For us, one of something is never enough, which plays hell with our theology

Book 2, Chapter 2

-Part 2 continued-

This particular section in my copy of Caussade’s book takes up less than two pages – just a few moments to read. But, this part really makes me want to look away and find something less arduous to read. The good father has found me out, and his invitation to my own complete freedom with God in Christ accuses me, at the same time, for having become accustomed to and comfortable with my entanglements.

I am a comfy Christian, I confess; a product of my society; friend of the world and occasional thinker of higher things. I like to think of myself as among the beloved of God, but I shy away from considering the consequences of being so loved. Frankly, I like being loved by God, and I also like all the people and things and toys that make my life my life.

When we come to the aspect of Christian spirituality that leans disturbingly inward upon my soul – that is, my suitable response to the God who is precisely and lovingly my life is to be an all-or-nothing one – this makes me start looking for exit signs. There must be some way to get out of this!

A very unfamiliar and uncommon word comes to mind: “Singularity,” with the nuance of “one,” or “sole.” Not since the days that “stereophonic sound” was coined by Western Electric in 1927, beginning the gradual demise of one-channel monophonic sound reproduction, have we been led to think that one of something is enough.

We are a two-channel people (at least two). Take away one of our speakers or pull out one ear bud, and the sound is less than half as good. Philosophically, we like to take two opposing concepts and mash them together in a Hegelian stew to synthesize a third new entity. As a people, we have either become pluralists or fans of pluralism beneath the loving care of one God who describes Himself as “one,” and who is like no other thing or person in all existence.

As we live and pray before an all-or-nothing Lord who asks us to be singular in our attachment to Him, we will be quite naturally in conflict with this God and the multi-stranded attachments that we have invited or permitted that hold us bound to the Earth. Possibly we are bad people. More probably, we carry around a poor-quality Christianity.

For example, a few days ago I wrote “Self-love and self-denial cannot occupy the same person.” Well they can if we twist Christianity out of shape and make the faith something that it is, indeed, not. We might, in passing, have to also adjust our definitions of “self,” “love,” and “denial.” If we mess with the words enough, we can come up with a satisfying “both/and” distortion from an “either/or.”

It is possible that the actual true Christian faith has been buried beneath a barrage of semantics and clever words. Since the day Jesus said we cannot serve two masters (Matthew 6:24), we have done everything we can to prove him wrong. He told us the kingdom of heaven was like a hidden treasure in a field, or a pearl of great value, where the discoverer “sells everything he owns” to buy the field or the pearl (Matthew 13:44-46). We have since then tried to figure out how to acquire the treasure without selling everything.

We think we know stuff. We will find a way around everything God ever said. We damage our souls every time we nod in agreement to the world. The infinite transcendent difference between the realm of the fallen world and the realm of the kingdom of glory cannot be filled by all the Christians in the world who want a life that is one part God and three parts world.

If I may dare quote Kierkegaard again, “Christianity and worldliness never come to an understanding with one another – even for a moment.” (Works of Love, Page 82.) Whenever we think we have successfully mitigated the two, we do untold damage to the faith, to our own soul, and to the people in our world, who each must have a clear depiction of Christ from us.

How we love the bonds that keep us from flying

Book 2, Chapter 2

-Part 2-

I grew up surrounded by dark green cottonwood trees painted against a flawless Wyoming sky of perfect blue. The horizon in any direction was edged by pale granite lazuline mountains that granted the same reassurance in their presence as would a dog sleeping at the foot of one’s bed. We were all protected and somehow aware that we were under the watch care of these quiet, loyal, ancient stone guardians.

Before I started the first grade, we moved from our town of 2,000 to its outskirts, the east side of the Big Horn River; an area unofficially but ubiquitously known as “the heights.” From then on I was surrounded by space, most of which was made up of alfalfa fields framed by slackened strands of barbed wire fence to keep whatever horses or cattle in their places. The fences by no means meant “keep out” to humans – at least not to us kids.

Our neighbors’ fields were just as much a part of my turf as was our own yard, which itself was actually quite small. It was in these fields that I raced with my dog, built snow forts, inhabited my own “fortress of solitude,” built a tree house, dug underground shelters, pole vaulted fences and ponds, caught frogs, climbed trees and practiced boomerang Frisbee.

In one of these fields on a summer afternoon a friend and I noticed a scuffling on the ground in front of us. We could not make out what was causing the movement. I immediately assumed the worst and concluded it was a child-eating snake. Still, I couldn’t stop myself from drawing closer to the disturbance on the ground.

To my relief, we found it was a bird. One of its legs was entwined in a short single strand of dried weed that tethered the bird to the ground. The commotion we had seen was the bird trying again and again to fly off, always thwarted by the twist of weed.

I lifted the frightened bird and couched it in one hand while undoing the thin strand that had wrapped itself under one wing and once around the leg. Once freed, the bird got to its feet in my opened hand and looked into my eyes. It perched on my finger for a second or two and then flew off.

Today we seek God’s help with our disentanglement. For we are called to live a life from above, and yet we are ensnared by bonds and attached to the life below by cables made of materials we, in our folly, consider agreeable and harmless. We insist that we can live as citizens from heaven while carrying with us the cares, concerns and adventures of the world at our feet.

Who among us would not like to fulfill our personal goals and also serve God? Which of us would turn down the opportunity to do exactly whatever we wanted and believe that this alone would be our acceptable service unto God? Who can resist the irresistible inclination to both befriend the world below and serve the King above?

It seems quite natural that we should be able to synthesize an existence that borrows from both worlds – to homogenize a palatable essence made of what we might call “the best of both worlds.” While this is a keen idea, it is not a Christian one. Mind you, Christian thought is very easily polluted by this blending of spirituality and worldliness, because the mixture is powerfully attractive. It is quite human of us to want to compromise two disparate realms into a single agreeable one. Where we offend the world, we justify our faith; and where we offend our faith, we justify our sophistication. Rather than live in one realm we are vagabonds in both.

As Christians, our faith demands of us a singularity of purpose and satisfaction. “To live is Christ,” said Paul. We are to detach ourselves from everything else, leaving ourselves completely free to serve God in whatever way he would like at the moment.

The psalmist says he watches the hands of God like a handmaiden watches her mistress, looking for the slightest indication from the master’s hand that God’s mercy and some obedient response is about to come due (Psalm 123:2).The life fully free to serve God at every instant is watchful for any inflection within the current moment to indicate God’s wise and loving presence and direction.

Before we consider detachment, we have to see Christ. Otherwise this is just a religious exercise. Something must pull us away from the world we fancy, the cares we adore and the concerns we caress.

Seeing Christ is the essential first movement in the believer’s soul that will draw him apart from all else. Fail to see Christ, and no real detachment that benefits the soul will follow. Whatever else can be said about the condition of one’s soul at this point, it must be said that the soul remains entangled. Not homogenized; not synthesized; but strangled.

We try to live with ties that bind us to God and ties that hold us fast to this world. Although we talk and sing of flying, the entire Earth is shackled to one of our ankles. We can no more fly than we can pull the planet skyward with our frail wings. We are perilously suspended between two domains. In some awkward way we are built to fly, but, to quote a Pink Floyd song, we are “earthbound misfits.”*

Like that little bird on that summer day, we will require assistance with our disentanglement.

*(From their Division Bell album, 1994. Song: Learning to Fly.)

The obstacle is self-love -- paraphrasing Pogo's 'We have met the the enemy, and he is us'

Book 2, Chapter 2

-Part 1-

Continued even more ridiculously on …

Those few who may be following along in the book, which is the source of these reflections, will notice that I have not budged from this section (Book 2, Chapter 2, Part 1) for many days. By my count, this is the sixth reflection that these few pages of the book have pried loose from me.

I want to move on – I truly do, but Caussade keeps saying things that deserve some time. It has not proved good for my soul to read things without giving myself ample time to integrate or, a better word, internalize what my eyes see and that at which my mind gives but a passing glance.

As journalism rendered my penmanship unreadable, even by me, it was during my college years that my reading life was ruined. The sheer race against time to absorb at best a shadow of an outline of a book led to a very utilitarian way to read – fast and light. Get in, get what you need, and get out. It was less like reading and more like committing a robbery. In this state of mind, the spiritual writings of some of our best teachers are considered frustrating and unworthy. No one likes hot tea where the water encounters the tea leaves for less than a moment. Jesus himself was considered too watery for those who were trained not to ponder. He was asked once (and we can assume more than once), “Tell us plainly.”

So, while the student in me grows impatient with an author who will not get to the point quickly enough for me to get on with it, the beloved son in me wants to linger and pause in the thrum of God’s presence.

So here we go with further musing . . . especially on the matter of indifference and its stake in the life of the spirit.

“Come, my soul, let us pass with head erect over all that happens within us or outside us, remaining always content with God, content with what he does with us and with what he makes us do.” ~Caussade (Page 56.)

As we shall soon see, Caussade’s words here are from movements of the beautiful musical suite that makes up the life of the soul. His invitation is for the soul to enter into the peace that passes all understanding and the love that knows no bounds.

In order to experience in our limited way the unlimited expression of God’s presence in peace and love, we have to replace an obstacle in our path with a spiritual discipline: Universal indifference.

Probably none of us feel particularly comfortable with the word “indifference” – a word that means unconcerned, unresponsive, unsympathetic and uninvolved. It suggests a cold, unfeeling apathy toward something or someone. Perhaps it has even been thought that a good Christian person shouldn’t have any of this laying about in his or her personality.

Used wisely by a proper handler, indifference can help remove the most powerful obstacle in spiritual life. It can clear the path for the seeker who wishes to give answer to the groanings and yearnings for God that well up from the depths of the soul – “Deep calling to deep.” (Psalm 27)

The obstacle is self-love.

“Let us pass this labrynth of our own self-love by vaulting over it . . .” ~Caussade (Page 56.)

Let us first admit that we have a mind-set problem when it comes to the topic of self-love.

Starting sometime in the 1970s, if not earlier, it was in vogue to consider that one of the mental issues facing Modern Man in America was that he did not love himself enough. This proposal was picked up by the church and many a Christian was told that one could not love one’s neighbor unless and until one loved oneself. This inversion of Christ’s “second greatest commandment”: “To love your neighbor as yourself,” was put forth to help us with our self-esteem issues.

The conclusion, simply, was that self-love was our best friend.

Obviously, the two attitudes toward self-love collide. They are two different worlds. Self-love is either friend or foe. Here there must be a radical reconsideration on our part regarding the true nature of self-love in its theological, psychological and practical consequences.

It is not possible to look into a book with the first-word title “Self-Abandonment” and expect self-love to be supported and thought in keeping with the pursuit of holiness.

In Christian theology, self-love is the source for all the bad news that infects the human soul. For example, here is the list of the Seven Deadly Sins: Pride, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Laziness, Wrath and Envy. Seven outcomes, if you will, resulting from applied self-love. Find any other list of sin (Galatians 5 for example) and you will find each unclean act or attitude has the same cause – applied self-love.

In the case of self-love, neither self nor love are put to use in the way they were intended by God.

The individual human person is made in the image and likeness of God. Of all created beings, we are at the top. We were made with much individuality and freedom in order that we would turn ourselves over to the care and authority of our Maker.

The self has always been something to give away. In the Garden of Eden, Adam yielded nothing, but clung to himself resulting in death. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus yielded himself to the will of the Father resulting in life.

The self has always been something to give away resulting in fullness from God.

Once this abandonment is in the works, rather than finding himself hollowed or drained, the individual finds himself filled with the Spirit of God. In this condition, we share intimately and powerfully in the love that exists between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and we can most fully respond to the love that God has for us.

We find contentment and fulfillment not in loving ourselves, but in receiving the love God has for us and responding in kind with the love we have for him.

Once self and love are used properly, and we realize something of the depth to which we are loved of God, this begins a healing trend upon our wrecked self-esteem and some of our insecurities that have plagued some of us since childhood. Here is where professionals can help us, but only if they will not foster the misuse of self or love.

Man was created by a self-giving God. As such, we bear the imprint of our Creator as self-givers. We are to find it natural to turn our lives over to God. We have spent enough time in our broken condition that we could find these words appalling. Still, every one of us is seeking some way to give ourselves away to something or someone. That is the imprint talking.

God is the only safe keeper of each of us. If we give ourselves to another person, a career, an object, a cause or even a ministry, we find instead a lack of fulfillment and a certain amount of damage to the self. In realizing this, we may happen upon the erroneous advice that we need to love ourselves more and this emptiness will go away. Great. We just keep digging ourselves deeper and deeper into the mire that we think will deliver us.

If we instead abandon ourselves to God, he will perfectly keep us by wisdom and tend to us by love.

We have to get off the self-love treadmill and recognize this false and perilous path.

The follower of Christ who answers the call to the shallows of self-love will have no depth of spirit, and will have no defense in light of Christ’s command to “deny yourself, pick up your cross and follow me.” Self-love and self-denial cannot occupy the same person.

Back to Caussade’s point – Once we belong to God, we are free to be indifferent to matters that could either overwhelm us or subtly distract us.

Like eagles, says Father C, let us fly free: “Come my soul, let us pass beyond our languors, our illnesses, our aridities, our inequalities of humour, our weaknesses of mind, the snares of the devil and of men with their suspicions, jealousies, sinister ideas and prejudices.” (Page 56)

As we shall see next, we cannot fly free when entangled.

At root, the problem is not that we do not love ourselves; the problem is we have not come to love God.

God's reply to a young man's plans: 'Well, that's not quite what I had in mind.'

Book 2, Chapter 2

-Part 1-

Continued ridiculously on …

These three pages that make up “Part 1” of this chapter in Caussade’s book contain a number of central thoughts that help guide the follower of Christ. As with the faith itself, just about the time I think I am finished with these pages, I find that I have merely begun.

Caussade is going to introduce us to the matter of indifference when it comes to embracing the will of God.

I will start with a story from the life of one of the most insecure people I know: Me. As a young pastor (and here I mean “extremely, very green”) I had been called up by my then-denomination to start a church from scratch in a small town in western Montana. The Christian & Missionary Alliance Church had sent me to Hamilton, where neither I nor my wife knew a single soul. We were to scrounge up our own jobs, find willing church-starter-type people, make converts and start services.

Many were the Sundays we set up borrowed folding chairs in the spacious living room of the apartment we miraculously rented on our second day of arrival. We had to return the rental truck on the third day after we arrived. Our first night in this strange town – our new home – was spent in a distressingly-decorated motel that excelled in a depressing atmosphere. Sunday after Sunday I preached carefully-studied sermons to my wife and our two cats. I had a sign made and kept it in our front window, which opened immediately onto the sidewalk on North Second Street: “Valley Alliance Church meets here.”

Almost 30 years later, that sign is all that remains of my failed attempt at church-making in Hamilton. I use it as level footing for my backyard barbequer.

I was daily tormented by lack of success. Every once in a while a wanderer would knock on the door for food, and I would walk with him to the Range Café and buy him a hot beef sandwich. For a while, a welfare family of 10, two parents and eight children, with one on the way, took up the use of us. When they showed up on Sundays, we had an immediate need for a Sunday School and a Children’s Church. When they didn’t show, it was back to my wife and the two cats. Other than that, the Valley Alliance Church wasn’t much of anything. From my point of view, neither was its pastor.

I had no doubt that God had led us here, but I was quite dubious about myself as someone . . . effective. I didn’t seem to have a meaningful ministry. Wait, and you will see what a trap that word “meaningful” can be.

Feelings of inadequacy were only worsened when I was required to attend pastors’ conferences within the district. A group of pastors is not unlike any other group of professionals. There are the quiet, there are the blustery, there are the competitors, there are the self-assured, there are the nice, and there are the asses. I was never comfortable in this group. I was always afraid someone would ask, of all things, “How’s it going?”

At one of these conferences, in Missoula, we had all been given roles in the night’s events. There were featured speakers, people to introduce them, song leaders, invocators, benedictionaires, special music presenters and Scripture readers. And ushers.

Ushers, of course, are as necessary at a pastors’ conference as the French were in World War II. When I discovered that I had been assigned to ush, which amounted to walking backwards down an aisle and pointing knowingly in a direction with an expression on my bitten-closed smile that said, “That right there is a chair,” I fled the conference.

I silently, privately had no confidence in myself, but I could not endure having it publicly confirmed among my peers in this way: “Tim, we think, would make a passable usher.”

This was a microcosm of my general malaise. I wanted my ministry to have meaning. Instead, I felt like a sticky note in a vast library full of massive, intimidating, important books.

You can tell I was let down, disappointed, frustrated, self-absorbed, fragile and angry.

I had made a fundamental error in my walk with God. I had not yet learned that even a Christian’s idea of success can lead to problems. I had come to believe that the work I did in God’s kingdom would have to be satisfying and meaningful to me; that I would somehow look good on paper; that I would be seen as successful and competent by my fellow creatures. I might even win a prize.

The truth is, the work I do in His kingdom has to be satisfying and meaningful to Him. I may have something in mind completely different from God’s idea when I involve myself in my plans. By now, for example, I can tell that, while I wanted a career and a stable employee life, the Lord has thought otherwise. Since my college graduation I have had at least 23 jobs scattered in many different fields. Bursting forth from high school, I was committed and unstoppable in my pursuit of becoming a music teacher. Exploding out of Bible college, I was singularly set upon becoming a pastor.

God’s response to my plans might have sounded like this: “Well, that’s not quite what I have in mind.”

About the will of God, we have this example from Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by. Nevertheless, let it be as you, not I, would have it.” (Matthew 26:39) and again, “My Father, if this cup cannot pass by, but I must drink it, your will be done.” (26:42)

Once we carefully integrate this approach in our walk with God: “Let it be as you, not I, would have it,” we are closer to what Father Caussade calls “a universal indifference.” That is, as he writes, “a soul freely submitted to the divine will with the help of grace” (Page 55).

This is a radical distinction, and brings us to another of Caussade’s thoughts in this section of his book.

“We should then love God and his plan in everything … We should abandon ourselves purely and entirely to God’s design, and thus, with a complete self-forgetfulness, be eternally busied with loving and obeying him, without all these fears, rejections, twistings and turnings and disquietudes which sometimes result from the care of our own salvation and perfection.” ~Caussade (Pages 55, 56.)

The indifference here required is to realize that your life is not what your life is all about.

My ministry, such as it is, has not been packaged in the way I thought it would. In my earlier years this led to the above-mentioned disquietudes. As I develop a better-integrated spiritual life through grace and practice, it becomes clearer that God is doing what he wants with me at all times. As I grow in the faith, I kick somewhat less against this.

If you aren't growing you are doing it wrong

Book 2, Chapter 2

-Part 1-

Continued even more …

“This foundation being laid, the soul has nothing to do save to pass all its life in rejoicing that God is God.” ~Caussade (Page 55.)

It seemed disingenuous to breeze through Father Caussade’s comment here without revisiting the notion of Christian growth and the development of one’s spiritual maturity, as we have done above for some time.

Indeed, it is because he said, “This foundation being laid,” that I had to stop my writing for many days and consider the condition of “this foundation” – not only in me, but in all of us.

For a moment, let’s consider Father Caussade’s full description of the foundation: “The great and solid foundation of the spiritual life is to give oneself to God in order to be the subject of His good pleasure in everything internal and external, and afterwards to forget oneself so completely, that one considers oneself as a thing sold and delivered to the purchaser to which one no longer has any right, in such a way that the good pleasure of God makes all our joy and that this happiness, glory and being become our sole good.” (Page 55)

Only then does he go on to say, “This foundation being laid …”

The material for such a basis for establishing a life of faith is made up of a will to submit to God. No one can “rejoice that God is God” without submitting their will to him. Those who know God as God either submit to him, or remain stubbornly lost, or are darkened by evil.

          It is upon this “great and solid foundation,” as Caussade puts it, that we may then move on to “grow completely into Christ,” as Paul states in Ephesians 4 – to be “fully mature with the fullness of Christ Himself.”

What is the true condition of this foundation among those of us who dare say we walk with God? Do we not see how exclusively and single-mindedly, and with what commitment this foundation is composed? Do we not see its beauty?

More often than not, when reading the words of long-past spiritual shepherds, their comments about the initial phase of spiritual growth (beginners) are beyond any one of us who might think we have adequately moved on in our faith. Myself, thinking that my spiritual journey by this time should be at least at mid-sea, I have found instead that I haven’t left the harbor. My shoes are still dry.

Even during the best occurrences of spiritual growth, the believer is faced with the same ever-fading horizon that plagued the aging king in Tennyson’s “Ulysses” – “Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades Forever and forever when I move.” As I progress, I see how much farther I have yet to go to reach my drifting goal. I sail toward, but never seem to reach, the receding horizon.

In his 12^th-Century work Ladder of Monks, Guigo II wrote that the function of meditation on Scripture is like squeezing much juice from a small grape. At this, he says, “I am still an ignorant beginner, and it is only with difficulty that I have found something in which to draw up these few drops.” (Page 71)

We want to become better at knowing God, but once we make progress, we realize what little way we have come and how unsearchable he is. The believer’s ever-fading horizon is the sheer magnitude of God.

Even so, we are encouraged not to look back on the field of discoveries that we have made, but to face forward with the plow and continue on. Moses, thank goodness, did not pitch a tent where he saw the burning bush awaiting succeeding fiery interludes with God. Moses is a good example of a spiritual person who was free to move on from one solid experience with God to others. The ground there was called holy by the Lord, yet no altar was built there, nor did the people of Israel camp around an unburnt bush for the rest of time.

From this well-made foundation, as described by Father Caussade, our vantage point from which we perceive God through our inner man is lifted, as though we are children on our father’s shoulders, seeing and enjoying just that much more fully.

Why would the believer then stop building at this point – satisfied to have constructed a passable foundation? What composer would think he had finished an orchestral score when he had only marked out the blank measures and affixed the time and key signatures? Is there not now music to create? Cannot the imagination be summoned to fill pages with notes, and eventually a concert hall with music?

What soul can say that its sole good is the good pleasure of God, and that its life is about rejoicing that God is God? Let us admit together that we are all far from this. We must as well note a careful distinction: Some have the same heart as the psalmist, who yearned for God in his heart. Some have not this heart for yearning. Those who are satisfied should take warning from their inert inner man. As Jesus pointed out, only those who thirst will be satisfied.

How far along am I in loving God? Notice, I didn’t say “studying God,” or “understanding God,” or even “loving what God has done.” There are, in fact, many reasons to love God, but we are required to do more than love these reasons. Note the reasons if you like, but get on with it. Grow in your love for God. If this is not happening, as far as your Christian faith is concerned, you are doing it wrong.

Beginners must get past beginning ASAP

Book 2, Chapter 2

-Part 1-

     Continued more …

Having established that it is fitting for beginners to begin, it must also be said that this starting phase of one’s spiritual life must be soon grown out of. Once the runner has taken his place at the starting blocks his feet are braced, his fingers pressed on the track, his body coiled, his mind cleared – but for what? When the starting gun is fired all of his finesse training and all of his pent up strength must be released. He will run, and perhaps win, only if he explodes out of the starting blocks.

In the blocks, there is a satisfying ache from the leg muscles as they await the opportunity to do what they do naturally. Likewise does the new believer have zeal to grow. If not this, there could be cause for concern. Young parents become alarmed when their child does not seem to be developing as quickly as the siblings did, or are not as advanced as the other kids at daycare. We rightly tend to see a lack of growth as a symptom of a possible health problem or of inadequate nurturing.

So also must the house of God ensure that its beginners are moving along in their walk with Christ. The new believer is to be immediately set upon a prayerful journey into maturity. Along this voyage we will find we have fallen in love with God, and with our crew.

Some Christian spiritual directors refer to this secondary stage that flows into the believer as the “intermediate” stage (e.g. John of the Cross) or they use a reference to “those making progress” (e.g. William of St. Thierry).

Another way to advance the idea of “making progress” in one’s spiritual life is to refer to the process of being transformed into the likeness of Christ. (See Romans 8:29.) Members of the churches first under the direction of the Apostles were pressed to allow God to thoroughly work this transformation upon them. For example:

“Brothers,” wrote the Apostle Paul, “do not remain children in your thinking; infants in wickedness – agreed, but in your thinking grown-ups” (First Corinthians 14:20).

As Abbott William of St. Thierry said, “The servant of God must always make progress or go back; either he struggles upwards or he is driven down into the depths” (The Golden Epistle, Part 38).

In the Bible, the young churches are sometimes chided by the apostles for their slow-going with regard to spiritual maturity.

Here is a brief wakeup call from Paul to the Christians at Corinth: “And so, brothers, I was not able to talk to you as spiritual people; I had to talk to you as people still living by your natural inclinations, still infants in Christ; I fed you with milk and not solid food, for you were not yet able to take it – and even now, you are still not able to, for you are still living by your natural inclinations. As long as there are jealousy and rivalry among you, that surely means that you are still living by your natural inclinations and by merely human principles” (First Corinthians 3:1-3).

In another place Christians are told “you have grown so slow at understanding.” And, a sentence later, “you have gone back to needing milk, and not solid food” (Hebrews 5:12).

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul tells seeking Christians that the purpose of the church as the Body of Christ is to bring its members to “unity in faith and knowledge of the Son of God and form the perfect Man, fully mature with the fullness of Christ himself.” (Ephesians 4:13)

Then he goes on to briefly spell out the difference between immature and mature believers:

“Then we shall no longer be children, or tossed one way and another, and carried hither and thither by every new gust of teaching, at the mercy of all the tricks people play and their unscrupulousness in deliberate deception. If we live by the truth and in love, we shall grow completely into Christ, who is the head by whom the whole Body is fitted and joined together, every joint adding its own strength, for each individual part to work according to its function. So the body grows until it has built itself up in love.” (Ephesians 4:14-16)

In order to move from spiritual immaturity to maturity in Christ, the believer must undergo a steady, continuous transformation that ripens in the soul a wise, informed, willful love for God. Only a Christian with these heart markings may be allowed to be considered mature in Christ. Welcome, beloved, to a world filled with toddlers.

Please have your boarding passes ready . . . The journey has a beginning

Book 2, Chapter 2

-Part 1-

        Continued …

“This foundation being laid, the soul has nothing to do save to pass all its life in rejoicing that God is God.” ~Caussade (Page 55.)

In the following few sections we will be looking at a person’s spirituality from the standpoint of phases of growth or levels of development. However, because these are discussed one at a time, it must be kept always in mind that these divisions are not closed off from one another. A believer may be very mature and well-made in one aspect of his life with God, and quite unripened in another. Also, humility and poverty of spirit must be kept in mind whenever the reader is considering himself in light of the descriptions of these supposed levels or stages.

The separate consideration of these steps of growth is a means by which the spiritual life may be taught and discussed. In our real life, these gradations are not sealed off from one another.

William of St. Thierry pointed this out in his discussion of the three stages of growth: “It should be noted that when we speak [1] of carnal or animal perception, [2] of rational knowledge or [3] of spiritual wisdom, we have in mind both a single man [who possesses characteristics of all three], and three kinds of men … each with the characteristics of one of these states.” (The Golden Epistle, Section 35, Paragraph 140)

Still, I believe it is helpful to articulate the spiritual journey by talking about its beginning, its route and its destination.

Because our natural orientation is toward things below it is not always easy to understand or relate to things from above. Nor is it easy to integrate some of the advanced thoughts from spiritual masters. My soul might be ripe for one sentence and unready for the next. I suppose most of us try to take away what we can from our reading and leave the rest for another time. That’s how I do it.

Spiritual writing is not a replacement for the work of the Spirit, but is one of the agents through which the Spirit often chooses to enact the transformation, the growth and the progress of a disciple.

The nature of spiritual writing is to inform as a teacher, form as a coach, and draw the reader to God as a spiritual director. Each of these three aspects are accomplished only by the work of the Holy Spirit, who Himself teaches, coaches and draws the disciple further along, more deeply along, more genuinely or actually along the follower’s journey with God.

To be taught, coached and drawn to God – these three match the three categories into which some spiritual masters have placed God’s people. That is, beginners, intermediates (those making progress) and the proficient. Such is the three-phased description of John of the Cross. William of St. Thierry worded his three phases of spiritual growth as animal, rational and spiritual man.

In the Bible itself, there seems more often to be a two-fold description of the faithful: The young and the older; the infant (the milk-drinkers) and the mature (the meat-eaters); the child and the adult. When we think of the spiritual life as a journey, then there will be a beginning and a destination. Between the two, there may be any number of gradations representing progress or movement or advancement. Any number of words could be employed to describe the points between the start and the destination, or the developmental stages between the child and the adult.

When it comes to reading, whether it is the Scriptures or books on Christian spirituality, the ultimate goal is to allow the encounter with the words to draw the reader to God. In the case of beginners, this occurs with some difficulty. Those new to the faith or newly interested in their faith rightly become students and will want to be informed. Books are studied by novices for content.

The young in the faith also carry around a certain amount of pride for what they are learning. Never was this so clear to me as it was in Bible college, where it was encumbered upon me to live in a dormitory named “Skitch Hall.” A freshman that year, who lived in another dorm, which some of us had nicknamed “The Firetrap,” introduced himself to me with his name, a firm handshake, inescapable eye contact and this between-you-and-me comment as if made by the mustache-twisting villain in a melodrama: “I am something of an expert on the Bible.”

I had never heard anyone announce themselves like that before – much less someone who had just turned 18. I should have said, “This is Bible college. Who isn’t?” Instead, I puzzled.

During my years at this preacher school, humility was neither taught nor caught. We were embroiled in an unspoken, rule-less competition to see who could appear the most spiritual, amass the most knowledge, and look as if we would be supremely adept pastors or missionaries when the time came. Humility would have to wait. I would have to become an expert, and start telling people so, in order to survive. I was threatened by my classmate’s braggadocio, such that I quietly accepted his superiority. Nowadays I realize it was the comment of a brash toddler.

There is nothing wrong with this initial “student” phase of investigation or discovery. (Well, except for the fore-mentioned nagging pride.) It is important to have good information in order to live and think in truth. Good spirituality does not come from bad theology. So it is thoroughly appropriate for beginners to become accustomed to the truth of the word of God and the teachings of the faith. Such a good root system will produce good fruit.

We must maintain a sense of balance when we are discussing the younger or less experienced among us. It is not acceptable to berate the beginner. Jesus pointed out that heaven rejoices over the recovery of one soul (Luke 15:7). God makes all of His blessings entirely available and entirely present to the beginner (Ephesians 1:3).There is absolutely no shame in a person taking their first steps in a lifelong walk with God. There is no disgrace in starting. Nor, for that matter, in starting late.

Years ago as a young pastor, I stood next to a hospital bed and helped a man start his life with God. He was trembling with physical weakness such that the bed was tremulous to the touch. “I have never been a religious man,” he said to me, “but I would like to do something about that now.” In that afternoon, he responded to God in faith. His family and I waited with him at the hospital for one week after that, when he died while he and his son were looking at one another. I have no doubt that God did a complete work in this man’s heart, and that he lacked nothing when he died.

From Christ’s first invitation for the disciples to “follow Me,” up until the church as it exists now at this moment on this day, the call has been clear: “Join us.” Once he answers this call, the beginner belongs. He is a member of the community of faith, the company of the committed, the beloved of God. The beginner is no less a part of the Body of Christ than any other believer; no less valuable to God or to other members; and no less loved by God or His people. Every ship must have its maiden voyage; every sailor his first crossing.