(continuing from the last entry…)

Several years later, I enrolled at Houghton College, a Christian (Wesleyan) college in Western New York. During the first week of classes, we had nightly services which were a vestigial form of revival services. On the first evening, the preacher gave a strong call for repentance and total commitment to Christ. I had always loved God and perceived myself to be more committed to God than most of my friends and the people in my youth group, but that night comparing myself to others was woefully insufficient. I wanted to give myself entirely, exhaustively and exclusively to God. When I went forward for the altar call, the Spirit of God gripped me as I knelt there weeping. Through that entire year, I thrust myself into the passages of Scripture that call for repentance, complete abandonment and radical discipleship (e.g., Gospel of Luke, Galatians, minor prophets) as well as the writings of Charles Finney and Leonard Ravenhill. This was my first exposure to the Holiness tradition. Here I learned the thrill of offering myself fully to God. I began to discover a dimension of freedom, from sin and compromise, to love God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength. I cannot claim to have fully attained it then, but it became a burning vision for me. It was something I refused to live without fighting for.

Unfortunately, I fell into some of the snares that lurk around Holiness tradition as well (NB: The terminology “lurk around” is very specific. These snares attempt to capture people zealous for holiness, but are not inherent to the Holiness tradition. They can, however, be a danger if one does not have maturity, balance or wise counsel. I had none of them). I acquired a form of legalism where I gauged holiness by a list of do’s and don’ts and my emotional well-being rode on how well I measured up to it. I lived in constant shame and regret, never believing that I was ever good enough or doing enough for God. I also began to see my form of commitment to Jesus as the standard for everyone else, regardless of their calling and the season of their life. I was again empowered by unrighteous judgment, not over worship styles, but concerning whether I perceived people to be fully devoted to God.

A positive lesson I learned however was the priority of prayer in a believer’s life. I started to hold prayer meetings, for better or for worse, modeled as closely as I could to Charles Finney’s “formula for revival.” Finney taught that one must focus prayer meetings on sin, repentance and judgment. People ought to center their hearts on the horrible state of the church and arouse corresponding deep feelings. Oddly enough, (said tongue-in-cheek) I found very few people interested in attending such meetings. It grieved me even more that people would rather watch TV or play card games than come to my “groaning prayer meetings.” In retrospect, it was probably the grace of God saving them from my goofy distortions of holiness teaching in the Bible.

That summer, while I was home on school break, I devoted the entire three months to learn everything I could about prayer. Charles Finney taught that revival (which I defined as people turning to God out of compromise and into holiness) only happens when people pray. However, in my experience people did not go to prayer meetings. Therefore, I gave myself to learning everything possible, so I would be able to get people to come to prayer meetings and see revival come, specifically to Houghton College, but also to America as a whole. Being a college student with limited financial means, I searched on the Internet for any free resources on prayer I could find. I stumbled upon a website with streaming videos from a prayer conference. The preacher spoke of enjoying prayer rooted in knowing God as the one who loves us even as we work through all our issues of struggle, sin, weakness and immaturity. This was definitely a new idea for me, and one that I did not like. Prayer had to be serious, weighty and cranky (as I perceived Finney to be teaching). It couldn’t be joyful. Furthermore, I thought the speaker was overdoing the “love thing.” “What about sin?” I kept wondering, “Isn’t that important?”

Consequently, the message rather bugged me, but it was free of charge and there were a bunch more on the same website, so I kept listening. After a couple of messages on loosely the same subject, I just broke down crying in front of the computer screen as two shocking realizations hit me: first, that I was called to prayer as my primary occupation and ministry for my entire life; second, that God actually loved me; not the ideal me, not the super-sanctified-image me, but He actually loved actual me. Years of pressure to be more holy than I was and shame for not measuring up to the ultra-high standards I placed on myself (which cannot solely attributed to the teachings of Finney but surely were aided by the perfectionistic mores of my community of origin) came crashing out from a place within me I did not know existed. This all took me as quite a surprise and my heart quickly transitioned from being annoyed and offended to being overwhelmed by the love of God. I was reasonably bewildered by the whole experience and wasn’t sure what had happened. All I knew was that it was God, I really liked it and I wanted more of it.

This was a somewhat shocking introduction to the Contemplative tradition, with its emphasis on deep heart-felt intimacy with the Lord and devotional prayer. Over the course of the next couple of years, I gave myself to studying and meditating on the attributes of God, specifically the relational ones: his love, gladness, mercy, kindness, etc. I spent more time in solitude and quietness not seeking as much to get something from God, but simply to know Him more. In this place, I discovered a dimension of freedom in that I found liberation from a defiled conscience when I came before God through understanding his heart towards me and the person ramifications of the atonement. Holiness was still a vital part of my life, but I began to learn that God’s heart towards me and the atonement, not my personal performance were the basis of my position before God and my relationship with Him. Understanding the love and forgiveness of God just a little bit, lifted enough weight off my heart so that I actually began to enjoy being with God again, similar to my high school days, but now it was deeper, more grounded and more God-centered.

To be continued…

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Narcissim: Denial of the True Self is a fascinating book by Alexander Lowen, a leading psychoanalyst discussing the problem of narcissism. Though commonly thought of as simply the dilemma of an over-inflated ego in which one loves themselves excessively, Lowen contends that narcissism is rooted in emotional numbness. The narcissist does not love themselves excessively, they can hardly love, if at all. This emotional numbness is a defense against overwhelming experiences in life that if expressed appropriately would seem that one is going crazy. When our experiences do not correspond to how we perceive reality we feel disoriented and eventually like we are going crazy. One way of coping with overwhelming experiences is to deaden the body and sedate all emotion.

Over this lack of feeling, the narcissist constructs an image to present to the world. This image is not in accordance with the individual’s true self, which is mired in unexpressed sadness and anger. Since the sense of self is not rooted in the actual self, it is remarkably unstable and is constantly needing the praise and affirmation of others, hence the commonly perceived symptoms of narcissism related to the over-inflated ego. This image projection however, does not show one who loves themselves too much, but one who in fact has rejected their true self in favor of an image that is sane, collected, sophisticated, appreciated and affirmed. Narcissism lies not in self-love or self-acceptance, but rather in self-rejection.

One of the most insightful sections of the book was the final chapter in which Lowen critiques modern culture in a chapter he calls “the insanity of our time.” He claims that many fear expressing their emotions lest they seem, become or go insane. If insanity can be defined as not being in touch with reality, there is little more insane than not being in touch with one’s own emotions. To be emotionally numb is to not be fully alive. It is actually a form of insanity.

This applies not only individually but also culturally. Our culture as a whole is entirely over-stimulated. Whether it be television, radio, stereo, i-pod, billboards, etc. the stream of images and sounds is incessant. Add to that the hurried pace of our lives and the insanity is building. Since it is truly impossible to respond to all of these images and sounds, the only way to deal with such over-stimulation is to deaden one’s feelings. When that happens, we need further, stronger stimulation to feel anything at all. So we make the volume louder, beat the drums harder, play the music faster, flash the images more quickly, speak only in sound-bites, keep the activities rolling, etc. Is it any wonder why so many people are incredibly bored yet inundated with more entertainment than ever in history? Is it thus any wonder why our society compulsively throws itself into a boundary-less sexual expression as if one more orgasm can jolt one out of emotional numbness? Is it any wonder why even in the church, studies show that a majority of men are involved with pornography in a desperate attempt to feel something?

The church plays the game little differently than the rest of society. “People can’t listen very long, give them sound-bites,” they say. The music is getting increasingly louder, stronger, harder and faster. The pace is getting more and more frenetic. But this time, it is not just the ideal of societal advancement, God is behind it. It is no different in the seeker sensitive movement, where everything has to move quickly to keep people’s interest, or in the prophetic movement, where everything has to be so intense to maintain people’s passion. There is less and less time and ability to feel, be still, to read books, enjoy art or relate to another person non-pragmatically, much less to have deep prayer.

One of the most misused writers in the Christian tradition is John of the Cross. His fateful phrase “Dark Night of the Soul” is often applied haphazardly to whenever the pace slows down enough and stimulation decreases so that the “sense of the presence of God” has vanished from an individuals’ experience. Somehow the intensity must be ramped up, the pace quickened, the images made more vivid so that feeling can return. Over-stimulation is never the way for feeling to return. John speaks of the spiritual journey not as merely an increase of intensity, but an increase in sensitivity. When the sensitivity increases, the intensity will likewise increase automatically. The period of dryness that John speaks of is when feelings so subtle and so profound begin to graciously infuse the soul and one cannot even feel them. If one was in such a state and was to play the modern over-stimulation game, nothing at all would be gained. One’s sensitivity would actually continue to decrease and greater stimuli would increasingly be required for one to feel anything at all. Take hearing for example. If one wanted to hear something clearly, they could turn up the volume. Yet the more one turns up the volume, at a point, hearing will begin to be lost. When this happens the intensity has to be increased to replicate the same level of experience previously. Though the analogy breaks down here (as there is no way to reverse hearing damage), if one’s sensitivity were to increase, one could have the same level of experience even at a lesser intensity, and the same level of intensity as before would produce a greater level of experience.

Remarkably, those who have written on “deep prayer” throughout the centuries of church history, traditionally called “mystics”, generally describe this prayer as not having increasing activity and freneticism, but increasing stillness. It is often called the “prayer of quiet.” At this point “discursive prayer” ceases and one moves into sheer enjoyment of pleasures so very subtle and sublime. It is not our activity or words that matter here but simply the gentle current of love flowing from the deep within us. Jesus said in John 7:38 that whoever believes in him, that out of the deepest place within, rivers of life would begin to flow. These are pleasures more subtle but more superior than anything else in existence. However, their sublimity often evades us in the modern sea of stimulation. Let us forsake the insanity that fosters the deadness of our bodies and emotions. Let us again grow comfortable with stillness, quietness, silence and sublimity. Let us dare to believe that John of the Cross and Jesus were right. Let us not pursue stimulation, but increasing sensitivity; not mere doing, but rather resting in being; not simply operating by logic, but living and breathing, by giving and receiving unfailing love.

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