For 300 years, from the 1200’s to 1500’s the Rhine River Valley in Europe experienced an astonishing revival of Christian experience among regular people. One of the great expressions of it was the founding of many communities of “beguines” and their male counterparts “beghards.” These communities were part of a huge spiritual movement that stressed the imitation of Christ’s life through voluntary poverty, care of the poor and sick, and religious devotion. {Check out the best seller of the time]
I am praying for a new flowering of similar discovery and passion in our own time. If you read this blog, you probably stoke my hope. Many younger Jesus-followers, in particular, are trying on the basic Christianity their recent ancestors in faith have abandoned for political fights and empire thinking. Circle of Hope is a good opportunity to try on some beguine-like radicality. So can we re-begin the beguines? We are in the process of refining our church in many ways, these days, could the beguines lead us?
Priest lectures a group of beguines
What is a “beguine?”
No one knows for sure where the word “beguine” came from. It could be a derivation of “beige,” since many of these people were heavily involved in the flourishing new cloth manufacturing trade in Europe and wore simple tan clothes. Maybe they’d be called “denims” today. But “beguine” could also be a pejorative nickname that stuck, like “Christian” — no one really knows.
I admit, when I remembered these inspiring people the other day, I passed over the great mystics among them and went straight to Begin the Beguine by Cole Porter (who may be as obscure to some of you as the 13th century!). In the Creole language of Martinique and Guadeloupe a beguine is not a Christian lay woman living in a religious community without formal vows. The term came to mean “white woman” in general, and then it came to be applied to a style of music and dance, and in particular a slow, close couples’ dance. Cole Porter popularized this dance wherever people were cool in the 30’s and 40’s. There is not much connection between Cole Porter and my spiritual heroes, which goes to show how spiritual movements flourish, get co-opted or corrupted and are lost on some dance floor. But I persist.
According to the famous mystic, John of Ruusbroec, the beguines’ religious and political opinions were similar to those expressed by anarchists of later centuries. Religious authorities believed their members had heretical tendencies and sometimes tried to bring disciplinary measures against them (Marguerite Porete was burned at the stake in Paris on charges of heresy in 1310). The Beghards were even more public about their reforms; during the 14th century, they were repeatedly condemned by the Pope, the German bishops and the Inquisition. Before the close of the Middle Ages, the communities were in decline, diminished by institutionalization, persecution and the waning of the textile trade. But some beguinages kept going for 800 years until the last beguine died in 2013.
They weren’t trying to build a legacy, anyway, much the opposite; they were just trying to have a life in Christ. When radicals like the Franciscans started speaking the gospel outside the church and its power structure, in the vernacular and not just in Latin, it led to thousands of people acquiring a genuine relationship with Jesus, which ultimately led to an intimate oneness with God. This spiritual progression was ultimately known as “mysticism” [link to posts on “mystical hope“].
An intact Beguinage, at Antwerp, Belgium
Part of a great movement of the Spirit
Responding to itinerant preachers before the year 1200, women by the thousands flocked to various convents. The communities did not have room for all of them. So they joined together in their own communities for spiritual growth and pooled their resources to buy large houses to live in a city (above), or whole sections of it. Initially, the beguines were widows and single women, but soon married women found ways to connect. They were devoted to the poor. Some of the first houses formed around infirmaries where many volunteered. They bought the new Bibles being translated into local languages and studied together. They wrote their own devotional books, music and philosophy. Some of the earliest books in Dutch and German were written by Beguines, such as Hadewijch of Brabant and Mechthild of Magdeburg. Radically in love with Jesus, these women saw themselves as brides of Christ and gave their lives to the pursuit of knowing Jesus and serving his cause.
How far can we go with similar intent? It would be great if some of our good businesses became means for people to pray together, then go work on their common business. It would be amazing if people saw our cells and congregations as distinct parts of the city where people protected one another’s relationship with God. It would be wonderful if we managed to care for the poor in new ways that did not rely so much on corporations and government. It would be wonderful to incorporate more of the feminine and fluid theology of the era of the beguines. It would be great if we unleashed our creativity even more to give voice to the movement of Jesus among us. It would be miraculous if our sense of alternativity blossomed into another movement of the Spirit in our time.
I know we are in the process of trying all these things right now. So miracles could occur! Some of us just have a toe in the water, some of us are kind of over “radicality,” some of us are on the other side of Christ-centered faith, many of us are just beginning to walk with Jesus. As the beguines demonstrated, it doesn’t really matter who one is or where you are on the faith journey; renewal and inspiration are all about the Spirit of God — and the Lord’s Spirit is not bound by who we are right now. Where could we go? And who might we become? We have courageous examples from the past who suggest exciting ways to develop.
I have been thinking a lot about Lilias Trotter lately. For one reason, she was the subject of a 2015 movie which made her a bit more notorious — it is great when Christians discover an interesting spiritual ancestor and tell their story! I am happy, but also cautious, when I hear stories about great Christians from the past. I think it is safe to say that one often finds what she is looking for in history — the stories that get told often end up looking strangely like the autobiography of the historian!
Nevertheless, Lilias Trotter, presented by her admirers or suspected by her detractors, has had me thinking ever since she appeared in The Transhistorical Body last week. I love her, even if at the same time I think she may have been a bit deluded. And I respect her, even though I know remembering her has the capacity to drive certain Christians to despair.
A bit about Lilias
In case you didn’t read the blog entry, Trotter was an English socialite in the Victorian era who committed herself to the “higher life” in Christ and ended up being a missionary in Algeria. She was so sickly, the missionary board would not send her. But she and her friend, having resources of their own, struck out for North Africa anyway and spent 30 years trying to help Muslims meet the living God, risen in Jesus. That would be an inspiring reason enough to remember her, but it is even more inspiring to know she left her very promising art career behind to serve Jesus. She was so talented that no less than John Ruskin told her she might become one of the greatest English artists if she applied herself. But she left her development as an artist behind to follow her calling. Fortunately, she still did a bit of art, but she could never give her heart to the pursuit, since her heart belonged to Jesus.
El Oued desert 1895 — Lilias Trotter
When I brought Lilias Trotter into our cell dialogue last week, I started with the quote from Jesus with which the Daily Prayer blog started:
“…unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven” (Jesus – Matthew 5:20).
I will not attempt to unpack all we had to say about that piece of scripture; we just scratched the surface, anyway. What we started discussing is the fact that we, like the Pharisees, tend to get stuck in a “box” of our own making that we consider about as good as it gets (or as good as we can do) and we become satisfied with it, or defensive of it, or stuck within the confines of it, or unable to see beyond it. We are all prone to the frailty of mortals, even if we are trying to be as righteous as the Pharisees were trying to be. We need the Lord, in our case the risen Lord, to tell us, “Your ways will not get you into the kingdom of heaven; you must join me where I am. I will show you the way, personally.”
The higher life
When Lilias Trotter lived a movement began among Christians in Europe and the United States. Many people heard a call from Jesus and immediately looked around at their boxed-in lives and boxed-in religion and made every effort to get out of the box. It has been called the “higher life” movement. Trotter learned of this higher life in the Spirit and about died seeking it, all the while thinking death would be fine, because she did not want to be in the box when Jesus returned; she would rather have died than to miss out on her highest calling. She gave her utmost for the Lord’s highest.
Several people in our cell grew up in environments where word of this higher life was the constant message of their parents and elders. They constantly heard, “You need to get out of wherever you are and go further. You need to make sure you are not missing your highest calling. Ordinary people filled with the Holy Spirit do extraordinary things.” So they were always quite sure that there was a further place to go and they had not made it yet.
Even when they tried to be as good as they should be, they secretly felt guilty for not being good enough. In the name of spiritual freedom they felt completely condemned! This may not have happened to you, but a couple of people experienced such anxiety and depression they felt even more faulty, since an “extraordinary” day for them might be getting out of bed and actually going to work! Having the devotion of a Pharisee in a righteous box might seem like success! So when Jesus appears to say such limited righteousness is not enough to get them into heaven, it is devastating. They’d never even gotten into a religious box yet, much less would they have the wherewithal to get out of it!
They were glad our church was so gracious to accept them where they are, even though it is filled with “higher life” types (like me) who are rearin’ to go most of the time. Our church is, essentially, a radical kind of place that, by nature, might not seem like the best place for someone who feels successful if they make it to the Sunday meetings a couple of times a month. We are often blasted with messages from people who would have loved to follow in Lilias Trotter’s footsteps to Algeria. And yes, she and her type will be celebrated as admirable ancestors in “our transhistorical body” blog while we appear to overlook the millions of Jesus followers who few remembered after they died.
It is OK to be at the “level” you are
I ended the dialogue in our cell like I am going to end this blog post, with this question. Why can’t Lilias Trotter be celebrated for who she is and each of us be celebrated for who we are? If she is greater, why not love her for it? If you aren’t, why not love you for it? Isn’t that the gospel, that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and we are all saved by the redeeming work of Jesus? As soon as the Lord makes us all equal in his love as he dies for us on the cross, do we immediately need to turn around and create a hierarchy among us according to how much glory someone is reflecting, or not?
I know being loved as we are and feeling hope for a higher life is hard to accept when we are depressed and anxious, or when our parents and associates have made us feel like we are not worth much, or sin at work in us has warped our view of self and God so much we can’t see straight. I freely admit that many Christians have been a menace, acting all holy and doing terrible things in the name of their righteousness. In spite of their sin, we need to receive our new self in Christ whether it lives in a messy, yet-to-be-perfected box or not! It is the crucial act of putting on the new self of God’s beloved that leads us out of every restrictive box and onto the unusual ways of faith in Jesus.
Damon Linker of This Week, Penn, and suburban Philly, says “The lies, corruption, graft, racism, xenophobia, hucksterism, and demagoguery of President Trump and leading members of his administration are so brazen and diverge so sharply from the political norms of the recent American past, it’s easy to lapse into misplaced hope that the pathologies swirling around us will dissipate as soon as the man leaves office.”
I was in a house full of grandchildren as I read those lines — their presence made Linker’s prediction even more alarming. Are my grandchildren destined to navigate some terrible pathology? I hope not. But if they are so troubled, it will give Jesus an opportunity to prove, once again, that he is greater than our hearts.
Trump may catalyze the worst in us for his own benefit, but he couldn’t do it without the rest of the country providing him opportunity and giving in when he takes his liberties. We of Circle of Hope mildly talk about our “alternativity,” but how far have you been driven, in truth, into some individual bunker from which you plot your safest route to your personal desires? Our recent dialogue about consolidating two of our congregations, although amazing and encouraging (and alternative!), also highlighted what we are up against these days. We are tempted to conform to the pathology around us either by adopting it or endlessly rebelling against it – either way it dominates us.
Linker lists six features of the United States society that often threaten to become features of our church, as well. I hope commenting on his list contributes to finding a way to avoid the pitfalls of our time.
Skepticism about leaders
There’s the spread of skepticism, rooted in radical egalitarianism, about the capacity of any authority to judge fairly among competing truth claims.
If we desert our families and can’t listen to our leaders, can we learn to follow Jesus? Aren’t we tempted to perfect autonomy, thinking that is a good thing? I think our pastors talk about our skepticism all the time — but that doesn’t mean anyone thinks it is right to listen to them, or that they actually do listen. People tend to wake up to “who’s in charge” or “what’s the process” when they discover some change actually impacts their “personal lives.” Otherwise, they assume that everyone in charge is self-interested or corrupt and try to steer clear of any process that might require their responsibility or sacrifice. Skeptics need to be questioned: Are all the region’s police self-interested and corrupt? Is everyone in government out for profit? Are the Cell Leader Coordinators unaware of your reality? Are protesters wasting their time? What kind of person is your skepticism making you?
Virtual extremism
There’s the technological amplification of extreme views, which allows those on the ideological margins (and other bad actors) to spread and organize with unprecedented potency in virtual space.
The Russians would not be able to corrupt the U.S. system if the echo chambers in which citizens are trapped intersected and if they were not all atomized into individual interpreters of the day’s news. Our church, designed as it is to span usually-distinct territories and people groups often has a terrible time getting people to follow Jesus together if their ideological underpinnings are not satisfied. I have convictions I consider elemental to my faith in Jesus and which bind me to prophesy to society, but should they exclude others who don’t know what I’m talking about yet?
Endless entertainment
There’s the thoroughgoing transformation of our public life into a forum for mass entertainment aimed at the lowest common denominator.
Last week one of my grandchildren so skillfully lobbied for watching the The Two Towers we spent hours of a cloudy vacation day doing it. Afterwords, we had a long talk (long for elementary attention spans, that is) about what the movie means. One of them questioned my authority to begin such a discussion, of course (back to point one), but we talked anyway. I pointed out that the movies corrupt Tolkien’s story, since the filmmakers use extraordinary, powerful technology to tell the story of the meek inheriting the earth. This thought came to mind after I was informed that the spectacle of Helm’s Deep is much more interesting than the Hobbit scenes, and it is time to hit the bathroom when Gollum is dithering about his soul. They might be children of their age, in danger of spiritual lobotomy by the powerful scenes from the entertainment industry. The news is infotainment and the presidency a reality TV show. It is no wonder people have a tough time taking their faith and their church seriously.
Accepted polarization
There’s ideological polarization combined with a regional (urban-rural) split along both cultural and political lines, which is exacerbated by our country’s multiple counter-majoritarian institutions.
We passed around an article a few weeks back about the interesting divides in the country. We could see the cultural stereotypes played out in some of our own dialogue as the church. We don’t have to look hard to find evidence of the country’s division among us. One might say many of us are obsessed with what divides us — condemned by their “identities” to perpetual otherness instead of welcomed into the community we crave. Lately, our email list of covenant members has been the scene of some brilliant practical theology after our leaders called us to a course of practical necessity and creative adaptation – a change. I am glad to see we gravitated toward unity in Christ instead of mere diversity of choice.
Distortion as strategy
And there’s the willingness of cynical, power-hungry political functionaries to traffic in outright lies and distortions in order to win and hold office.
I was in Barnes and Noble with five 7-11 year olds, enough said. While we were buying books I spotted a surprising title: The Faith of Donald J. Trump. I pondered it the day after the news of Cohen’s and Manafort’s legal issues came to a head, both which point to the corruption and brazen immorality of the leader, who the books calls, “the one guiding figure who can return us to the traditional values –hard work, discipline, duty, respect, and faith — that have long been the foundation of American life.” It is small wonder there will be a whole generation of people who assume any leader, including a church leader, is lying. After all, we don’t need Trump, just a few bishops in Pennsylvania will make us wonder.
No love of enemies
Justice has been reduced to the friend/enemy distinction: Whatever damage is done to the other side in the name of progress for my own mission is acceptable, even laudable.
Are people, in general, really losing all capacity to have conflicts that result in mutually beneficial outcomes? In our church, people often solve difficult relationships by refusing to ever have the conflict they feel. They kill love to avoid conflict. They neuter their faith in the name of some “acceptance” that masks their fear. They don’t want to be a loser and they have reduced love down to not making anyone else lose. This is politics conducted without any notion of a common good. The interests of the whole community no longer transcend the competing, perpetually clashing, and conflicted parts. Such a “politics” could kill a church, of course.
I felt a lot of these influences tempting us during our dialogue last week; so I was nervous. I wasn’t sure I could trust our trust system. We purposely designed our church so people could wreck it by being unloving or irresponsible (since Christians love and care and share or they should not be called Christians). I was not sure we would be Christians when we felt hurt or threatened or needed to fail and change. I went to prayer. Jesus came through and we came through. We’ll all be fine. But we will still be living in a world that is clearly not fine, these days. It will try to drag us down with it, so we’d better keep praying.
Last week I was sitting on my porch at 1pm on a Thursday eating an ice cream sandwich, all of which are rare. A car rolled by with the windows down, playing I Say a Little Prayer by Aretha Franklin, one of my favorites. It was still playing in my mind when I went inside to my computer. As soon as I sat down, a chat screen popped up and Jonny told me Aretha had died — he knows I am a fan. So I will probably always remember the day Aretha Franklin died because of that serendipity. And because she has been a companion along my way since I was fourteen. I suspect I have played her album of Atlantic hits 500 times and said a little prayer with her a few times, too.
I was fourteen in 1968 when Respect won two Grammys and Aretha Franklin became a feature on the Hi-Fi stationed in my family’s living room. There were no personal music players or earphones back then so music was a communal experience. My parents did not like Aretha in their communal experience (just like they hadn’t liked one of her mentors, Mahalia Jackson). For one thing, she was black and they were vocal racists, especially my father, who had competed for sharecropping jobs with black men and jealously guarded whatever shred of white privilege he could muster. What’s more, she sounded aggressive and loud. Even if they didn’t listen to the words and didn’t get it when she spelled it out: R-E-S-P-E-C-T, they could feel her demand when she sang. She threatened the living room. Her blackness invaded my parents’ sanctuary.
I did not get all this completely when I was fourteen. I’m a product of racism just like we all are. So it merely felt like a like a guilty pleasure to rebelliously listen to Aretha, and to allow someone but Perry Como to define music for me. Aretha liked Perry Como, too (I read the interview), just like she enjoyed all kinds of good music. But my parents did not know that, mostly because she was black and it betrayed their worldview to listen to her. Nevertheless, my relationship with the Queen of Soul grew and my appreciation of her talent and passion deepened.
As it turns out, the famously private Aretha Franklin was hiding all the trauma that would have appalled my parents and supercharged the disrespect they were eager to pour on her. Her parents were separated. She was a teen mother at 12 and 14. Her first husband purportedly abused her. She had two divorces. She was often overweight. She was known for idealizing her life, not even publicly admitting to the pancreatic cancer that eventually killed her as late as last year.
At the same time she was using the gift God gave her to make a huge difference. Had she just given us the pleasure of listening to her great musical talent, however she used it, that would have been enough. But her music became the soundtrack of the civil rights movement for African Americans and women both. And her insistence on doing things that were beyond the labels under which she labored and the track on which her previous success directed her is an example for all of us who feel underestimated or pigeonholed.
Her soulful talent helped me move out of my racist bubble. Thank God. I remember another moment of transition related to the song that came to me through the car window on her death day. I got started with I Say a Little Prayer with Dionne Warwick in 1967 before Aretha recorded it in 1968.
I loved Dionne Warwick’s version. But when I heard Aretha’s, I realized that Warwick’s was something of a sanitized version which was more about the cool, cerebral music of Burt Bacharach than about Dionne Warwick. She was just a vehicle for the notes. When Aretha got a hold of it, it was full of passion that transcended the notes and most of the words. At the end of the song, she turns it into an actual prayer and we are all invited into a place that is a lot bigger than pop. So-called white people used so-called black people to carry their assignments long before I learned as a child to think of that as normal. Aretha broke me out of that normality when she led me someplace bigger. She was a leader. And even wounded, she was just bigger than most of us.
I suppose that is why I was particularly moved when she died. Like many other people I eventually tuned into the news channels to see what people were saying about her and to invite her into my living room again, this time to celebrate her with freedom. I found myself shedding a tear with President Obama as her Kennedy Center Performance was repeatedly replayed.
As I listened, I had another revelation that led to this blog post. I loved A Natural Womanwhen I heard it on Carol King’s Tapestry (which I had on vinyl and basically wore out with many plays). But when Aretha got a hold of it, she added a spiritual dimension that took it beyond the great feeling of a man seeing his partner as the woman she is and calling out the best in her (which I hope we all get to experience many, many times). I honestly think she took the song where we can all sing it to God.
Maybe this seems strange, but when I sing “You make me feel like a natural woman” along with Aretha, I feel God making me feel like my true self, even when I sing “natural woman!” Again, she brought someone larger to the music. It seems like Aretha did not have too many people in her life to make her feel as safe and real as the song sings it. So I think she must have gotten her power in the secret place she kept beyond fame, pain, addiction and racism where Jesus reminded her she was his beloved. May she rest in God’s arms.
I don’t know how old I was (jr. high?), but I do know this: I was too young to be the Sunday School teacher for the 5th grade boys. But the church was desperate and I was their boy, so the coach put me in. I am not sure what the class learned except how clever they were to discover that I could be nicknamed “Rod White and Blue.”
Not exactly as the 5th graders portrayed it.
But I learned quite a few things! One of them has stuck with me ever since. In order to keep these boys occupied I decided to have them enact the story of Joseph for the church (Genesis 37-50). I have no idea why the pastor let us do this in the Sunday meeting, since it was a uniformly terrible production. But the parents put everyone in a bathrobe and the servant found the church communion chalice in a gunny sack and the whole thing. Perhaps the kids still remember the epic story as a result. I do. I have been pondering it my whole life (and I’m not alone).
Edge and center spirituality
Recently, I learned a new twist to the great story after I read a book about discerning life transitions. I have offered an entire series of messages about life transitions based on this great saga about Joseph and his family, since all the stages are all there and vividly portrayed. But this new book taught me that, in the course of moving through the stages of spiritual development, there is another theme to follow and the author used Joseph to demonstrate it. Ernie Boyer calls this theme “edge spirituality” and “center spirituality.” Boyer sees two spiritual ways in life, reconciling them in the image of a circle, in which the “edge” is our traditional sense of spiritual discipline and the center is a renewed spirituality of everyday concerns. His idea brings Mary and Martha back to living together in the same house, perhaps Mary returning from her hermitage or Martha moving into the monastery.
Boyer encourages us to explore life “on the edge” (following the lead of our apostles, prophets, and artists) like the edge of a wheel, feeling all the highs and lows, coming into contact with the rough surface of the earth, and rolling into what is next. But he also, realistically, encourages us to stop neglecting life “at the center,” which we often despise for its repetition and domesticity, and find the Spirit in what is already established. These two spiritual modalities are often side by side in the New Testament, though the edge is often considered the better way.
You can see how the “edge and center of the wheel” this is a nice metaphor for meditating on our individual and communal lives. Individuality lends itself to a heroic search for the edge. Community leads us to look for ways to develop the sacrament of our routine and the blessings of living as part of the Lord’s body, on pilgrimage and rooted in eternity. There is always a balance of individual calling and caring for others, a balance of looking at our personal career goals and caring for our family, both biological and spiritual.
Joseph learns his relationship with God and his unique calling out on the edge: in his dreams as a teen, in a pit in his twenties, way on the edge in Egypt in his thirties, in prison in his forties (the timeline is subject to interpretation of course). Then in his older years, he ends up in the center of Pharaoh’s household in the center of the whole kingdom and in the center of a famine that gives him the capacity to save his family, bring them to live with him and end up at the center of them again. There is an interesting dance of these complementary spiritual ways in the story. Joseph’s family upheaval spins him out on the edge. Then his great spiritual journey on the edge makes him fully capable of nurturing the center. You can also see this idea worked out from the beginning to the end of the Lord’s mission. At the beginning, Jesus is pushed to the edge by his mother, at a wedding no less. Then at the end, as Jesus turns back toward home, both as a man and God on the cross, he looks to his mother and provides her a home with John, then turns to the Father and says, “It is finished.”
How edge and center spirituality goes together
As I look back over my faith development, I can see how these two spiritualities often felt like they were in competition, but usually ended up in a balance – or at least a truce! When I got out of high school, and out of the kind of Baptist Church that would make me a Sunday School teacher (!), I became an actual Christian. My first mentors in the faith were all people who had great faith “on the edge.” I loved Anthony in the desert, Patrick on his hill, Francis in his cave and Wesley on horseback. It was a real question whether to become a Franciscan or marry Gwen. I just could not get God to let me be a Franciscan — and since you may know my wife, you can see why I did not argue too much with the good given to me in her! But my mentors in history made me feel a bit guilty about my choice. Since an “edge” spirituality often despises anyone who ties themselves to the “center” of the wheel.
Francis on the edge
Thank God I had the flower-child-recasting of St. Francis in Brother Sun, Sister Moon to encourage me. Here is a bit of wisdom stuck in my memory, straight from the script:
[Giocondo] I can take all the rest, the cold, the hunger, but there are days and nights when I’d gladly face eternal damnation for one moment of love. I’ll ruin everything you’ve tried to do, Francesco. I can’t go on.
[Francesco] But, but you don’t have to. We’re not a regiment of priests for whom the sacred vow of chastity is a discipline. We’re, we’re just a band of men who simply love God, each according to his own capacity. But if Giocondo finds the lack of a woman distracts him from loving God,then he should marry and breed to his heart’s content.
[Giocondo] You didn’t cut my hair before. You knew I was weak. You knew this would happen.
[Francesco] If everyone took the vow of chastity, the human race would end. Be fruitful and multiply, but with a wife, remember.
Dwight Judy says, “Most of us are not living the highly individualistic life of early hermits in the desert. We live in society, in communities, and in families. Yet the resources from Christian spirituality largely reflect the individual quest for purity of soul before God. Even when engaging in a communal living situation, such as monastic life, our spiritual legacy of prayer and attention to the inner journey helps us primarily with the task of solitary communion with God.” Francis had to assure Giocondo that making love is great. For many of us it is one of the most spiritual things we do. And watching a child born is usually the closest sense of incarnation we ever witness.
The spirituality of the center is the hub of the circle where we live in community and family, doing the daily routine in grace. The turning of the wheel and the bumps in the road usually push us toward the edge, where we meet God in our unique experiences, gifts and troubles. The rarified experiences we have out on the edge then inform our return and they refresh the center. The two spiritualities are woven together in a “coat of many colors,” just like Joseph’s.
Being conscious helps with the balancing
I have a great affection for St. Francis whose “out there” spirituality also built a community who still love to call themselves the “little brothers,” just like he taught Giocondo. I know my balancing act of the two spiritualities, though somewhat conscious, has often careened from one extreme to the other. This blog post arose in a day of retreat out on the edge. But I will be into the community life of Circle of Hope later in the week and August is full of family and friends — and I am still married to my lovely wife! But as much as I long for my solitude with God and the pure joy of revelation and comfort I find there, it is really no less joyful, I think, than having my grandson climb up on my lap as I am lounging, put his little nose on my big one and ask me one of his profound questions. So odd, isn’t it, that we might despise one revelation in comparison to the other, or ignore one and specialize in the other, or fear the edge while we cling to the center or fear the center as we look beyond our edge.
I take heart in the story of Joseph, since it begins and ends with impossible grace. He never knows what is going to happen next, but he apparently knows where he is going. He’s rolling along with God, not assessing whether he is experiencing “edge” or “center” spirituality! He receives whatever comes along. He even tells his brothers. “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today” (Gen. 50:20).
If you are learning how to have a disciplined spiritual life, the point is: Don’t mistake the edge for the whole wheel. Don’t despise the hub as if it were mediocre or mundane. It is all one life energized by God’s Spirit. From wherever you start today, perhaps clinging to the center too much or aspiring to an impossible edge too much, we all have the assurance that God keeps developing us, just like Joseph developed, by the seemingly unpredictable or even troubling experiences we face. It is all a wonder and God intends it for good.
In my 40+ years of counseling and pastoring I’ve heard about many kinds of emotionally distressing situations triggered in all sorts of ways. But one of the greatest sources of pain I hear about is feeling cut off. The cutoff hurts most in a family or an intimate relationship. But it is also probably the main pain people experience and fear in the church – which is like a family and often full of intimacy or the desire for it. Regardless of the reasons, people who are cut off when people leave them or the church (and sometimes when they stay) feel much the same: shame, confusion, stress, and sometimes even depression and a feeling of being disempowered. [Remember Gotye?] They particularly feel these things when no explanation for the cutoff is provided. People may cut each other off for months, years, and sometimes even a lifetime with little or no explanation.
I am experiencing variations on this theme right now. A couple of very significant people in my life have cut me off. So I have felt some of the feelings just mentioned!
by Kseniia Perminova
University of Chicago neuroscientist John Cacioppo told Psychology Today, “The pain of losing a meaningful relationship [that one still wants or needs] can be especially searing in the absence of direct social contact. With no definitive closure, we’re left wondering what the heck happened, which can lead to the kind of endless rumination that often leads to depression.”
In The Journey from Abandonment to Healing, Susan Anderson writes, “When a loved one dies, the loss is absolutely final…[but] abandonment survivors may remain in denial and postpone closure, sometimes indefinitely.” Some people never accept the need to grieve and come to acceptance when their pain comes from the loss of romantic attachment or intimate friendship, especially when the loss is extended over time (as in they keep meeting up with the person who has cut them off or they are connected via other relationships).
When there are emotional loose ends — unanswered questions, mistrust, betrayal, disbelief, bewilderment — it can be very difficult to heal. What makes it worse is that our culture is somewhat hostile to people in this situation. People often judge those who don’t move on right away. Being the one struggling without answers is a difficult experience.
People with abuse and trauma in their backgrounds are especially vulnerable. The breaking of attachments can trigger anxiety, depression and evoke unhealed psychic wounds. Anderson goes on the say: “Emotional experience is more painful when it echoes an episode from the past; that’s especially true when it comes to rejection and loss. The relationship that ended today may be the fulfillment of your worst nightmares from childhood. Grieving over that lost love opens a primal wound.”
The following are some of the most frequent reasons why someone is likely to cut someone off, or to freeze them out of the fold. Before I get there, let me say a couple of things. This is not an exhaustive list. I am NOT suggesting that cutoffs are healthy or even reasonable. I can’t imagine something less like Jesus than cutting someone off. On the other hand, I am also NOT suggesting that people need to put up with abusive, demanding, overwhelming people. We’re not as able as Jesus, for the most part. When boundaries are set and someone refuses to consider them, something’s got to give. So there is another side to what I am about to list and we can talk about that some other time. This time I am honoring people who have been cut off. It can be tough on them. As I enter this confusing set of dynamics that go so dreadfully awry, keep in mind that love is as hard as it is crucial.
So why is the cutoff so common these days?
Modeling
Some people grew up in families that have a history of cutting off members when they are disappointed, angry, or experiencing other less-than-pleasant emotions toward them. Perhaps you witnessed your mother do this to her mother-in-law while you were growing up. You then learned that cutting off relatives is an option. You may follow the pattern when you feel similarly disenchanted with someone. We all learn from what we see modeled at home.
Trauma specialist Hala Khouri says, “If it’s hysterical, it’s often historical.” People who have experienced trauma often don’t differentiate between the person triggering them and the original source of trauma. When difficult emotions arise, they may feel real feelings of threat and anxiety. Their brain may shift toward fight-or-flight mode. A cutoff can be a flight response that helps keep difficult emotions at bay.
Power and Control
In all systems, there are dominant and less-than-dominant members. The dominant may lead the whole group to cut someone off simply to exert their high level of power and control (or for any of the other reasons on this list). Where do children learn the playground dynamics of bullying? At home, a bully may be exerting the same kind of power and control.
Not long ago our pastors warned covenant members about a “wolf” among us (who is still threatening people!). That was a necessary use of their power. But cutting someone off from the church is so rare it seems like it never happens among us. In Christ, people should generally need to prove they are untrustworthy. Our love does not overlook sin, but it does not demand perfection before we give it.
Exhaustion
Sometimes people simply get exhausted and depleted by a person who seems difficult to them. They may feel that they have put up with certain behaviors for too long, and they may feel hopeless about things ever changing. They may start by phasing out a person and then handily place them on the “do not interact with” list. Everyone has their own pain tolerance level and can only handle so much.
People who are addicted or mentally/chronically ill often end up over-the-tolerance level, a warning our church often notably ignores – but we can get tired too. If you are truly exhausted, maybe you shouldn’t ignore it. Thank God we live in community and someone else may not be exhausted at all.
New life stories
There are many people who know a lot about your history and your younger self. Perhaps you don’t want to be reminded of your past. How do you go about rewriting your history and changing your narrative when those people won’t let you outlive it? One way is to shut them out. Eliminate them from your life, and you can rewrite your story without anyone letting the proverbial cat out of the bag. Avoid those people, and your past is more likely to be left right where you feel it belongs — in the past.
Maybe you moved to Philadelphia to make a new story possible! When we had our “divorce dialogues” this year, a few of the divorced felt shamed because people talked about their history; but we were just trying not to participate in their cutoff narrative. We were not avoiding. Instead, we were acknowledging that a new story was being written.
Loyalty
Some of us have felt forced into situations in which we had to choose between people who were cut off from each other (like in a divorce). Or maybe you feel coerced into choosing between pastors, or even a former pastor. These are dreadful situations, but we all know someone who has been in this position. Is the situation common? Yes. Is it easy? Not at all.
In our church, where we have formed a nice, often tight community, people who cut off sometimes hover around the edges and ask for collusion, even ask for a pledge to cut off the same people they have. This kind of power play tends to hurt everyone. Sometimes relationships break; it never feels good. But we can make it worse when we try to get people to join in our sense of being cut off or join us in getting even with someone who has cut us off.
Avoiding slighting and being slighted
Sometimes a set of misunderstandings occur between people in a community, like the church. If the misunderstandings don’t get discussed, understood, and forgiven they can build up, and eventually break down relationships. It is tragic when such build-ups lead to breakdowns.
I often feel like avoiding things, but I also feel like it is an obligation to God not to do so. But for many people, “discussion” is synonymous with “confrontation,” and so avoidance is their go-to choice. When a new person wanders into a set of relationships in which people are covering up their distress with avoidance, it all feels rather inauthentic.
Why cut someone off without saying why? For one thing, explaining opens a conversation, implying you want to work things out, which you don’t. But there’s another reason, too. Many of us find it hard to say anything “negative” outright, so we swallow our hurt—until it chokes us. Ghosting means still not saying anything negative.
For those who are pondering what they did to cause them to be ghosted, it may help to know the answer may be: nothing. For instance, a woman was relieved when–-decades later— a friend who had disappeared reconnected and explained that she’d been going through a tough time and had cut everyone off. Another woman recalled her own habit, when she was younger, of cutting friends off: she’d pursue a friendship, then feel overwhelmed by the closeness she’d created — and flee. It might be you, but it might not be.
A person doing the cutoff may benefit from taking a deep breath and asking, “What am I trying to avoid here?”
Money
Financial issues are often the source of relationship difficulties. Money may not always be able to buy love, but it sure can lead to lots of bad feelings. Consider the dynamics of the church dividing up a diminishing income, or imagine the bad things that often happen when a family system is also a business (like Circle of Hope!). People sometimes flee the pressures.
In the church (and families and roommate situations) people can cut themselves off by not paying their share or get cut off because others feel like they are freeloading.
The demands of the needy
Do you want to see a church disintegrate? Watch what happens when people try to share the responsibilities involved in caring for people who can’t care for themselves – sort of like the need to bring grandma into the home of one of her kids. There are certainly family systems that come together and handle these sorts of situations beautifully, but putting a needy person in the middle of the system is also high on the list of reasons that relatives get disenchanted with one another — and sometimes cut off.
In the church, people sometimes get cut off because they are not functioning up to standards; they are too needy. Sometimes people cut off because they are overwhelmed with people who can’t contribute and they feel they don’t have enough to give what is required.
Abuse
Unfortunately, many people have been emotionally and/or physically abused in their past – even by relatives, as I already mentioned. This damage cannot always be completely repaired. In many cases, people cut off because they have painful interactions with people that are reminiscent of the abuse in their past. The repeat feels intolerable and often the system (like your cell) does not acknowledge it, so it again feels like the secret trauma they experienced before.
Lack of Elasticity
Some communities simply lack elasticity. They lack the ability to recover from difficulties and, like a rubber band, snap when stretched too far. Flexibility takes confidence that we are not cut off from God and that, no matter what trials we face, Jesus has and will overcome them with us. Even when someone cuts us off, Jesus is with us as we recover and find our way into what is next. If a group does not have the character to bend and grow, people cut off or get cut off.
Every day we wake up ready to effect reconciliation in the world. We are all about helping each other mend relationships. Sometimes there is so much history and damage that there is little desire and energy to do the mending. Yet Jesus continues to highlight the need to plant and grow love in the world. And he promises to not leave us orphans in the process – he will never cut us off; we’ll have to do that ourselves. We’ve been cut off enough times to have trouble believing that. So we will need to meditate on what we have been given. We will need to leave what we DON’T have to God and move with what we have been GIVEN.
This post started because I sensed my own resistance to the changes happening in my life. In the middle of prayer, I said right out loud, “You really don’t want to do anything today, do you?” I picked up a good book I want to finish and the first page was about the resistance a man felt to accepting a call he felt from God. I immediately put down the book and said, “I just can’t do this.”
I was becoming more aware of my innate resistance to my journey deeper with Jesus. To be honest, it seems like the deeper I go, the more resistance I face! So I got up to do some more research on the concept and experience of resistance in people who are going deeper into themselves and, more important, deeper with God – which always includes going deeper into oneself. After I wrote the first line of this paragraph, I impulsively flipped open a news aggregator website I like. I really didn’t want to concentrate on this issue! So if you are feeling similar things, I suppose this blog post might be hard to finish. You might be about ready to click the Facebook icon right now.
The resistance people feel might not be your fault
As a church, we often feel ashamed of ourselves when people leave one of our many expressions of our tight community. There are many good reasons people leave, no doubt — we do things wrong and their lives just change. But one factor we often overlook is that they leave because of their resistance. They don’t want to go deeper: with God, with others or in their own sense of self and mission. You can often see resistance brewing before they hit the road. Here are some symptoms: perfectionism, criticism, contempt, being self-critical, preoccupation with appearances, social withdrawal, need to be seen as independent and invulnerable, or an inability to accept compliments or constructive criticism.
This resistance and its symptoms is a phenomenon psychotherapists have been talking about for a century. They kept experiencing the paradoxical experience in which a client who came for relief and help would resist their own treatment. A main reason is they were ashamed to need treatment! They wanted to change and grow, but the uncomfortable journey into health was hard to bear. This probably sounds familiar to you. The resistance your therapist is noting in your session is also happening in all our health-giving, loving relationships, — we even experience it in our families. Toddlers who love french fries inexplicably won’t eat them! Did you somehow taint french fries? I doubt it. Why did that person drift out of the cell, dismissing it as inadequate or annoying? Were you really that inadequate and annoying (perhaps!) or could they be facing the need to change and they are resisting it?
Motivation is not really enough
When people are facing resistance to their life of faith (sometimes displaying those annoying symptoms I just listed), they are often condemned (usually by themselves!) for their lack of motivation. Just tweet the picture above to one of them! They could easily read it as: “Why are you so uncommitted to Jesus and his people? Why aren’t you super?” But, for most of us I think, we are rarely consciously resisting anything. It is automatic. Want to hear Freud talk about it?
“The discovery of the unconscious and the introduction of it into consciousness is performed in the face of a continuous resistance on the part of the patient. The process of bringing this unconscious material to light is associated with pain, and because of this pain the patient again and again rejects it…If you succeed in persuading [them] to accept, by virtue of a better understanding, something that up to now, in consequence of this automatic regulation by pain, [they have] rejected, you will then have accomplished something towards [their] education…Psychoanalytic treatment may in general be conceived of as such a re-education in overcoming internal resistances”
Want to hear it from the Bible?
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. — Hebrews 12:1-4
Hebrews 12 is often trucked out as a motivational jolt. “Come on, get over yourself! Get into the game! Look at all these great people who have already done it! You can endure your suffering and tirelessly move ahead. You’ve still got blood in you, don’t you? Today is the first day of the rest of your life!” The verses can can be made to sound like the Oprah channel, and it does have some overtones of good self-talk. [This Oprah moment is not the worst thing ever said, it just needs Jesus]
But it can also be read as very sympathetic to the resistance the readers are facing. I think it says, “The most dreaded thing in us is suffering and pain. Face the entanglements and sin you are discovering and move beyond them. Fix your eyes on Jesus, who so vividly faced the dreaded shame of dying on a cross! He certainly understands what it is like to face opposition, inside and out. It won’t kill you to do it, even though it feels like it, at times. Don’t let your resistance steal your rightful place by God’s side.”
Motivation or positive thinking are good to have, but they are not enough when we need to go deeper to go farther.
We need to look at our resistance from many angles
As I began to let my own resistance be noticed, I had a whole array of ways to resist noticing my resistance.
I could repress it — suppress my thought and my desire to move with the change and leave the whole subject unconscious.
I could redirect the feelings to a substitute – I’m just feeling blue because Gwen is gone, the cat died and so-and-so disappointed me.
I could have called some therapeutic friend and got them to feel sorry for me so my resistance could actually get me something even though I did not really address it.
I could get up and clean the basement or watch TV and basically get myself deeper into my resistance by repeating all the behaviors that always cause the distress I have come to think of a “just being me.”
Or I could assuage the innate guilt I feel by punishing myself for my resistance or avoiding the shame I feel with inebriates, procrastination, comfort eating or worse.
It is no wonder Paul said in Romans 7
I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! — Romans 7:21-25
We have a lot of ways to defend our injured, tender selves against feelings of discomfort. We find it very difficult to attend to perceptions and ideas which we have disciplined our mind to avoid, or to acknowledge impulses we don’t want to admit we feel. It would be great if we could hear a motivational speech, change our minds and so change all our ways. But being deep takes a lifetime. Being saved takes a moment, but transformation is a slow process of working things through with the Holy Spirit by our side and God’s people watching our backs.
One of the primary reasons that motivation, of itself, does not automatically lead to change is that we fear that the demands involved may be too costly. We may have to see our own role in the problems we are having and do something about it. In addition, we worry about how other people will react when our behavior patterns change; the move toward health can be surprisingly upsetting to those who are used to “the devil they know” (a person’s usual defensive style). Their partner’s change challenges them to change and they might be uncomfortable with that. Finally, seeing our own role in our problems does cause some negative reflection about the past and how much time we have wasted in behaving as we have.
Click pic for further thoughts on resistance
So be careful with people facing their resistance in the church
We might need to be careful with people who seem unmotivated, irritable, or wishy washy. They are undoubtedly dealing with their resistance to their own spiritual health. Surely you can’t be bad enough to deserve all the criticism or rejection such people redirect on you. Sometimes you even repent, don’t you? — and they still are not satisfied. It is probably more about their own struggle than you. Stick with them. You might even help them see what is going on by allowing them to explore it with you. But more likely, the Holy Spirit will be incrementally transforming them as long as they can stay close and not wander too far from the environments that help them.
There is something like an invisible wall that stands between aspiring Jesus-followers and the true self they desperately want to put on. When Paul talks about it, it could sound like a pep talk.
You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. — Ephesians 4:22-4
It could even sound like a scolding, “Why are you walking around in that old self?!” There is a place for that question.
But Paul’s letter is to people who are working with this new life they have and it is not that easy. When they get a glimpse of the wall they face, they can see how they have been corrupted and how deceitful their desires are. People continually bump up against this wall, get knocked back on their duff, get back up, and incomprehensibly repeat the procedure over and over. We don’t even know we’re bumping into a wall. We’re just left feeling confused, dazed, and disoriented, unable to make any sense of recurring self-defeat or self-sabotage. They know they have already been made new by Jesus, but living like it is a surprisingly difficult matter. We, like Paul, need to keep bringing it up and facing the resistance. It is crucial for our personal development. I need to admit that I have places yet to go. I am still developing “after all this time.” I think we should be careful with others too.
We are all facing the same kind of irrational fear. We prop up our resistance with a stubborn, largely unconscious determination to avoid the anxious or fearful feelings of being confronted with truth and reality. Our sense of self can be quite tiny. We may not want to feel disoriented by new self-knowledge. We might fear being overwhelmed by everything we’ve been holding back. We may have come to believe our own illusions and think we already know everything that could possibly be relevant or important. We probably think holding on to our conflicted self is normal and blame others if they don’t accept it as normal too.
The basic idea of going deeper with Jesus, even needing to be saved, asks people to acknowledge their ignorance and neediness. Resistance combines with furious non-acceptance to debunk this humiliating new idea that I don’t know enough and am not OK. We might even falsify reality in order to accommodate our defenses, as the President demonstrates almost every day.
All liberating growth takes time. So don’t be surprised if our deep-directed community frustrates people who aren’t willing to endure the long journey. The “old self” pops up here and there in all of us. Eventually, our perverse defense system will probably collapse. But the process takes time. We have to keep “fixing our eye on Jesus” and listen, really listen, to others when they tell us to “consider him” so that we “do not grow weary and lose heart.” Our transformation is not taking “too much time.” We are eternal, after all. Time is just living, not some kind of burden or obstacle. Once a person is pointed in the right direction, time is on her side.
Right now, I still feel the seeds of my resistance ready to direct my day. Writing a blog post did not automatically cure me. But it did redirect me. A small decision to fix my eyes on Jesus and dare to look at myself made a difference. It wasn’t that easy for me, even though I am kind of an “old salt” when it comes to spiritual discipline. It is not that easy for you or for all those people bumping up against stuff in your relationship with them or in the church, or even with Jesus. Let’s be understanding and gentle with each other. The suffering often feels intolerable.
I am listening to a troubled friend. They pause for a breath, and sometimes I can’t help it. I blurt things out. These days, it seems like I am often blurting:
“You are responsible for so much!”
I feel so sorry for them – so much to control when they feel so out of control, so many wrongs to right when they feel so wrong (and wronged!), so many needs to fill when they are surrounded by people who are not giving them enough!
Being over responsible may be why some of us do so little for Jesus.
This is how some religious people work. Dutiful Christians can see what needs to be done; they are smart enough to see what would be required of them to get it done, and they resist getting started — they just can’t see how they could do all that!
What’s more, they resent being asked to do all that. Someone is always putting one more thing on their heavy load.
Even more, they have a secret they rarely reveal: “I am not able to do what I think I ought to do and I don’t want you to think poorly of me when you find out. So I am going to keep looking like I am just fine, and tell you that every time you ask, even though we both know I am lying.”
A few spouses and parents reading this might think I do not know what I am talking about, since they are taking care of an irresponsible mate and their children seem to be anything but “responsible.” They won’t even turn out a light or cook an egg for themselves! But they might be wrong about what is going on. Just because a husband withdraws when he is upset, does not mean he does not care deeply for the relationship. He might feel scared to mess it up by presenting his unholy feelings. Likewise, if your child can’t succeed at cooking the perfect egg, they might rather starve. Likewise, if you are responsible for improving all the weaknesses of your mate and children, they are likely to be just like you, searching around for weaknesses in others and themselves and demanding something of others and themselves which is beyond their present capabilities. And on we go.
It is understandable how the world, in general, might end up on an over-responsible treadmill. After all, most people believe they are alone. And many philosophies and a couple of religions, specialize in making the “reality” of being alone palatable. If one is the center of reality, they feel an overwhelming responsibility for themselves. They are responsible for the well-being of the planet! The good or bad experience of each fleeting, precious day is squarely on their shoulders. The TV commercials last night included one about a young man advertising himself on a dating site – I wanted to cry. Even on a commercial he looked awkward and hopelessly hopeful his grand gesture would result in love. He was being sold as one of the brave ones who take love into their own hands and get it.
I think many of us Jesus followers have a problem. We aren’t righteously responsible.
We are prone to carrying God’s responsibility in the name of God instead of accepting our actual responsibility. Our unwarranted responsibility is killing us. We are often miserable failures who make everyone else feel like they have to be more than they are to be acceptable. We want to do great things, but since it mainly depends on us to do them, alone for the most part, we don’t even get started.
Why is it so hard to build a church? Most of the people in it love Jesus. Could it be because many of them are preserving their limited resources, since they know they will be responsible to make their small lives work out perfectly and they instinctively know the call of God in the church would overwhelm their limited resources? They can’t be responsible for the church; they are responsible for everything!
I have several friends I often need to stop in the middle of a paragraph to say, “I don’t need you to react to my feelings before I have them. Please stop taking care of me by not telling me the truth about what you think and feel. If I can’t handle what you are saying, God will help me.” I think they think it is kind to be responsible for my feelings. In some sense I guess that’s true, but I already have a Savior. They could be kind without being messianic.
That’s what I am getting at. We can only be responsible for anything because God is responsible for everything. God decided to need us; we are not responsible for making ourselves useful. We are accepted as who we are and as who we will become at the same time.
I think I can say it is a sin to be an aspiration who is responsible to become someone worthy rather than be a beloved child who is deemed worthy right now. Children grow naturally in the light of love. Grandiose aspirations take what is good and wreck it out of their overwrought sense that they need to make something better out of it and so prove their value as a person worthy of their lives.
Jesus followers have plenty of responsibility, of course. We are entrusted with the Holy Spirit, after all! But, like Paul so clearly teaches, we carry our glory in “clay jars.” Our main responsibility is to let our light shine and reveal our splendid weakness as we fully trust Jesus to bring things to right. Isn’t is irresponsible not to do that?
I was in a meeting with some very thoughtful, caring people last week. We were talking about thorny questions with unclear answers. Others in the group cited long experience, cutting edge interactions and the latest scientific data. I referenced, you guessed it, Netflix. Much of what we were talking about had to do with the future, including our fear of it. So I mentioned Altered Carbon.
I told them, “I do not recommend this series because then you will blame me when you watch it.” But I found it pretty riveting — full of scientific, religious, revolutionary and artful themes. Plus, it is beautiful. It is all about a future we are beginning to experience when “consciousness” is downloaded on “cortical stacks” and inserted in various “sleeves” (bodies). I can’t begin to tell you where they go with this, but I warn you, it will be one more way to instill dread when you see it.
The future is all about dread, right? Most movies assume the future will eventually be the ultimate war, which is dreadful (Avengers Infinity War), or it will be a post war disaster, which is also dreadful (Blade Runner 2049).
Christians are notorious for taking the Bible and going off on a future which will be dreadful for everyone but them. We Jesus-followers actually have a future, so it is fascinating to think about it — and we have done that since the first disciples. But we can be as fearful and hysterical as people who have no hope. Back in the 70’s, Evangelicals started scaring the pants off people by filming the rapture. Nowadays, we just need to tune into CNN to have our pants scared off. Surely this era is the “tribulation.”
The Hidden Face of God — Jed Malitz
Among the thousands of shrill voices screaming for our attention, there is one voice we need to hear—the voice of Jesus. But what does He have to say about the future?
Know about the future
Jesus rebuked people for not knowing about the future. They did not recognize that important prophesies were being fulfilled all around them. He once scolded a crowd: “Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky, but why don’t you know how to interpret this time?” (Luke 12:56). He expected them to be able to open their eyes, look around and put two and two together — but they hadn’t even learned their numbers.
But don’t worry about it
The future did not trouble Jesus. He was not preoccupied with what might happen. At the end John 16 He tells his disciples, “I have told you these things so that in Me you may have peace. You will have suffering in this world. Be courageous! I have conquered the world” (John 16:33).
Jesus revealed the future so His disciples would rest in Him, not walk around under the shadow of dread. Jesus is the anti-dread. The resurrection is how the end works out. We rest in that hope. Jesus is frank with his disciples about His imminent death, the persecution to come, and the sorrow, pain, and hardship ahead. But after predicting all these frightful events, He tells them to place their trust wholly in Him. For Jesus-followers, the story of “the end” is not frightening, it is another resurrection story about the whole creation rising to new life.
Get ready for the future
Jesus frequently spoke about future events. In Matthew 24, He laid out a vision of events to come and concluded by saying to His disciples: “Take note: I have told you in advance.” He wanted them to know facts ahead of time to help them (and us) face the coming days.
I think we can lose the wild-eyed speculations many teachers find irresistible and focus on Spirit-led discernment. That’s what Hebrews 10:24-25 means: “Let us be concerned about one another in order to promote love and good works, not staying away from our worship meetings, as some habitually do, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day drawing near” (Heb. 10:24-25). We “see the day drawing near” because we are looking for it. We can ask the Holy Spirit to help us understand our day and the hour in which we live. We don’t shy away from reading the signs of the times simply because thoughts about the future make us uncomfortable.
But don’t forget to live in the present
Every time Jesus talked about the future, He connected it to what people were doing in the present. Prophecy is given for now, not for then, to help us get from here to there. In John 14 Jesus is quoted telling his disciples right before he dies: “Your heart must not be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if not, I would have told you. I am going away to prepare a place for you. If I go away and prepare a place for you, I will come back and receive you to Myself, so that where I am you may be also.” We have God’s promise. We can be at peace.
We have God’s promise so we can plan big things for next week. We are eternal, so we can dare eternal things. Right now our whole country is going through a sea change. Donald Trump s so dreadful people don’t even want to know what he is doing. It is hard to face the future. Sci-fi movies that seemed absurd might prove reasonable. The prospect makes some of us avoid everything, including our own future!
Our church (and probably yours) is going through what everyone else is, plus we have a unique transition all our own going on. Some days we wake up and wonder, what is going to happen? Old people are gone. New people are here. Plans that were small last year now have a big presence (like those buildings we keep finding, ending mass incarceration and gun proliferation, and discovering new ways to connect with God as who we are now). Challenges we did not even imagine now preoccupy us (like war with Iran and the gentrification next door). The future keeps coming and we don’t feel like we are keeping up.
Jesus will help us interpret the times. We don’t need to worry. We need to stay ready. But we also need to stay rested – not because we ghosted on the challenges, but because we gave up on controlling the dread and trusted the Anti-dread. When my pastor calls me into the mapping process in the next couple of weeks, I won’t be reading the signs of the times with scorn and dread, I will see them pointing toward a good end, and I will point myself to do my part in getting us all from here to there.
I have been thinking about how wonderful it is that Circle of Hope has a few hundred people at the core who have been committed for a long time. Many of them will be at the Love Feast again recommitting their hearts to the long haul. Whatever success we have in meeting our goals is based, to a large degree, on their capacity to stick with it! In gratitude for them, I offer you a paraphrase of some parts of a good book on the subject of sticking with it: Eugene Peterson’s A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.
Instant or sustainable?
One aspect of the world I have been able to identify as harmful to Christians is the assumption that anything worthwhile can be acquired instantly. We assume that if something can be done at all, it can be done quickly and efficiently. Our attention spans have been conditioned by same-day delivery, instant messages and last-minute texts. Our sense of reality has been flattened by fifteen-second commercials and thirty-page abridgments.
It is not difficult in such a world to get a person interested in Jesus; it is terrifically difficult to sustain their interest, much more difficult to build the church, live as a missional community and gain the prize of maturity in Christ! It is hard to achieve our goal of nurturing fifty-year-old radical Christians.
Immediacy or patience?
Millions of people in our culture still make decisions to follow Jesus, but there is a huge attrition rate. Many claim to have been born again, but the evidence for mature Christian discipleship is slim. In our kind of culture, anything, even news about God, can be sold if it is packaged freshly [2018 retailer news]; but when something loses its novelty, it goes on the garbage heap [2015 novelty foods]. There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness.
Orlando’s Holyland Experience — click for website (it’s a real place)
Religion in our time has been captured by the tourist mindset. Religion is understood as a visit to an attractive site — a visit made when we have adequate leisure. For some, religion is a weekly jaunt to church, for others, occasional visits to special events. Some people, with a bent for religious entertainment and sacred diversion, plan their lives around special events like retreats, rallies and conferences [Joyce Meyer is still my favorite (Wiki page is not so nice to her)]. We go to see a new personality, to hear a new truth, to get a new experience and so somehow expand our otherwise humdrum lives [KLOVE fan awards]. The religious life is defined as the latest and the newest: Zen or anything Eastern [9% of U.S. practices yoga], faith healing, Kabbalah, human potential, parapsychology, prosperity, choreography in the chancel, Armageddon. We’ll try anything–until something else comes along.
The aspect of the world that makes the work of leading Christians in the way of faith most difficult is what Gore Vidal has analyzed as “today’s passion for the immediate and the casual.”1 Everyone is in a hurry. They want shortcuts. They want church leaders to help them fill out the form that will get them instant credit (in eternity). They are impatient for results. They have adopted the lifestyle of a tourist and only want the high points. But the church is not a tour bus.
Friedrich Nietzsche, who saw this area of spiritual truth at least with great clarity, wrote, “The essential thing ‘in heaven and earth’ is . . . that there should be long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.”2 It is this “long obedience in the same direction” which the mood of the world does so much to discourage.
For recognizing and resisting the stream of the world’s ways there are two biblical designations for people of faith that are extremely useful: disciple and pilgrim.
Disciples are people who spend their lives apprenticed to their master, Jesus Christ. We are in a growing-learning relationship, always. A disciple is a learner, but not in the academic setting of a schoolroom, rather at the work site of a craftsman. We do not acquire information about God but skills in faith.
Pilgrims are people who spend their lives going someplace, going to God, and whose path for getting there is the way, Jesus Christ. We realize that “this world is not my home” and set out for “the Father’s house.” Abraham, who “went out,” is our archetype. Jesus, answering Thomas’s question “Master, we have no idea where you’re going. How do you expect us to know the road?” gives us directions: “I am the Way, also the Truth, also the Life. No one gets to the Father apart from me” (John 14:5-6). The letter to the Hebrews defines our program: “Do you see what this means–all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we’d better get on with it. Strip down, start running–and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in” (Hebrews 12:1-2).
Levelled or upward?
We are disciples on pilgrimage. The pilgrim songs from Pslams 120-134 are helpful encouragements along our way. These fifteen psalms were likely sung, possibly in sequence, by Hebrew pilgrims as they went up to Jerusalem to the great worship festivals. Topographically Jerusalem was the highest city in Palestine, and so all who traveled there spent much of their time ascending. But the ascent was not only literal, it was also a metaphor: the trip to Jerusalem acted out a life lived upward toward God, an existence that advanced from one level to another in developing maturity–what Paul described as “the goal, where God is beckoning us onward–to Jesus” (Philippians 3:14).
This picture of the Hebrews singing these fifteen psalms as they left their routines of discipleship and made their way from towns and villages, farms and cities, as pilgrims up to Jerusalem has become embedded in the Christian devotional imagination. It is our best background for understanding life as a faith-journey.
Meanwhile the world whispers, “Why bother? There is plenty to enjoy without involving yourself in all that. The past is a graveyard–ignore it; the future is a holocaust–avoid it. There is no payoff for discipleship, there is no destination for pilgrimage. Get God the quick way; buy instant charisma.” But other voices speak–if not more attractively, at least more truly. Thomas Szasz, in his therapy and writing, has attempted to revive respect for what he calls the “simplest and most ancient of human truths: namely, that life is an arduous and tragic struggle; that what we call ‘sanity,’ what we mean by ‘not being schizophrenic,’ has a great deal to do with competence, earned by struggling for excellence; with compassion, hard won by confronting conflict; and with modesty and patience, acquired through silence and suffering.”3 His testimony validates the decision of disciples who commit themselves to make the climb as pilgrims and look for their true selves on the journey home.
1 Gore Vidal, Matters of Fact and Fiction (New York: Random House, 1977), p. 86. 2 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Helen Zimmern (London: 1907), sec. 188. 3 Thomas Szasz, Schizophrenia, the Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry (Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, 1978), p. 72.
I was in Barnes and Noble with five 7-11 year olds, enough said. While we were buying books I spotted a surprising title: 
