The Call of the Wild and Spiritual Formation

I just finished this classic book last night. I loved it! This book is about a domesticated dog, Buck, who is half Shepherd and half St. Bernard. Buck is kidnapped and sold into the dog sledding industry at the time of the gold rush.

The book is written from Buck's perspective, but it is not a Disney-fied version of a dog's perspective. We follow the dog's thoughts and perceptions as he goes from domesticated, to fully alive, and wild. The book is brutal to read, as it follows all of the trials that Buck faces while learning the "law of club and fang." These trials include beatings, starvation, exhaustion, kill or be killed scenarios, death of friends, fights, dealing with weather extremes, and learning, through trial and error, the life of a sled dog.

Tho book is really a great inspiration on surviving life's trials and letting them shape your character into something stronger and more pure, what God intended you to be. When you compare Buck in the beginning of the book, struggling and learning to live in the cold extremes of the northern outdoors, to the end of the book, Buck is a mean, lean, wild dog machine which can take on a full grown bull moose, a pack of wolves, and a hunting party of Indians, it really puts life into perspective.

Through this story, I was encouraged to let the tough times of life mold my character into something stronger, wiser, and more wild and alive than the domesticated version of me that is weak, foolish, and tame.

I believe that this book speaks to the idea of Christian Spiritual Formation: the process of being formed into the image of Christ for the sake of the world. The world will benefit from a stronger, wiser, and more wild and alive me than it would the domesticated version. I believe that it would benefit from a YOU that is stronger, wiser, and more wild and alive as well. Read this book and let it challenge and inspire you.

Why the World Will Not End Saturday...

I have issues with this theology on so many different levels. Here are a few:

Problem #1: Ethical. Mr. Tom Evans predicted the end of the world in 1994 and was obviously wrong. He chalked it up as a mathematical error. Oops. Sorry that I soaked up people's life savings, passions, ministry resources, people's concepts of God, man, and the church that could have been spent on actual purposes of God and His Kingdom. Maybe next prediction will be right. When this Saturday comes and goes I am sure that there will be another mathematical error statement. Why anyone would put stock into this again is beyond my comprehension. If Christ does come back this Saturday it will not be because Mr. Tom Evans predicted it through numerology, it will be because it is time. The two coinciding would be mere coincidence.

Problem #2: Theological. The destruction of the world is not in the Bible. Revelation 21:3 says that God makes HIS home with US. Here. Not us there, but Him here. It goes on to say in verse 4 that the world is actually resurrected to wholeness and healed of death, pain, and sin, by God Himself. Verse 5 says that God will make all things new.

Problem #3: Philosophical. This seems more of a Gnostic heresy than Biblical Christianity. Gnosticism was a heresy that the church fought tooth and nail with early in its early days. To simplify it, it states that physical matter = bad | spiritual = good. “Christian” Gnosticism says that Physical world = bad | Spiritual heaven = good. The problem is Jesus occupied a human body that was fully man as much as fully divine. God made the physical world and stated that it was “very good.” (I wholeheartedly agree with Him) The corruption has taken place in the systems and structures of this world. Those are done away with at the end and the physical creation is healed and restored, not destroyed.

Problem #4: Sociological. This paints a poor picture of God, his church, and his motives and intentions for humankind. Judgment is something that is to be looked forward to. I want the evil systems and structures of this world to be gone. They are what hinder us from becoming into who God created us to be. This view of God promotes a view of Christians as judgmental, self-righteous, prideful, vengeful, and, sorry to say, ignorant. It paints God to be a bloodthirsty, vengeful, bitter old man who can’t wait to give it to those “sinners” down there.

To sum it up, this campaign is a perfect picture of what is wrong with the Western Evangelical Fundamental Christian Church. Because I love the church, I love God’s creation, and I love God, I am grieved, mad, frustrated, and just plain fed up that Christians would even give this theology the attention it has received and I wish that I did not have to waste an hour of my day writing this post.

Process of Christian Formation Pt 3

Now we come to the integrated life. What are we aiming at? What do we wish to see from our Christian experience? What are we supposed to look like on the other side of a transforming relationship with Christ? The word that I found best describes this goal is the word integrated.

You can see that the lines separating the body spirit and soul are now dashed lines. This illustrates that how we live, what we think, and what we value is now one. We are no longer a “double minded person” (Js 1.8).

Notice at the center of this picture there is the Divine presence of God. This is the theology of omnipresence, but as a reality experienced. The Divine presence of God is now the Reality from which we center all of life around, and the source of all our activity in the world.

When we are living with the center of our life correct, our activity then becomes apprenticing Jesus in the world and learning the “family trade” of redemption. God is in the business of redemption, and we are to learn this trade by “shadowing” God in this world. The fancy bible name for this is “incarnation” God with flesh. We are now to be the ongoing incarnation in the world bringing God’s redemption. We become, through the Holy Spirit within us, the presence of God in the world. Paul refers to this as being an Ambasador for Christ (2 Cor. 5.20) and the church practices this by praying and acting “in Jesus' name.”

This apprenticing has a few pathways. In our personal life, we now display the fruits of the Spirit in our attitudes: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Gal. 5:22-23). When people encounter us, they encounter one who displays the characteristics of God, and thus, they encounter God through us.

Another pathway is through the gifts of the Spirit. It is hard to nail down a list of the gifts, there are a few different ones in the Scriptures, but we do know that the Holy Spirit wishes to do something with our life, and He empowers us to do so with gifts. These gifts are God’s actions in the world.

The third pathway that I see as an encounter with God is through the Body of Christ, a local community of believers that is an expression of his presence. When the body of Christ gathers together for worship, teaching, prayer, and serving, we become a microcosm of the global and historical church of God within our community.

Through these three pathways we reach into the contexts that we live and redeem what God wishes to redeem, and to battle that which God wishes to battle. When we do this we are contributing to the goal of Revelation 21 of a new heaven and a new earth, one that is married together (or integrated).

Process of Christian Formation Pt 2

Welcome to the Dis-Integrated life. This picture is the front of the cylinder. The life you see before you now is a compartmentalized existence. The book of Hebrews tells us: “Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Hebrews 4:12 (NRSV) Vine’s New Testament Dictionary says this concerning this verse: “The spirit may be recognized as the life principle (the way we think) bestowed on man by God, the soul as the resulting life constituted in the individual (what we believe to be true at the core of who we are, not just cognitively), the body being the material organism animated by soul and spirit.”

WORLD: Our Environment

The outer circle is the world, the environment that we find ourselves in, our work, family, friends, recreations, and errands. This is the air we breathe and the water we swim in. This is the physical world. At its core, the world is good, physical creation declares the glory of God. (Ps. 19.1) Yet the physical world has a set of values and structures that is corrupt governing it. The world needs redemption. For many people, the systems and structures of the corrupt world define ultimate reality, this is the god they serve. The Old Testament refers to this as idolatry. Then it was bowing physically to a statue that they believed would make the world better. Today it is bowing to the invisible systems and structures believing that they have the power to make the world better.

Ephesians describes this depth of living saying, “You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.” 2:1-3 (NRSV)

BODY: Our Vessel

We have a physical body that is our vessel for traversing this environment. Our body is how we experienced the world. We see, hear, taste, touch, and smell our environments. If we are living as thought the physical world is ultimate reality, we will let the physical world dictate how we behave, how we think, and how we feel.

The world tries to effect the way we behave within it by catering to these five senses, and encouraging us to indulge in it. The Bible says: “Satan, who is the god of this world (age), has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God.” 2 Corinthians 4:4 (NLT) The church has classically called the weapons of the “god of this age” the seven deadly vices: pride, greed, lust, sloth, envy, anger, and gluttony. The corrupt world tries to effect how you behave in the world, and it attempts to effect how you think. The world always works from the outside in, illustrated by the arrows pointing inwards. The world wants to consume us (Example: the world wants to control your behavior of spending because it wants your allegiance, it uses greed and envy to cater to you and get you to indulge in frivolities.)

Reminder: The world is at its core, good, (Genesis 1.31) it is the systems and structures that are corrupted by the “god of this age” that need redemption back into God’s purposes. More on that later.

SPIRIT: How you think

We also have a spirit (Greek word Psyche, where we get our word Psychology) Your spirit is the way you think, what you believe to be true. This effects how you behave in the world. This is the worldview that you have bought into, the core narratives that you believe to be true of God, man, and the universe. If these narratives are false, it can be devastating to how we live. (i.e. God is a cranky old man, therefore I will try to appease him with good behavior so he will not get mad at me and punish me.)

The world we find ourselves in attempts to dictate what we believe to be true in order to exploit us for its own purposes. (If you do not believe that one, read any mission statement of a marketing company and see how close it comes to the previous statement.) The spiritual vices are hooks in our mind that we do not know exist that drag us away from the peace of God’s presence in our life.

If we are religious, the spiritual vices can become a religious false self, built upon false perceptions of how we think God views us, what the Pharisees of Jesus’ day were plagued with. If we are not religious, the spiritual vices can be a false self built upon other’s perceptions of us, what the Greek pagans were plagued with of Jesus’ day. Both are illustrated with the parable of the prodigal sons. (Luke 15)

SOUL: Our core beliefs

The soul is the place of your passions, your eros energy. Rolheisser defines spirituality as "what we do with the fires inside of us, about how we channel our eros." (Holy Longing) God has placed inside of us a holy passion to seek him out within his creation. This is our eros energy. It is a very holy energy that is often spilled out on unholy things in unholy ways. Eros is the Greek word for love in which we get our word erotic from.

The soul is where we wrestle with our emotions, especially joy, sadness, hope, and fear which in and of themselves are very neutral, but can lead us away from the center of our being, the Divine presence within.

THE CHALLENGE

The spirituality of this life is one of compartmentalizing. Spirituality does not fit into certain worldly endeavors such as work, family, or recreation. The challenge is to move beyond this shallow existence into a deeper and more integrated life and be the person God created us to be. To live in a way that our life is centered on the presence of God within us and to live from that reality instead of letting our external environments dictate who we are.

Process of Christian Formation Pt 1

As a part of my Master’s Degree in Spiritual Formation and Leadership, I am thinking through the process that a soul takes in formation into Christ-likeness. The idea of a cylinder came to mind. On one end we have the conversion experience and the other is what I call the “Integrated Life” or how a Christ-like soul operates in the world.

The cylinder is a timeline that is both linear and cyclical. The problem with cyclical timelines is that you never seem to get anywhere, and life becomes redundant. The problem with linear timelines is that it makes no room for the chaos in life. Everything needs to happen in a certain order. Combining the two into one shows the progress of a linear timeline yet involving the cyclical leaves room for the messiness of life.

On the beginning side of the cylinder we have a life that is not integrated and very much compartmentalized. Our faith, if we have one, is not a part of our everyday existence. Possibly it is merely fire insurance faith. Possibly it is our parents faith.

In the middle of the cylinder we have a progression into Christ-likeness. There are three depths of conversion. Each depth is entered through by the Dark Night as described by John of the Cross. After each Dark Night there is a progression of Releasing, Receiving, and Integrating.

On the end of the cylinder is the Inegrated Life, a life formed into the image of Christ for the sake of the world.

Now for a closer look into these sections...