word and deed.
In this instance it becomes natural for the actions of
the church, say, in education, medical work, social
action, and the like, to be construed every bit as much
as evangelism as does the verbal proclamation of the
gospel. Moreover, it is surely this conception of evangelism
that lies behind the enormous efforts currently
being made to evangelize the world through radio
and television. The warrant for the widely held conviction
that the world can be evangelized through
television is the claim that communication is of the
essence of evangelism. Evangelism is just the verbal
proclamation of the gospel; hence in our situation
the obvious tool for this is television.

We have already seen that the attempt to base
this on purely etymological considerations is precarious
in the extreme. However, even if the argument
about the origins of the term ‘evangelism’ were to
hold, that is, even if ‘evangelize’ originally meant
simply to ‘proclaim’, this would not settle the matter.
We also have to ask if this is the best way to
construe evangelism in our situation today. We must
explore how far it is appropriate to consider evangelism
in these terms in our context. In my judgment
it is imperative that we enrich our conception of evangelism
to the point where we move beyond mere
proclamation to include within it the initial grounding
of all believers in the kingdom of God. If we
make this shift, then, in fact, we actually come much
closer to what evangelists, ancient and modern, have
actually done, but, even then, the argument is not
advanced on purely historical grounds. The primary
considerations circle around the needs of our current
situation in our modern western culture. Here I
shall be brief and make three points, one negative
and two more positive.

First, continuing to think of evangelism in terms
of mere proclamation fosters the practice of disconnecting
evangelism from the life of the local church.
It nurtures the illusion that evangelism can be done
by the religious entrepreneur who can simply take
to the road and engage in this crucial ministry without
accountability to the body of Christ. To be sure,
there are lots of local churches who welcome this kind
of evangelism. It allows them to ignore evangelism
entirely as a constitutive element in the mission of
the church, for it can hand this responsibility to the
itinerating evangelist, or it can keep evangelism to
those seasons of the year in which it focuses on the
proclamation of the gospel. However, this is not the
really deep problem here. The deep problem is that
this way of construing evangelism has generally been
used to cut evangelism loose from the life of the
Christian community precisely because the responsibility
of the evangelist has stopped once the proclamation
has ceased. On this analysis, the evangelist
need not belong to a church; indeed if he does
not like the church in which he was brought to faith,
he can invent his own on the spot. Nor need the
evangelist be accountable to the canonical traditions
of the church; indeed if she does not like the canonical
narrative of the gospel, then she can invent her
own narrative at will. Nor need the evangelist take
any responsibility for the spiritual welfare of the
seeker or convert; this can be conveniently left to others,
say, in the field of Christian education. In all,
restricting evangelism to proclamation helps keep
intact unhealthy evangelistic practices which should
long ago have been abandoned. In a culture
mesmerised by the power of the mass media, the
church must recognise both the radical limits and the
dangers of proclamation in our current situation.

Secondly, restricting evangelism in this manner
cannot do the job that needs to be done in an
increasingly pluralist and post-Christian culture.
Evangelism needs to be expanded to include the early
phases of Christian initiation. The gospel must be
handed over in such a way that those who receive it
may be able to own it for themselves in a deep way
and have some sense of what they are embracing.
Proclamation is but one part of the process which
will make this possible. It will also require teaching
and persuasion, spiritual direction, an introduction
to the spiritual disciplines and the sacraments of the
gospel, initiation into the basics of the Christian moral
and doctrinal tradition, some orientation on the kinds
of religious experiences which may accompany entry
into the kingdom of God, and the like. Without
these the new believer will not be able to survive
spiritually, morally, or intellectually in the modern
world. In short, an evangelistic church will take responsibility
for the initial formation of Christian disciples
as an integral component of its evangelism.

Thirdly, the wisdom of this strategy is borne
out by a very significant recent study of spiritual
development in England. In that study careful attention
was given to about five hundred people who
had come to faith in recent years. The most pertinent
piece of information to the issue in hand is that
the majority of people studied came to faith over a
relatively lengthy period of time.
The gradual process is the way in which the
majority of people discover God and the average
time taken is about four years: models
of evangelism which can help people along
the pathway are needed.

Most “up-front” methods of evangelizing
assume that the person will make a sudden
decision to follow Christ. They may be asked
to indicate this by raising a hand, making
their confession, taking a booklet or whatever
is the preferred method of the evangelist. The
fact is that most people come to God much
more gradually. Methods of evangelism
which fit this pattern are urgently needed.
The nurture group and the catechumenate are
the best known at present, but others may
need to be devised. The use of one-to-one
conversations akin to some form of spiritual
direction may be one possibility. Another
may be a series of church services where
people are introduced to the Christian faith
over a period of time and given opportunity
to respond at each stage. Even more urgently
needed are means of helping non-churchgoers
to discover God outside the church building
in ways which enable a gradual response.

A useful way to capture this vision of evangelism
is to construe evangelism as directed fundamentally
toward initiation into the kingdom of God.
Achieving this will require both the activity of proclamation
and the work of catechesis. More comprehensively
we might say that the ministry of evangelism
will include effective evangelistic preaching, the
active gossiping of the gospel in appropriate ways
by all Christians everywhere, and the intentional
grounding of new converts in the basics of the Christian
faith. This in fact comes close to what evangelism
looked like in the early church.

In order to forestall possible misunderstanding,
note that this proposal assumes that no evangelism
is possible without the concurrent activity of the
Holy Spirit. It also insists that evangelism must be
rooted and grounded in the life of the local Christian
congregation. Finally, it expects that evangelism will
naturally result in the growth of local churches, but
this is neither the goal nor focus of the ministry per
se. The focus is the coming of God’s kingdom in Jesus
Christ and the goal is to see people grounded in that
kingdom here and now. In short, evangelism is simply
the initial formation of genuine disciples of the
Lord Jesus Christ.

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May 12, 2010 · 3:19 pm

Deep Personal Desires

Since we are both intuitive types, we do not decide things as much as we gravitate toward them. This is not very theological language, I know, but on the subject of divine guidance I side with Susan B. Anthony. “I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do,” she once said, “because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.” Having been somewhat of an expert on the sanctification of my own desires, I try not to pin them on God anymore. At the same time, I recognize the enormous energy in them, which strikes me as something God might be able to use.

When I read the stories in the Bible about people such as Sarah, Jacob, or David, what stands out is not their virtue but their very strong wants. Sarah wanted her son to prevail over Hagar’s son, Jacob wanted his older brother’s blessing, and David wanted Bathsheba. While these cravings clearly brought them all kinds of well-deserved trouble, they also kept these characters very, very alive. Their desires propelled them in ways God could use, better than God could use those who never colored outside the lines. Based on their example, I decided to take responsibility for what I wanted and to trust God to take it from there.

–Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith

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July 25, 2009 · 3:15 pm

Mother Teresa, Saint or Sinner?

mother_teresa_costume218Ever since the publication of Christopher Hitchens book, The Missionary Position, I keep hearing from people who believe that Mother Teresa was twisted person who intentionally perpetuated poverty rather than relieving it because she believed things were better that way.  I attended a discussion for an unrelated book last night in which one of the audience member commented that Teresa kept people poor because she thought it would help them get to heaven.  The moderator pushed back at that idea, but it obviously had some currency with those present.

I’m not an expert on Teresa, and I haven’t gotten around to Hitchens’ book.  So no answers here, but I do have this question.  I wonder whether its the case that Mother Teresa’s admirers and detractors would all essentially agree on the facts of what she did, but interpret them in almost opposite ways.  Could it be that she chose to focus on comforting the sick and dying rather than relieving poverty because that was her calling, her charism, and she needed to focus on bringing a personal touch to as many people as possible in Calcutta?  Those who fell under the influence of her ministry certainly seemed grateful.  Hitchens, whose vision goes no further than the material comforts of this life has no appreciation for a touch of grace to the dying because it doesn’t solve anything he can see.  It has no tanglible results.  But with every hug, every bath, every spoonful of soup brought to the lips of an invalid, Teresa was sowing grace amidst despair.

I’m not opposed to poverty relief efforts–quite the opposite!  But I do recognize that there is more than one kind of good work in the world.  I’d be cautious about criticizing someone for doing a kind of good work different than the one I prefer.  There’s room for both.

And I’m definitely of the opinion that Teresa is just too tempting a target for my atheist friends.  There’s a little too much glee in the criticisms.  What a delight it is to show that the woman so admired around the world was a fraud!  If the iconic holy woman of the modern age was really a pathological deviant, then there can’t be anything to that Christianity stuff after all, can there?

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July 23, 2009 · 2:38 pm

Slavery in the Modern World

Not For Sale: There are 27 million slaves worldwide right now.  Here’s a map of where they are.

For many people, awareness of modern slavery—especially slavery in America—began with John Bowe, when his article “Nobodies” was published in the New Yorker in 2003.  That was subsequently followed by a book of the same title, part of which became the basis for This American Life #344 “The Competition.”  Here’s Bowe on NPR’s Marketplace as well.

Now ethicist David Batstone (interview) is devoting his time to abolishing slavery, through his book Not For Sale, and through co-founding the Not For Sale Campaign, which “equips and mobilizes Smart Activists to deploy innovative solutions to re-abolish slavery in their own backyards and across the globe.” Here’s an excerpt from the book.

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May 21, 2009 · 8:03 pm

RJS on Inspiration and Incarnation by Peter Enns

I’m not sure who RJS is, but there’s some good stuff in his post here at Scot McKnight’s blog. Read the comments, too. One of them gives this great quotation from the book.

“It is somewhat ironic, it seems to me, that both liberals and conservatives make the same error. They both assume that something worth of the title word of God would look different from what we actually have. The one accents the human marks and makes them absolute. The other wishes the human marks were not as pronounced as they were. They share a similar opinion that nothing worthy of being called God’s word would look so common, so human, so recognizable. …”

I’ll have to add it to my list.

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May 19, 2009 · 11:21 am

Touched By Evil

There’s a good piece in the Atlantic about Flannery O’Connor:

O’Connor was dismissive of any pressure, whether of religious or secular origin, for more “positive” fiction. She saw no contradiction between her faith and her art. Just the opposite: “Because I am a Catholic I cannot afford to be less than an artist.” However, she stated,

the novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural.

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May 7, 2009 · 4:04 am

An Aside: Ben Witherington on Ancient Historiography

In response to Bart Ehrman’s latest book (which I haven’t read yet):

Bart reminds us early on that the method of studying the Bible taught in most mainline seminaries is “the historical critical method”. It is also, in fact perhaps the main method of teaching the Bible in evangelical seminaries today as well. And two of the major things one is taught, quite correctly in the study of this method are: 1) ancient historical texts must be studied in their original historical contexts to be properly understood; and 2) modern post-Enlightenment historiography is at odds with the historiography of most ancients, particularly when it comes to the issue of God’s involvement in human history.

There is a further corollary—in order to understand the Gospels or Acts, or Paul’s letters, or Revelation, one needs to understand the features and characteristics of such ancient literature—in short their respective genres. The Gospels are written like ancient biographies, not modern ones, or in the case of Luke-Acts like an ancient work of Hellenistic (and Septuagintal) historiography. Unless one knows the conventions and limitations that apply to such literature, one is in no position at all to evaluate whether there are “inconsistencies” “errors” or other problematic features of such literature. Error can only be assessed on the basis of what an author is attempting to do and what literary conventions he is following. Let us take an example Bart uses from p. 7 of his book—the fact that in John the cleansing of the temple comes early in the Gospel account, whereas in the Synoptics it is found in the Passion narrative. He is right of course that some modern conservative Christians have attempted to reconcile these differences by suggesting Jesus did the deed twice— once at the beginning and once at the end of the ministry. The problem is, that this conclusion is just as anachronistic (and genre ignoring) as the conclusion that the Gospels contradict each other on this point. What do I mean?

If you actually bother to read ancient biographies (see e.g. Tacitus’s Life of Agricola, or Plutarch’s famous parallel lives) you will discover that the ancients were not pedants when it comes to the issue of strict chronology as we are today. The ancient biographical or historiographical work operated with the freedom to arrange there material in several different ways, including topically, geographically, chronologically, to mention but three. Yes they had a secondary interest in chronology in broad strokes, but only a secondary interest in that.
If one studies the Fourth Gospel in detail and closely in the Greek, comparing it to other ancient biographies what one learns is that it is a highly schematized and edited product, and the sign narratives are arranged theologically not primarily chronologically. And whilst this might cause a modern person some consternation, it is not a reason to say that John contradicts the Synoptics on this Temple cleansing matter. The Fourth Gospel begins by showing that Jesus replaces the institutions of Judaism with himself—a theological message (he is the Passover lamb, he is the Temple where God’s presence dwells etc.). The Synoptic writers are likely presenting a more chronologically apt picture of when this event actually happened. But strict chronology was not the major purpose of the Fourth Evangelist, we should not fault him for not giving us information we might want to have, or for focusing on the theological import of the event, rather than its timing. Such was the freedom, within limits, of ancient biographies and histories. I must disagree with the conclusion then when Bart says “Historically speaking, then, the accounts are not reconcilable.” (p. 7). False. This is only so if one insists on a flat modern anachronistic reading of the text which pays no attention to what the authors are attempting.

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May 4, 2009 · 11:36 pm

Believing in the Bible

Just ran across this column from Bart Ehrman at the Washington Post site.  Excerpts:

The idea that to be a Christian you have to “believe in the Bible” (meaning, believe that it is in some sense infallible) is a modern invention. Church historians have traced the view, rather precisely, to the Niagara Conference on the Bible, in the 1870s, held over a number of years to foster belief in the Bible in opposition to liberal theologians who were accepting the results of historical scholarship. In 1878 the conference summarized the true faith in a series of fourteen statements. The very first one — to be believed above all else — was not belief in God, or in the death and resurrection of Jesus. It was belief in the Bible….

To make faith in the Bible the most important tenet of Christianity was a radical shift in thinking — away, for example, from traditional statements of faith such as the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed, which say not a word about belief in the Bible….

Here are the historical realities. Christianity existed before the Bible came into being: no one decided that our twenty-seven books of the New Testament should be “the” Christian Scripture until three hundred years after the death of the apostles. Since that time Christianity has existed in places where there were no Bibles to be found, where no one could read the Bible, where no one correctly understood the Bible. Yet it has existed. Christianity does not stand or fall with the Bible.

And so, biblical scholarship will not destroy Christianity. It might de-convert people away from a modern form of fundamentalist belief. But that might be a very good thing indeed.

I think Ehrman is being a little coy.  If you read the introduction to Misquoting Jesus, you get a brief version of Ehrman’s faith journey, which basically boils down to “I was a conservative, Bible-believing Christian for a while, and because of that I got deep into Biblical scholarship, and what I learned about the Bible turned me agnostic.”  I don’t think he’s lying here–he certainly knows that there are a lot of Christians who take a liberal or post-liberal stance toward the scriptures but are still guided by a deep faith in Jesus.  I’m one of them.  But I think if Ehrman were really pressed on this point, he would admit that while there are people who accept Biblical criticism while retaining Christian faith, he himself doesn’t find that position tenable.

I don’t want to pick on Ehrman too much.  I’m pretty appreciative of his books, which essentially take the basic Biblical information you’ll learn in a mainline seminary and make it accessible to a mass audience.  We ought to be discussing the difficulties with the Bible in church more, and it really isn’t Ehrman’s fault that some people learn this information and drift away from faith.  (As per this post, I think it’s the fault of the kinds of churches who essentially make their congregants choose between believing in inerrancy or becoming an atheist.)  But he ought to be a more honest about the reality that his books certainly will provoke a faith crisis in a fair number of his readers, if not an outright rejection of Christianity.

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February 19, 2009 · 1:23 pm

A Testament of Devotion: Holy Obedience, Part V

Simplicity

As with humility, Kelly cuts past a facile understanding of simplicity to describe the true virtue that lies underneath those outward signs that we sometimes label ‘simplicity.’

I have in mind something deeper than the simplification of our external programs, our absurdly crowded calendars of appointments through with so many pantingly and frantically gasp.  These do become simplified in holy obedience, and the poise and preace we have been missing can really be found.  But there is a deeper, an internal simplification of the whole of one’s personality, stilled, tranquil, in childlike trust listening ever to Eternity’s whisper, walking with a smile into the dark. [p. 45]

And

We are called beyond strain, to peace and power and joy and love and thorough abandonment of self.  We are called to put our hand trustingly in His hand and walk the holy way, in no anxiety assuredly resting in him. [p. 46]

Intentionally clearing our calendar is a good practice, and so is turning off the TV, shunning materialistic excesses, and spending time quietly with God.  But none of those things are ‘simplicity’ per se.  Simplicity is the calmness of the soul that comes from deeply accepting that God is on his throne, his love is boundless, and his plans will be brought to fruition in the end.  I may partner with him in his creative and restorative work, and I may sometimes struggle vigorously for the kingdom’s sake.  But no outcome rests on my shoulders.  All rests on God.  So I can rest in him.  This is the last, and lasting, fruit of holy obedience.

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February 19, 2009 · 11:46 am

A Testament of Devotion: Holy Obedience, Part IV

Entrance into Suffering

The Cross as dogma is painless speculation; the Cross as lived suffering is anguish and glory.  Yet God, out of the pattern of His own heart, has planted the Cross along the road of holy obedience. [p. 43]

Kelly is writing in the late 1930’s or perhaps 1940, and he refers several times in this section to the great suffering in Europe.  Even though he didn’t live to see America’s entrance into the war, or to know the worst horrors of the holocaust or the atomic bomb, he still had a deep sense of the suffering of the planet.

[W]e shrink from suffering and can easily call all suffering an evil thing.  Yet we live in an epoch of tragic sorrows, when man is adding to the crueler forces of nature such blasphemous horrors as drag soul as well as body into hell.  And holy obedience must walk in this world, not aloof and preoccupied, but stained with sorrow’s travail. [p. 40]

This isn’t just because joining with people in sorrow is the right or Christian thing to do, but because there is a truth we see in suffering that we can miss in times of comfort.  Comfortable times can entice us to live in the illusion that human cleverness or good will can give us the peace and security we need–and we can drift away from God, seeing no need for him since we are doing so well for ourselves.  Tribulation reminds us of the truth.  Thus Kelly writes:

An awful solemnity is upon the earth, for the last vestige of earthly security is gone.  It has always been gone, and religion has always said so, but we haven’t believed it. [p. 41]

I’ve read a thousand times in the Bible that I shouldn’t trust in my money and possessions for security.  Jesus said those things were all temporary, that only treasure in heaven lasts.  But when the economy tanks and my IRA plummets, I have a unique opportunity to re-discover that Jesus was right, and to search my soul to see if I am willing to trust Him fully for my security, or whether I’ll keep scrambling for the shiny things I can gather up around me.

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February 19, 2009 · 11:07 am

A Testament of Devotion: Holy Obedience, Part III

Humility and Holiness

Now Kelly writes that there are many fruits of holy obedience, but “two are so closely linked together that they can scarcely be treated seperately.  The are the passion for personal holiness and a sense of utter humility.” [p. 34-35]

Kelly gets humility exactly right, I think.  It isn’t “self-disgust at our shabby lives”–it’s such a deep awareness of God that you fully realize only what He is doing counts.  Humility doesn’t come through thinking of myself a certain way, it comes from not really thinking about myself at all.

The God-blinded soul sees naught of self, naught of personal degradation or personal eminence, but only the Holy Will working impersonally through him… [p. 36]

If I try to progress in humility by thinking about myself in a certain way, I’ve entered a self-defeating process.  Humility comes when I’m not grasping for humility itself, but grasping for God.

Kelly goes on to say that there is a humility in God Himself–that it makes sense to say “Be humble, therefore, as God is humble.”  I’m not quite sure what he means by this, unless it is that God himself isn’t really focused on his own status or glory, rather his focus is on love for his creation.  This is my understanding of the hymn in Philippians 2:

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.

In other words, it is because of the fact that Jesus shares the nature of God–not in spite of it!–that he was willing to leave power and privilege to become a servant.  The humility of Christ is not some abberation in the Trinity, but truly reflects the character of God.

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February 12, 2009 · 9:38 pm

A Testament of Devotion: Holy Obedience, Part II

Gateways into Holy Obedience

Kelly writes of two gateways into the wholly (and holy) obedient life.  Some come into such obedience through mystical experience.

It is an overwhelming experience to fall into the hands of the living God, to be invaded to the depths of one’s being by his presence, to be, without warning, wholly uprooted from all earthborn securities and assurances, and to be blown by a tempest of unbelievable power which leaves one’s old proud self utterly, utterly defenseless, until one cries, “All Thy waves and thy billows are gone over me” (Ps. 42:7).  Then is the soul swept into a loving Center of ineffable sweetness, where calm and unspeakable peace and ravishing joy steal over one….There stand the saints of the ages, their hearts open to view, and lo, their hearts are our heart and their hearts are the heart of the Eternal One.  In awful solemnity the Holy One is over all and in all, exquisitely loving, infinitely patient, tenderly smiling.  Marks of glory are upon all things, and the marks are cruciform and blood-stained.  And one sighs, like the convinced Thomas of old, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28).  Dare one lift one’s eyes and look?  Nay, whither can one look and not see Him? [p. 30]

Something tells me that this isn’t going to be my gateway into obedience.  An experience of God half that intense would be twice as gripping as anything I’ve ever known.  But Kelly doesn’t expect this kind of ecstatic experience to endure, or to happen for many people.

Do not mistake me.  Our interest just now is in the life of complete obedience to God, not in some amazing revelations of His glory graciously granted only to some.  Yet the amazing experiences of the mystics leave a permanent residue, a God-subdued, God-possessed will. [p. 32]

It seems like all the genuine mystics understand that (1) very few people are going to have visions of this magnitude, (2) the people who do recieve them have them as an act of grace, not a reward for personal merit, (3) such visions are temporary and rare–perhaps happening briefly once, and never again, (4) they are an aid to Christian holiness, but not essential.  Devoted Christian living can happen without such moments.

I appreciate this characteristic humility from the great mystics, and more than that, appreciate their sense of priority.  It’s encouraging to a complete non-mystic like me that Kelly thinks I can also have a life of holy obedience, even without the celestial visions.  But that means traveling through a different gateway.

…most people must follow…the active way, wherein we must struggle and, like Jacob of old, wrestle with the angel until morning dawns, the active way wherein the will must be subjected bit by bit, piecemeal and progressively, to the divine Will. [p. 32]

The first step is to is to cultivate a

flaming vision of the wonder of such a life, a vision which comes occasionally to us all, through biographies of the saints…through a life lived before our eyes, through a haunting verses of the Psalms…through meditation upon the amazing life and death of Jesus….[p. 32]

This is precisely why I’ve begun to develop an interest in the lives of the saints, and why I think most of the Protestant world made a mistake in rejecting the notion of identifying those among us who have lived exemplary lives worth of study and emulation.  Teresa of Avila, Francis of Assisi, Augustine, Patrick, Clare, Aidan–my spiritual life would be significantly impoverished without their examples.  I could also make a long list of the lives “lived before my eyes” who have made a difference.  As Paul wrote, we should “take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you.” (Philippians 3:17)

Once you have a vision of what the wholly obedient life looks like, the second step is to start living in a way that is congruent with your vision–even if you are starting in very small ways.

Use what little obedience you are capable of, even if it be like the grain of a mustard seed. [p.33]

Step three:

If you slip and stumble and forget God for an hour, and assert your old proud self, and rely on your clever wisdom, don’t spend too much time in anguished regrets or self-accusations, but begin again, just where you are. [p. 34]

Again I shout Amen!  We all slip and fall.  No one’s path is perfect, and “there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

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February 11, 2009 · 12:04 pm

A Testament of Devotion: Holy Obedience, Part I

The Nature of Holy Obedience

Meister Eckhart wrote: “There are plenty to follow our Lord half-way, but not the other half.  They will give up possessions, friends, and honors, but it touches them too closely to disown themselves.”  It is just this astonishing life which is willing to follow Him the other half, sincerely to disown itself, this life which intends complete obedience, without any reservations, that I would propose to you in all humility, in all boldness, in all seriousness.  I mean this literally, utterly, completely, and I mean it for you and for me–commit your lives in unreserved obedience to Him.

If you don’t realize the revolutionary explosiveness of this proposal you don’t understand what I mean. [p.26]

In some, says William James, religion exists as a dull habit, in others as an acute fever.  Religion as a dull habit is not that for which Christ lived and died. [p. 27]

The life that intends to be wholly obedient, wholly submissive, wholly listening, is astonishing in its completeness.  Its joys are ravishing, its peace profound, its humility the deepest, its power world-shaking, its love enveloping, its simplicity that of a trusting child.  It is the life and power in which the prophets and apostles lived….And it is a life and power that can break forth in this tottering Western culture and return the Church to its rightful life as a fellowship of creative, heaven-led souls.  [p.28-29]

I’d like to see that last bit on a church bulletin: “Welcome to ABC Church, a fellowship of creative, heaven-led souls.”

There’s a lot on these pages that is worth chewing on for a while.  My initial thoughts:

  1. Kelly sees the primary barrier to complete obedience as an unwillingness to disown self.  This is something beyond giving up “possessions, friends, honors”–but those are the primary things that I think of when I’m grappling with dying to myself.  If I’ve already left my things, my people, and my pride for the cause of Christ, what is left for me to disown?  I think Kelly is right that I don’t understand what he means.  Does it have to do with leaving self-direction so I can become a “heaven-led soul”?
  2. I suspect that Kelly’s contrast between dull habits and acute fevers could be misinterpreted.  I don’t think he is in the modern happy-clappy praise camp.  Quaker spirituality tends to be quiet and contemplative.  He’s not really thinking of externals here, but is still dealing with interior matters.  The issue is: Am I following Jesus out of a sense of obligation, or because I have been so infected with the divine that I can’t be free from Christ any longer?  Based on early chapters, Kelly is all in favor of set routines, at least as a starting point.  But it is my grappling with the God-fever that compells me to these routines of prayer, not vice-versa.  Again, He initiates, I respond.
  3. Interesting that Kelly says that the wholly obedient, submissive, listening life is “astonishing in its completeness.”  We think that we’ve given something up, but we find instead that God provides those things that we truly need when we give up what we merely want.  The simple, humble life is also powerful (world-shaking!) and creative.  We need creativity among the saints, because God is creative and we join him in his work.  Didn’t Craddock say something about boring worship being a sin, because to be bored in our faith is to misrepresent God?

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