On the Road to Emmaus

The person who is wise, therefore, will see their life as more like a reservoir than a canal. The canal simultaneously pours out what it receives; the reservoir retains the water till it is filled, then discharges the overflow without loss to itself. He knows that a curse is on the person who allows their own property to degenerate. And if you think my opinion worthless, then listen to one who is wiser than I: “The fool,” said Solomon, “comes out with all his feelings at once, but the wise man subdues and restrains them.” Today there are many in the Church who act like canals, the reservoirs are far too rare. So urgent is the charity of those through whom the streams of heavenly doctrine flow to us, that they want to pour it forth before they have been filled; they are more ready to speak than to listen, impatient to teach what they have not grasped, and full of presumption to govern others while they know not how to govern themselves.

I am convinced that no degree of the charity that leads to salvation may be preferred to that suggested by the Wise Man: “Have pity on your own soul, pleasing God.” If I have but a little oil, sufficient for my own anointing, do you suppose I should give it to you and be left with nothing? I am keeping it for myself, utterly unwilling to proffer it to anyone except at the Prophet’s bidding. And should any of you, thinking me to be better than I seem or than my words suggest, insist on asking for it, here is my answer to him: “There may not be enough for us and for you; you had better go to those who sell it and buy some for yourselves.” But charity, you reply, does not seek what is its own. And do you know why? It does not seek what is its own precisely because it has it. Who seeks for what he possesses? Charity never lacks what is her own, all that she needs for her own security. Not alone does she have it, she abounds with it. She wants this abundance for herself that she may share it with all; and she reserves enough for herself so that she disappoints nobody. For charity is perfect only when full.

But you, my brother, your salvation is not yet assured; your charity as yet is either non-existent or so meager and reed-like that it bends with every breeze, puts its trust in every spirit, and is carried along by every wind of doctrine; or it is so great that you transcend the limits of the commandment by loving your neighbor more than yourself, or yet again so unsound that, contrary to the commandment, it bows to flattery, flinches under fear, is upset by sadness, shriveled by avarice, entangled by ambition, disquieted by suspicions, tormented by insults, exhausted by anxieties, puffed up by honors, consumed by envy. If you discover this chaos in your own interior, what madness drives you to insinuate yourself into other people’s business? But listen to what a prudent and vigilant charity advises: “This does not mean that to give relief to others you ought to make things difficult for yourselves: it is a question of balancing.” “Do not be over-virtuous.” It is enough that you love your neighbor as yourself; this is the balancing to which the Apostle refers. David says: “My soul will feast most richly, on my lips a song of joy and, in my mouth, praise.” To preclude a mere empty yawning, he wishes that infusion should precede the effusion, an infusion to the fullest capacity that gushes out. In this he shows prudence, his relieving of others does not embarrass himself; and he has a right intention, since he imitates him of whose fullness we have all received. You too must learn to await this fullness before pouring out your gifts, do not try to be more generous than God. The reservoir resembles the fountain that runs to form a stream or spreads to form a pool only when its own waters are brimming over. The reservoir is not ashamed to be no more lavish than the spring that fills it. And so, he who is the primal Fountain of life, full in himself and filled with himself, gushed forth and danced into the secret places of the heavens about him, to fill them all with his favors. And having endowed these remotest heights and recesses, he burst upon our earth, saving men and beasts through his munificence, multiplying his mercies everywhere. When he had first filled up the secret places, his teeming mercies billowed over; they poured upon the earth and drenched it, to multiply its riches. You must imitate this process. First be filled, and then control the outpouring. The charity that is benign and prudent does not flow outwards until it abounds within. “My son,” said Solomon, “do not let yourself drift away.” And the Apostle says: “We ought then to turn our minds more attentively than before to what we have been taught, so that we do not drift away.” See what is involved here. Are you holier than Paul, wiser than Solomon? Besides, I cannot see myself being enriched by your wasting of your powers. For if you are mean to yourself, to whom will you be good? Help me out of your abundance if you have it; if not, then spare yourself the trouble.

from Bernard of Clairvaux’s “Sermons on the Song of Songs”

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“Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.” (Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline)

I read these lines when I was a freshman in college. They set a course for my life, because as I read them, I determined that I was going to be a deep person. No matter what it took, I was going to be one of them. Its seems like almost everywhere I go, people (especially young adults) are disillusioned by the degree of shallowness in the Church. It can easily become a topic for griping and complaining. Though I can’t say I haven’t ever participated in such ill speech, I realized a long time ago, that unless I was going to proactively be part of the solution, I was merely perpetuating the problem. Many are content with complaining because it is exceedingly easier than radically reorienting your life in the pursuit of a different end.

Leo Tolstoy once said, “Everybody thinks of changing humanity and nobody thinks of changing themselves.” In an age where being extremely shallow and narcissistic has become the norm—where our concepts of reality come from the hyper-idealized world of movies, where our heroes are celebrities who occupy a fantasy world enabled by exorbitant wealth—the only way change will happen is as we personally wrench ourselves out of the spell cast by modern society and begin to dwell deep.

The second principle in this series discussing Principles and Practices for the Spiritual Life is as follows:

Becoming a deep person is the most fruitful long-term approach to loving God and neighbor.

with its negative formulation as follows:

Remaining content with being shallow is not loving or helpful to anyone.

In John 15, Jesus says, “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit.” To be connected to the vine, means to draw life-giving nutrients from the source, such that, over an extended period of time, there is a slow and gradual process of growth. It is only this slow and gradual process of growth that produces fruit, and as Jesus says, much fruit. This is what I mean by “becoming a deep person” – unplugging from the hectic mayhem of our narcissistic culture and engaging in a process of growth, whereby, over time, your entire being is both opened to and ultimately flooded with the life-giving presence of Jesus. We can often tell the difference between people who answer problems with cliches, and those who have real, helpful answers; people who are merely repeating the words of another, and those who can speak from the heart; people who wax eloquently about God, and those who seem to have been with God; people who have plastic smiles, and those who can empathize with your pain; people who interact with life in a detached and low-risk manner, and those who have a passion for life, engaging in the full range of its joys and sorrows; people who can network, and those who love affectionately and deeply; people who relate to others on the basis of what they can get, and those who give freely from the heart, laying down their lives for others in love. It is to the latter that we are invited as we open ourselves to God, allowing him to enter deeper into our lives, and in such, we become deep people.

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In this series I am attempting to describe central principles for the spiritual life as well as practices that directly and strategically implement them.  Thus far we have been discussing the principle:

A life poured out in love is the starting point of all true Christianity, the source and summit of all true humanity.

with its negative formulation:

A life lived for one’s self or within which self-giving remains ancillary is the sure path to a life of de-humanizing futility. God does not recognize this as Christianity regardless of a superabundance of Christian jargon, activities, ideas, etc.

Now I would like to give three practices to begin implementing this principle. I say “begin implementing”, because there is no way to turn on the “love switch,” so to speak, and become mature in love instantaneously. We cannot expect to attain the heights of perfection any time soon. But we should set our course in that direction (more on this later).

1) Resolution

I encourage you to make the resolution, “I resolve to spend every waking minute for the sake of love.” Make it your (verbally) expressed ambition to be a full and unreserved offering of love to God and the world. I know it sounds grandiose, but how do the following resolutions sound: “I resolve to…half-heartedly love,” or “…love with three quarters of myself,” or “…love when it suits me,” or “…love until it gets challenging.” Of course no one makes resolutions like these, but devoid of an all encompassing determination, are these latter resolutions not reflective of the way we thus live? I imagine the “every waking minute” part is a little unnerving as well. I think it functions simply to make concrete that which has great potential to float off into the netherworld of ethereal ideology. If I am loving with my whole self am I then not loving with all of my time? Or alternately stated: is it possible to love with my whole self if it does not include all of my time?

This resolution, however, cannot be made once and then laid to rest. It must be re-affirmed regularly and held out as the plumb-line by which we judge and evaluate past and potential decisions.

2) Schedule

If loving with my whole self means loving with all my time, then it matters how I spend my time. If you are at all like me, if I don’t plan how I will use my time it just seems to get away from me. Of course, that can happen even when I do schedule my time but it happens a lot less. I like to have, and attempt to follow, a weekly schedule where I plan all of my time usage in blocks. This allows me to strategically implement my values (principally, that being love) into my life and ensure that I am prioritizing those things which are most important. To have a “value” or “vision” that does not practically work its way into a scheduled pattern of life is likely little more than a pipe dream. To wax eloquently about values is meaningless drivel if they never get seriously implemented. A primary way to do this is by scheduling.

Different people like to schedule in different ways. Some prefer 15 minute increments. Others prefer to work generally in larger blocks of 30, 60 or 120 minutes. Some like to schedule using a day-planner that they stick in their bag. Others use their computer, phone or other electronic devices. However you make it work, take time to sit down and think carefully about how you are using the major segments of your day and time. Ask yourself to what end or for what reason each segment is being used. Are they for love or some other reason? Allow some things to fall under the criticism of the criterion of love and be reduced and/or eliminated. Don’t get too bogged down in soul searching. Just ask yourself if you are using a given segment of time to pour yourself out in self-giving love, or if you are using it to consume more money, power and people for your own selfish advantage. If you can’t firmly and quickly answer the former, then you have a pretty good indication that the answer (which you might not want to admit) is the latter.

I will add here briefly that to make your life a whole and unreserved offering of love does not mean non-stop constant hectic behavior. It also does not mean doing ministry all of the time. The next principle we discuss will address this issue directly.

3) Reach Out

This final practice is an easy way to tell if your approach to relationships is consumer-based or love-based. I have a pretty specific definition for what I mean by “reaching out:” Freely associating with people of a lower social rank. That might initially sound strange, but it strikes me that strong distinctions of social status exist not only in “those countries” over the ocean, but right here in America. Certain people have higher social ranks and associating with them, in a manner of speaking, causes us to accrue social rank. We can “leech” some of their social equity, so to speak. The same scenario plays out even in the Church. People will freely associate with others who entertain them, affirm them, open doors of opportunity for them, grant them a higher social rank, enhance their standing in the dating world, etc. But I find it much less common for people (and by this I mean Christians in the Church) to reach out by freely associating with people of a lower social rank.

By “freely” I mean its not their assigned role or function. It would be normal for “greeters” or “ushers” to talk to people they don’t stand to benefit from. They have to. It’s their job. By “associate” I don’t mean very much at all – simply to establish friendly connections. Think through your life and try to remember when people of higher rank have freely affiliated with you. When I was in middle school youth group, I’m not sure if I can think of a single high school person ever engaging me in a conversation. Growing up in church I can remember very few adults who would initiate a dialogue or intentionally speak into my life. When I was a freshman at a Christian college, I can recall hardly any juniors or seniors (or faculty!) taking a noted interest in my life. The few people who did, as I look back, had a tremendous impact on my life. Perhaps this is why I am so passionate about deconstructing the social hierarchies that persist in the shared life of the people of God.

I plan to come back to develop this idea further in a later post because it is not simply a nice “outreach strategy” or “feel-good approach,” but was central to Jesus’ ministry (eating with social outcasts) and Paul’s understanding of the Gospel (cf. 1 Cor 1:26ff; Gal 3:27ff). Though this may seem obvious to some, I will leave you with four real simple and practical ways you can reach out to people that will be meaningful to them:

1) Actively greet them – i.e., go a little out of your way to say hello

2) Engage them in conversation

3) Show interest in their life by asking them questions about their life and actively listening

4) Encourage them in the Lord and affirm them in their identity in God.

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I know its easy to skip genealogies when reading to Bible. Loads of detail with little yield. Thought this might not be immediately apparent, the genealogies in the Gospels are rich with theological significance. Names such as Judah, Ruth, David, Uzziah, Hezekiah and Josiah that occur in the genealogy would surely have evoked many stories in the minds of readers and hearers in the first century, but none so much as the two names which head off the genealogy: Abraham and David. Altogether, Jesus is placed in the center of, so to speak; or perhaps more properly, at the end, of Israel’s history of covenant and blessing, deliverance and freedom, promise and expectation. Jesus is thus the heir of this lineage, the one who continues the story, sums it all up in himself and becomes the locus in which it reaches consummation. [Craig S. Keener, Matthew, 73-77].

However, under the surface, I suspect there is even more going on than identifying Jesus with Israel’s long history of patriarchs and kings. Perhaps Matthew is reaching back even further. The opening words of the Gospel, if I write out how the Greek letters sound for one of the words instead of translating it, are “The book of Genesis of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” (Βίβλος γενέσεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ). In verse 18 he says again, “The genesis (γένεσις) of Jesus the Messiah…” It is pretty easy to pick up on John’s opening allusion to Genesis in the first words of his gospel, “In the beginning was the word…” Likewise, Luke’s genealogy goes all the way back to “Adam, the son of God.” Is it possible that Matthew intends for his hearers to perceive that he, along with John (and possibly Luke), is writing a “new book of Genesis” so to speak? Is he writing a story about God’s purpose to right the wrongs in the creation and be faithful to the promises he made to the patriarchs? Is the occurrence of this word yet another reminder that we are to interpret the life of Jesus within the larger drama of Israel and God’s plan to restore the blessing of Genesis 1 to planet earth? Did he understand the first coming of Jesus as the inauguration of the New Creation of all things? Of course, we could never prove such in this particular instance, but it is at least my strong suspicion…

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I am not from Texas. I am not from anywhere remotely in the South. I am a Yankee to the core. Nevertheless, I believe one of the primary deficiencies of the formal English language is the lack of a word like “ya’ll.”

The Greek language (like many languages) has (at least) two forms of the word “you,” a singular form and a plural form (akin to ya’ll). However, you would never know this reading an English Bible. The following verses (plus scores others) all use a plural form of “you”, but from the standard English translation you would never have any idea:

Matt. 5:13 - You (ya’ll) are the salt of the earth…You (ya’ll) are  the light of the world.

Matt. 7:2 – “For in the way you (ya’ll) judge, you (ya’ll) will be judged; and by your (ya’ll’s) standard of measure, it will be measured to you.

Rom. 12:2 – do not  be conformed to  this  world, but be transformed by the  renewing of your mind, so that you (ya’ll) may  prove what the will of God is, that which is good and  acceptable and perfect.

1Cor. 1:4    I thank  my God always concerning you (ya’ll) for the grace of God which was given you (ya’ll) in Christ Jesus…even as  the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed  in you (ya’ll), so that you (ya’ll) are not lacking in any gift…

1Cor. 3:16    Do you (ya’ll) not know that  you are a (singular) temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?

This “plural you” has significant implications for how we interpret verses on almost every page of the Bible. For example, as in Romans 12, is Paul’s goal that each individual would be able to personally prove what is the will of God for their individual life? Or is this discernment process something that “ya’ll” do together in community? Are you individually the salt of the earth or the light of the world, or are the people of God collectively the salt and light?

Luke 17:21 is an oft quoted verse in which the KJV, NKJV and the NIV read, “the kingdom of God is within you.” This is frequently interpreted as the Amplified Bible has in its gloss “the Kingdom of God is within you [in your hearts]…” Is the Kingdom of God in our hearts? This was a strongly promoted idea in the nineteenth century as classical theological liberalism approached its height. It is precisely what Adolf von Harnack says in What is Christianity?:

“The kingdom of God comes by coming to the individual, by entering into his soul and laying hold of it. True, the kingdom of God is the rule of God; but it is the rule of the holy God in the hearts of individuals…From this point of view everything that is dramatic in the external and historical sense has vanished; and gone, too, are all the external hopes for the future.” [Adolf von Harnack, What is Christianity? Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1956, 56]

Ironically, when evangelical Christians talk about the Kingdom of God being “in their hearts,” they are in essence spouting off, not Christian orthodoxy, not something a first-century Jewish man credibly could have said, but word-for-word theological liberalism, the same theological liberalism which is ready to dispense with the deity of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus, the second coming of Jesus, the new creation of all things, etc. In Harnack’s mind, the notion of the Kingdom being “internal” was very much related to the way he jettisoned “all the external hopes for the future,” i.e., the New Creation of Heaven and Earth.

Because the “you” is plural, Jesus’ saying would be better translated (as the NRSV, TNIV and NASB do), “the Kingdom of God is in your midst.” The Kingdom is not a “spiritual” principle, but the demonstrable intervention of God in time and space to restore and renew life on earth. Thus the purpose of the saying is not to describe an “internal” reality of the Kingdom, but rather, the demonstration and experience of the Kingdom of God in the shared life and experience of God’s people in the public world.

A related verse is Colossians 1:27, which is often translated, “Christ in you, the  hope of glory.” I’m sure it won’t surprise you to hear that the “you” in this verse is also plural, although you would never know it from your English Bible. Paul is not saying that “Christ-living-inside-of-you” is the hope of glory. While of course he would not deny the reality of Christ living inside of us, this is not the point of the verse. Rather, it is Christ in the midst of the Church, the experience of the Messiah in forming a redeemed and redemptive community of self-giving love, forgiveness, reconciliation, healing, restoration and renewal, that is the hope of glory, namely, the sign in the present that gives us expectation for the fresh work of grace God will accomplish when he makes all things new at the end. The presence of Christ in the community of the redeemed is even now the present experience and advance pledge of the restoration of all things which fills our hearts with confidence and eager expectation of its certain consummation.

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There are two general postures toward life: open or closed. The former is characterized by the risk, passion, wonder and joy of giving one’s self in a whole and undivided way. We reach beyond the encroachment of our self-contained shell by engaging with the people and experiences of life. In these experiences, we necessarily give up control and allow our lives to be affected and changed by what befalls us. In this way, we entrust what is most precious, indeed our very selves, to others. This openness leaves us indescribably vulnerable. Such is why alongside the experience of life’s highest joys, the open heart bears life’s most poignant sorrows.

The closed posture programmatically restricts the experiences of life. By refusing the loss of control entailed in authentic engagement with life, by objectifying reality in order to maintain a sense of control, by denying the opportunity for the people and experiences of life to really change one’s self, the self remains as desired – unchanged, untouched, unmoved. In the avoidance of true self-giving, the sorrows as well as the joys of life are quenched. Vulnerability being absent, passion also lies dormant. Under the ruse of passion, risks are well calculated and attempted primarily where there is really nothing to lose – carefully concealing the underlying apathy.

Love is how we open to life. The passion for life and for living lies in the giving of ourselves in bold and risky ways, in laying down our lives for one another. When we love, we open ourselves to be shaped and changed by others because we, in a sense, invest our existence in others. We offer ourselves as a gift — a gift that can never be returned — and placing it in the hands of another, give them power of determination over us for good or ill.

Jesus summarizes the entirety of God’s guidance for life (i.e., the “torah” or “law”) as the call to love with the entirety of our being. He said he came to give us life and life to the full (John 10:10). His command can be summed up as “love one another, just as I have loved you” (John 15:12), which for him means to “offer the core of our very being to those we love” (John 15:13). This full and unreserved self-giving is ironically the means by which we remain in the love of Jesus and experience the fullness of his joy (John 15:11).

The evasion of such counsel necessarily entails that our lives will be characterized by a marked emotional numbness, or else an artifice of passion contrived to veil our apathy and fears. Yet the call to love is the opportunity to abandon our apathy and begin to experience the full, rich and vibrant life of passion we were created for. Jurgen Moltmann describes it well when he says, “Apparently human beings cannot find themselves in themselves, or hold fast to what they are in themselves, without self-division or self-dissolution. It sounds paradoxical, but it is none the less true to say that it is only the person who goes out of himself who comes to himself. It is only in other people that we find the way to ourselves. No one can ever say ‘I am who I am,’ for no one is God. We say ‘I am because you are; you are because I am.’ (Jurgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life, 24-25)

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On Sunday morning you worship at church, on Tuesday attend a Buddhist meditation session, on Thursday, a Muslim recitation of the Qu’ran and Friday a Jewish Sabbath Eve service. Of course to modern ears this sounds like stretching the bounds of sanity. In the ancient world, the phenomenon of combining religions, sometimes fusing them, at other times observing them side-by-side, was quite common. In this practice, known as syncretism, when one encountered a new religion, deity or spirituality, its observance could be added on to one’s life while leaving almost everything else untouched. For example, supposing one was a frequenter of Zeus worship, adding the imperial religion of Caesar worship, or perhaps of the goddess Roma was quite simple and did not threaten or even remotely affect the prior held affiliations. There was nothing incompatible between venerating Zeus and upholding the imperial religion.

While this sounds somewhat foreign, is it really all that odd? If there is any imperial religion in our day, you won’t find it explicitly advertised in any church or other faith group. Yet you will find people bowing to consumerism in nearly every segment of society. Consumerism often refers specifically to an obsession with the acquisition and accumulation of consumer goods, in short, having lots of stuff. I would like to use the term in a more expansive manner – to our obsession with using everything for our own consumption, even exploitation – money, power, time, resources, relationships, etc. Everything is valuable based on its use for ourselves, namely how I can use it and use it up.  Relationships are valuable if one can use them for entertainment, or opportunities, or sex. Money is used primarily to advance one’s own comfort, honor or stimulation. Power is used (abused) to secure one’s own self-worth and expand one’s narcissistic self-aggrandizement. This is what I mean by consumerism – a general orientation of life which seeks to use (consume) everything for one’s own benefit.

Love is a completely different way of life. It seeks its own delight, not in the consumptive use of others, but in the delight and well-being of others. Relationships are valuable because the other person has an inherent worth given by God, which is to honored, affirmed and celebrated. Money is useful to improve the quality of life for those who are downtrodden or in need. Power is manifested in serving others. Love’s primary orientation is giving as opposed to consumerism’s posture of taking.

Love allows no syncretism with consumerism. Though the earlier portrait of syncretism seems inordinately strange, is it all that uncommon for someone to adopt select religious practices that seem Christian, rather than reorient their entire life around what Jesus called the Greatest Commandment? I go to church on Sunday and bible study once a week. Maybe I am more radical and have a daily quiet time for 15 minutes. I may even go hours a day. But what about the other 12-15 hours of waking time? Do they remain untouched? Is consumerism allowed to run unchecked while being justified by the presence of certain spiritual activities? Does the habit of relating to everything external to oneself for one’s own benefit continue unabated alongside of Jesus worship? Love requires a radical renunciation of all consumerism in every area of life. It demands that we loose the snatching grip of control and open our hands in generous living. This cannot be an isolated activity or it screams of insincerity. Rather, Love allows no dimension of life to remain sacrosanct, to lie beyond its scathing critique. It exposes and names all the ways we remain without interference in our enclave of indifference, pursuing our own selfish ambitions and interests in parallel to tokens of altruism. Love longs to permeate our entire existence with its gentle fragrance, to have free course with its liberating and life-giving presence. Love seeks to pry open the vise grips of fear to release our very lives as an offering of love to the world. It matters not if we find ourselves to be weak, feeble and insufficient. This is no reason to shrink back. Following the way our crucified Lord has gone before, we can, with great assurance, offer our broken bodies and bloodied selves as a gift of inestimable worth to the world.

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A life poured out in love is the starting point of all true Christianity, the source and summit of all true humanity. God in Christ has invited us as His people to live as redeemed and redemptive truly human beings by loving God and neighbor with the totality of our being. The full and unreserved giving of ourselves in love is that upon which the entire story of God’s redemptive purpose hinges. To miss this one point, or to make it so lofty a goal it is thus reserved for a far off future or an elite class of super-christians that do not anywhere exist, is to miss the whole of Christianity. Anything that does not start here is not Christianity, regardless of how many so-called Christian ideas, activities, platitudes and rectitudes crowd our lives. If fundamentally our being itself is not entirely a self-offering of love, we are not practicing Christianity.

I am not here initially speaking of a mature emotional and psychological life which constantly effuses compassion and grace toward the least deserving. That is a worthy goal, but is not what I am meaning by the starting point of Christianity. I do however certainly mean radically reorienting our lives so as to become such a person. This process begins by altering our lives’ basic organizing principles and embracing a process of thorough-going change whereby over time God shapes and molds us into people who love fully and deeply from the heart. To begin with, we must ask fundamental questions about what motivations shape and determine our lives. The movement towards love starts with a movement from consumption to generosity. Is my life shaped around the goal of taking or giving? This can be seen by observing our decision making processes. What determines how I spend my time, money, energy, emotions, resources, etc.? Are they utilized for self-absorption, self-satisfaction, self-promotion, or self-protection, which are all essentially forms of taking for one’s self, i.e., self-consumption?

A life poured out in love approaches these issues differently.  Such a person does not makes decisions motivated by the shallow desire to “do what I want,” but rather from a deeper desire to enter into generous relationships of sharing, giving, helping and freeing. Is my money fundamentally for my own comfort, or is it to provide for others? Is my time primarily to entertain myself, or is for me to be an beacon of God’s justice and truth? Are my relationships mostly about what others can do for me – relieve my boredom, affirm my ideologies, open doors of opportunity; or are they avenues for partnership in the outward expansion of God’s creative and healing love? Of course I do not believe that life should be a non-stop service project without taking care of yourself. I will address this in the next principle. However, for now, I’d prefer to avoid making qualifications. It is more easy than we imagine to sink into a comfortable realm of indifference and content ourselves with token expressions of altruism. Jesus calls us in the Great Commandment to love with the entirety of ourselves. The apostle John refuses to even acknowledge something called “indifference” and only contrasts between Christians who “love” and those who “hate.” (1 John 3:14ff). To fail to take the call to this kind of love seriously, the invitation to renounce a life centered around consumption, we are participating in the perpetuation of hatred which merely masquerades as “indifference.” Are we asking ourselves serious questions about what motivates our lives? This does not necessitate agonizing soul searching and an endless quest for a “hidden motivations.” Rather, it is often readily apparent whether a particular use of time, money, resources, etc. is about a consumptive taking or a loving generosity. The analysis is not the hard part. Surrendering the anger and anxiety of consumption’s tight-fisted posture for the open-handed self-giving of love in an unqualified manner throughout all of one’s life remains the outstanding challenge. Yet if we were honest, the grasping and clenching of self-concern has not paid out the dividends of happiness and contentment it so frequently offers. If the way to being truly human lies in the undivided gift of our lives in love, I surmise in this path may quite possibly also lie the way to being truly happy.

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This is the beginning of a series in which I hope to distill a synthesis of my learning and experience with respect to the manner in which one cultivates a deep spiritual life.  My intention is to combine both an understanding of how the spiritual life works along with what practically to do to experience growth. I find much spiritual counsel to have either a plethora of helpful principles, yet without clear guidance on how specifically to implement them; or lists of spiritual disciplines without a grounding base explaining their significance in the larger vision of the spiritual life (Dallas Willard’s Spirit of the Disciplines is a stellar exception). Here I will attempt to do both. In such I have isolated eight principles, which, in my gleaning from the Scriptures, from spiritual masters both ancient and modern, as well as from my experience, personally and alongside others, are central to a flourishing spiritual life. Each principle will be expressed both positively and negatively, briefly explained, and then followed by corresponding practices to specifically implement them in daily life. I will grant from the beginning there is much more that possibly could be said beyond what I will say with numerous additional principles, practices, qualifications, modifications and so forth. Granting the limited nature of my experience, understanding and articulation, I hope and pray these writings will bear fruit in your life.

Without further ado, the first principle is thus:

A life poured out in love is the starting point of all true Christianity, the source and summit of all true humanity.

A life lived for one’s self or within which self-giving remains ancillary is the sure path to de-humanizing futility. God does not recognize this as Christianity regardless of a superabundance of Christian jargon, activities, ideas, etc.

In Matthew 22, an expert in the Jewish law asks Jesus which commandment in the law is the greatest. In today’s religious consciousness, the word “law” commonly conjures up various images of abject servitude, detached submission, despondent acquiescence or rigid legalism. When God says to do something you must do it, yet all the while, bitterly wishing there was an escape hatch through which you could return to a life of free self-determination. Yet the biblical concept of “law” is different. The word “torah” (Hebrew for “law”) is the noun form of a word which means “to throw or shoot,” usually with arrows. Some scholars suggest that meaning behind “torah” is in the aiming of an arrow or the pointing of a finger to direct such a shot. Hence “torah” means something like “guidance” or “direction.” This meaning fits well with the actual content of the “torah,” the first five books of the bible, since most of it is not lists of rules, but stories about God and his people.  Remarkably so, the massive amount of material from Genesis 12 through the end of Deuteronomy all have a coherent theme: In a world where humans have unequivocally wrought disaster through their fighting, hatred, abuse and violence (see Gen. 3-11), God graciously initiates a promise of blessing to Abraham and his descendants, which both re-affirms God’s initial intentions for humanity (Gen. 1-2) and seeks to restore them. This promise, partially fulfilled in the stories recounted, remains the outstanding invitation to God’s people to be his answer to creation’s dilemma, and the agents through whom the solution comes (see David Clines fascinating book The Theme of the Pentateuch for a fuller exposition). The “torah,” then is God’s guidance on how, in the midst of a world of corruption and violence, to become a people through whom the earth’s desolate state can be mended and healed rather than further destroyed. By directing us to be participants in this grand story, we can be people who help the problem rather than continue to break lives, relationships and communities.

While I don’t imagine for a moment this was what the law expert was asking about in Matthew 22, I have more than a sneaking suspicion this is what Jesus chose to answer to anyway. In response to what the greatest commandment is, Jesus, in his typical terse yet far-reaching manner answers, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’  This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” The questioner asked concerning commandments in the law and Jesus responds with an answer which summarizes “all the law and the prophets.” This phrase, “law and prophets,” was a shorthand way of referring to the entire corpus of Jewish Scriptures. It seems as though Jesus is answering a bigger issue than which of the rules is most important, as if you only had one command to keep, which one would it be. Instead, Jesus is speaking to the foundational concept of the totality of Jewish Scripture. He addresses the entire unfolding narration of Israel’s history with God. In this history, God invited Israel to be the people who embody the true humanity before a world which had continually defaced nearly every trace of human semblance through its violence, ambition, hatred and greed. They would be God’s solution to the problem of sin and the agents through whom all nations of the earth would be blessed (Gen. 12:3), a blessing which would prevail over the curse of sin and death (Gen. 3:15-19). Notice that Jesus does not replace the “law and prophets” with an abstract principle of “love,” as if, whenever one has subjective experiences which one might call love, then everything else in the Hebrew Scriptures doesn’t really matter. Rather, the “law and prophets,” this whole story of promise, blessing, invitation, failure and restoration can be summed up as love. The way the people of God are to be the model of true humanity and a restorative presence on earth is through a love with the whole heart, the whole soul, and the whole mind. Namely, God invites his people to be truly human, to be the restored new humanity, and participate in creation’s restoration first and foremost by loving God and neighbor with all of one’s being (heart, soul, and mind) and will the fullest’ of one’s capacity (the whole heart, the whole soul and the whole mind).

“It is the whole of Christianity,” C.S. Lewis remarks in Mere Christianity, “Christianity offers nothing else at all.” Everything we can say about Christianity begins with the notion of the whole and unreserved giving of oneself in love for God and for others. What is commonly represented as a high level of achievement, a point to which one gradually works towards in one’s Christian journey, because so lofty an idea it is relegated to theoretical endeavors for super-saints which are never really attempted. It is in actual fact the only starting point. The self-giving love of this Great Commandment is not what we relegate to the mature while we formulate a more accessible modality for the rest of us novices (after all, who is mature anyway we might retort?) where we can do some spiritual things but mostly live for ourselves. Rather, to miss this one thing is to miss the entire point. If everything else hangs on the call for an entire outpouring of love, then without it, everything falls to the ground in a tangled mess. Of course, I am not meaning that perfect attainment of love in full maturity is where one must start as a Christian. Nevertheless, a radical renunciation of self-absorption, self-promotion and self-protection coupled to the risky self-surrender which endeavors to love with all of one’s self, must be utterly foundational. By this I mean the central organizing principle of how time, money, resources, energy, emotions, relations, etc are used must be whole and unreserved self-giving love, otherwise we are failing to follow the most basic guidance about what it means to be God’s people and what it means to be human. We were made in love, we were made for love and we were made to love. God invites us to be his redeemed and restored people in the world, those in whom the restoration of true humanity is beginning to flower, and through whom the abundance of his love can flow towards the restoration of a fragmented and broken world. A life poured out in love is the starting point of all true Christianity, the source and summit of all true humanity.

Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Collect for the Fifth Sunday in Lent from The Book of Common Prayer)

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Spirituality means “Life in God’s Spirit” rather than a vague and ethereal sense of “religiousness” or “inner attunement.” From briefly looking at the role of the Holy Spirit in the Bible (see part 1 – Christian Spirituality is Not Spiritual), we see that the Holy Spirit, rather than being in contrast to the physical and material world, plays a vital role in the creation, preservation and restoration of the visible, public, physical, material, bodily, social, and experiential existence of life on planet earth. If Christian spirituality is “Life in God’s Spirit,” then it is not spiritual in the sense that it pulls us away from engaging with the concrete realities of life into a focus on the immaterial and invisible. Christian spirituality rather draws us deeper into a passionate engagement with life, celebrating its joys, mourning its sorrows and pouring ourselves out in love to see its God-gifted purpose restored and flourishing into full flower.

Perhaps a seemingly strange verse to continue our discussion is Ephesians 1:10. Here Paul, at a climactic moment in his broad and sweeping oration of God’s purposes, declares that in Christ, God has publicly displayed “a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things under one head in him, the things in heaven and the things on earth.” The entire drama of blessing, calling, adoption, redemption, forgiveness, grace and mystery are summarized as a unification, a reconciliation, even a restoration of the entire cosmos in Christ. The scope of that which Paul speaks should not be missed. He speaks not merely of individuals being reconciled to God, but rather a fracturing in the entire created order is being mended and set right through Christ. Indeed, for the creation has groaned since its bondage to decay began (cf. Rom. 8:19ff), when its pristine state had been infested by thorns and thistles, its ground soaked with the blood of human violence and its fate imprisoned under the futility of inevitable death. The entire creation’s alienation from God, which had allowed such havoc to run free and spread throughout all its members, is being undone in and through Christ. Heaven and Earth are being united as one. Rather than us escaping the woes of earth to the bliss of heaven, the glory and radiance of the divine life and will as perfectly expressed in heaven will come to earth in a transformation of untold proportions. Heaven and Earth will converge and the fulness of God’s desire and intention for life on planet earth will come to a wondrous fruition. This plan has been set on public display in Christ and has begun its implementation, yet awaits its final fulfillment at the consummation of the age.

Paul continues in verse thirteen and fourteen to call the Holy Spirit, “the downpayment of our inheritance.” The Holy Spirit is thus a “partial payment,” so to speak, in advance of the full inheritance. One day God will fully and finally complete the restoration of the entire cosmos he began in Christ.  In the meantime however, the Holy Spirit is the “down-payment” of such, the living personal presence of the restoration of all things. As people in-dwelt by the Holy Spirit, we embody the convergence of Heaven and Earth and the restoration of all things which will be fully consummated when our Lord returns. Here we arrive at a central feature of Christian spirituality. Christian spirituality, that is, “life in God’s Spirit,” means that we (individually, but more so as a community of the faithful) become the place where even now, in advance of its consummation, Heaven and Earth intersect. The renewal of earth’s life is now manifested in the community of God’s people. We are the instrument through which creation’s plight is even now beginning to be undone. So when we speak of “spirituality,” and specifically so, “cultivating one’s spirituality,” this means not so much a private subjective exercise, but rather, engaging in the process by which we expunge the hatred, violence and apathy perpetuating our common plight and become a community in and through which the intersection of Heaven and Earth becomes increasingly expressed, through which the spring time of New Creation bursts into flower. The practices of “spirituality” are those through which even now God is making “all things new” and creating us as a people through whom He renews the face of the earth.

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