Thoughts on faith challenges in the first half of life.
As I think about my early “faith challenges” it is hard to make sense of them knowing what I now know about faith. My faith was misguided, trusting God to reward my ability and willingness to learn and do what he commanded.
How could such a misguided faith result in so many so many positive outcomes?
Richard Rohr’s book Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life has helped me begin to sort out that conundrum. Some insightful excerpts regarding the first half of life follow:
The first half of life is discovering the script, and the second half is actually writing it and owning it.
…in my opinion, this first-half-of-life task is no more than finding the starting gate. It is merely the warm-up act, not the full journey. It is the raft but not the shore. If you realize that there is a further journey, you might do the warm-up act quite differently, which would better prepare you for what follows. People at any age must know about the whole arc of their life and where it is tending and leading.
The first-half-of-life container, nevertheless, is constructed through impulse controls; traditions; group symbols; family loyalties; basic respect for authority; civil and church laws; and a sense of the goodness, value, and special importance of your country, ethnicity, and religion
Law and tradition seem to be necessary in any spiritual system both to reveal and to limit our basic egocentricity, and to make at least some community, family, and marriage possible.
Considering those ideas and my experience, I would suggest what I consider faith challenges for the first half:
- SIN
Although I described sin management as a challenge to my faith development, paradoxically sin management is essential to “keeping the raft afloat”, to use Rohr’s metaphor. Awareness/fear of the destructive nature of sin and the practical need to restrain it, can provide a life preserver that will keep one afloat through the early years.
Ideally, sin management would come through reliance on the power of the Holy Spirit rather than self-reliance. No matter what the under lying motivation, every effort must be made to restrain sin.
A practical implication relates to discipling people in their early years, is the need for clear and unequivocal insistence on morally upright lives. That requirement must not be divorced from consistent spiritual guidance that leads to deeper understanding of the nature of sin and and faith that truly manages sin and rejects legalistic law keeping.
- MYOPIA
nearsightedness, lack of imagination, foresight, or intellectual insight.
One trait that gives sin a strategic advantage is myopia. The inability to see ultimate consequences of sin makes resistance less likely.
Today’s culture is broadly characterized by impatience, a need for immediate gratification, short term gains, et al. The language of older people betrays the ubiquity of myopia: “If I had only known”… Didn’t see that coming”… “if I could go back”… and so on. Probably the greatest frustration of senior adults is the refusal of young people to look ahead and listen to the voice of experience.
Like myself, many young adults live life like driving a car at breakneck speeds only paying attention the next 50 feet of road. As Rohr says “People at any age must know about the whole arc of their life and where it is tending and leading.”
Spiritual guidance has potential to provide corrective lens for the myopia of youth but the hindsight of mature Christians is 20/20. Developing meaningful intergenerational relationships can go along way in mitigating myopia.
- DISENCHANTMENT
The first half of life is discovering the script…
In some recent writings, I contended that: “Living in a disenchanted age is the most significant challenge we face in seeking a relationship with God’. My spiritual heritage is a product of disenchantment and the “faith” of my memoir is its offspring.
Charles Taylor and my favored blogger Richard Beck have provide some understanding of the disenchanted age in which we live.
The default mode for the disenchanted age is reliance on human ability/reason and scientific laws as an ultimate source for answers to the problems of modernity. Utility, efficiency and production are our preimemmant tools to achieve full potential as human beings. Inherently, disenchantment rejects the transcendent. Mystery, fantasy, spirituality, faith, divinity, magic, art, namely, enchantment, is rendered irrelevant. our existence in a disenchanted age is reduced to one dimension, removing depth and meaning and distorting the purpose of our lives. As Beck describes, “When creation is stripped of its holy, sacred and enchanted character …it becomes–material. Raw, disenchanted material. Inert stuff. Piles of particles.”
I believe disenchantment to be the most difficult faith challenge for several reasons.
- Disenchantment as defined above is in opposition to the very nature of a transcendent faith. Inherently, disenchantment rejects the transcendent. Mystery, fantasy, spirituality, faith, divinity, magic, art, namely, enchantment, is rendered irrelevant. As an example, athoughtful examination of disenchantment will expose its inherent negative implications to prayer and illustrate its perniciousness.
- Disenchantment is the air we breathe. We are so immersed we have very little objective awareness of its threat to our faith. If Rohr is correct that the first half of life is discovering the script, our script will be distorted by disenchantment and leave us ill prepared for the second half of life.
- Ironically, the effects of disenchantment have created a vacuum of purpose, meaning and enchantment that provides unprecedented opportunity for the gospel. Accordingly, meeting the faith challenge of disenchantment will depend upon presenting the gospel in a way that fills that vacuum.
