New Years Resolutions, Industrial Holiness and the Spirituality of Life
I am personally not a fan of new-years resolutions, because most never get accomplished. However, I’ve decided to take some time to reflect on what it might mean to “sanctify” the coming year to God. My thoughts here are following Jurgen Moltmann’s book Spirit of Life.
Moltmann takes issue with popularized conceptions of “spirituality.” Sometimes spirituality means nothing more than “religiousness” or “devotionalism.” Such equations can cut off spirituality from everyday life. It can also establish a schism between the “religious,” that is, the clergy and the cloistered, and the laity, the common person. One group is “spiritual” and the other, the overwhelming majority, is unable to access such a place. It can also drive a wedge between the “spiritual” and the sensory, assigning greater value to the “spiritual” and a diminished or even negative value to the sensory and bodily experiences of life. Furthermore, life can be neatly separated into its superior “vertical” (Godward or heavenly) and ancillary “horizontal” (relational, human or earthly) dimensions. This dichotomization disintegrates what God made a coherent whole, and in effect “splits life in two, quenching its vitality.” (Jurgen Moltmann, Spirit of Life: a Universal Affirmation, p. 84)
However, it is of fundamental concern that the concept of “spirituality” be vitally connected to the Biblical understanding of the Holy Spirit. Spirituality is, after all, “life in God’s Spirit.” In the Old Testament, the ruach (Spirit) is the power that created all things and interpenetrates the life of all the living (Ps. 104.29ff., Gen. 1). In the New Testament, the Spirit is the power that raises Jesus bodily from the dead, inaugurating the “final springtime of creation (Rom 1.4; 8.11; 1 Tim 3.16),” the definitive restoration of life on earth (Moltmann, p. 84). This gives us an understanding of the Spirit that is immanently connected, rather than opposed, to physical, material, bodily, sensory and relational life.
Overcoming dualistic tendencies with regards to the Spirit and spirituality, Moltmann wants to understand “spirituality” as vitality, as a love for life. This expresses itself in an affirmed social and bodily existence. “In the experience of the Spirit, the spring of life begins to flow in us again. We begin to flower and become fruitful. An undreamt-of love for life awakens in us, driving out the infection of resignation, and healing painful remembrances. We go to meet life expecting the rebirth of everything that lives, and with this expectation, we experience our own rebirth, and the rebirth we share with everything else.” (p. 95)
We can then reach out to the world with the eagerness, innocence and expectation of a child (Matt. 18.1-5). A jaded attitude towards ourselves and the world melts with the rising of a vibrant love for life. The release of the body from the fears of “age-aquired wisdom,” which cynically expects the triumph of death, frees the arms to extend and embrace. The love of life empowered by the hope of resurrection looses the shackles of the soul with a penchant for retreating into the refuge of isolation. Open to the world, faith, hope and love once again flow in the risky endeavor of whole-hearted living (p. 97).
Life in the Spirit is not life against the body, it is life against death. It is everything that stands against the maniacal death drives of modern culture. It is awakening from the slumber of apathy and mechanistic living. “In this world, with its modern ‘sickness unto death,’ true spirituality will be the restoration of the love for life – that is to say, vitality. The full and unreserved ‘yes’ to life, and the full and unreserved love for the living are the first experiences of God’s Spirit, which is not for nothing called fons vitae, ‘the well of life’” (p. 97).
Moltmann wants to recast the concept of sanctification in light of the theology of the Spirit he has already been developing. He begins by discussing John Wesley’s “methodisitic” holiness. John Wesley’s “societies” arose at the time of the burgeoning industrial revolution. “The Christian discipline to which they submitted themselves and their bodies corresponded precisely to the discipline of their work in the factories” (p. 166). Wesley’s methods had a healing effect on isolated people who had been forced to leave home to search for work in the factories. It gave them community, stability and self-confidence in a time when there was much uncertainty and instability. However, because we are leaving the industrial age and moving into the post-industrial age, we need a renewed vision of the Christian life that is “related to the sickness of the given society in a healing way” (p. 171). The discipline of the industrial revolution has produced a society where production and efficiency have become the highest virtues. When such happens, the human body is reduced to a machine and the mind to a computer. No time remains for full-blooded feeling. The integrity of human being is sorely violated. The simultaneous growth of production and consumption that have flourished under the myth of progress have shown their debilitating effects on the psychological, relational and ecological condition of life on earth. As our production and consumption increases, we find ourselves unable to engage in living-giving relationships that God created the human race to enjoy mirroring His triune fellowship of love: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
A renewed concept of sanctification begins, for Moltmann, with the concept of spirituality as vitality and is embodied in the rediscovery of the sanctity of all life. Recognizing the holiness of all life effectuates the ethic Albert Schweitzer termed ‘reverence for life’: “Anyone who loves ‘the living God’ loves the life of all living things” (p. 172). This has communal (loving brothers and sisters), social (loving the poor and weak), and ecological (loving creation) dimensions. Reverence for life also “requires the renunciation of violence towards life,” including violence towards creation and violence towards one’s own life. The “violent regimentation” of one’s own life and body produces physical and psychological infertility, an inability to grow. The life oriented toward self-mastery, which by nature blocks off “whole sectors of life” must be loosed to allow for the “spontaneity of faith” (p. 173). This requires a greater trust in God than the discipline that breeds deeper mistrust. While this may seem contrary to Wesley’s methods, it is not contrary to Wesley’s intention “to heal soul and body” (p. 173). Wesley understood sin as a sickness that required healing (p. 164). The faithlessness, fear, anger and violence that lie hidden beneath ruthless discipline and regimentation must today be recognized as part of the sickness of sin the soul needs to be healed from. In such, specific actions are not sanctified, but entire lives are sanctified in the presence of the God of life. The word “holy” is again recognized in terms of its semantic origin: to be holy is to be made whole, to have integrity of being and life restored to a fragmented and divided existence, for the brutal violence of self-domination and other-manipulation to be relinquished in the trusting spontaneity of faith and sanctifying affirmation of life (pp. 175-6).
With this said, it might seem an attempt to cast off restraint and discipline, that any related “New Year’s Resolutions” would be about loosing the shackles of a regimented, scheduled existence. Such would be a superficial reading. I still plan on having and keeping a schedule. I have a passion to be a faithful steward of everything God has given me, especially time. However, it is true and essential to maintain there is nothing inherently Christian about discipline and it can be remarkably unchristian when it functions to destroy the goodness of what God loves. My New Years resolutions mostly relate to resisting the freneticism that schedules out the breathing space which enables the heart to live and delight in love. I am also keen to resist the constant encroaching of technology which seeks to mechanize life and dull the affections. God calls us to live a quiet and peaceful life, for in this stillness alone can the heart truly be present to God and there discover the “broad and open space” of love for live within which it can flourish and thrive.
My 2010 New Years Resolutions:
1) to never for any reason tell someone else that I am busy and thus imply that my “busy-ness” is more important than them or is an excuse to treat them poorly (thanks to my undergrad spirituality professor Mike Walters for this gem).
2) to leave my phone on silent and not check or send text messages while in the prayer room or when having a conversation with someone. Both when in prayer and in conversation I want to be fully present to the persons involved and not constantly detaching by frenetic digital communication.
3) to check my e-mail no more than twice a day. This is related to the previous one as far as frenetic digital communication goes. I am not so important that I need to be constantly accessible. I will also not upgrade my cell phone to be able to get email or internet. I’ll sacrifice having “the world at my finger tips” in order to maintain my sanity and quietness of being.
4) to regularly give people my undivided attention when talking with them, to interrupt less, speak less and listen more.
5) to periodically (though not frequently) allow significant relationships to disrupt my schedule.
6) to regularly remind myself that the people “under” me as a leader are not cogs in a wheel but people with precious and vulnerable hearts, abounding with love, hope, hurt, fear and God-inspired dreams.
7) to breathe deeply and be more fully present to God.
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