Thoughts about the journey:
There is a temptation to think of one’s spiritual journey as individual. I do not believe that is true. I am one part of the pilgrimage of all of God’s people. We each have our own unique encounters, experiences, trials and detours but we do not travel alone. We must not, cannot proceed alone. We need the strength, companionship, encouragement, wisdom and experience of fellow sojourners. The journey is perilous and we may need to be rescued or to rescue. The journey brings us joyful experiences and beautiful vistas to which we enthusiastically direct our fellow travelers. Of course we could make better progress without the burden of others but its not just about the destination. It’s also about the experience of the journey. Too often our perspective is like the impatient child: “Are we there yet?”. We pay little attention to the wonderful experiences, opportunities for relationship and love and the beauty and wonder of the scenes passing the window. We are only concerned about the destination.
…the central challenge of Christianity: …how do we put on the mind of Christ? How do we see through his eyes? How do we feel through his heart? How do we learn to respond to the world with that same wholeness and healing love? That’s what Christian orthodoxy really is all about. It’s not about right belief; it’s about right practice.
Cynthia Bourgeault via Richard Rohr
I have recently read David Brooks book “The Path to Character”. The following is an excerpt in which Brooks addresses the idea of engaging moral dilemmas in today’s society.
For his 2011 book Lost in Transition , Christian Smith of Notre Dame studied the moral lives of American college students . He asked them to describe a moral dilemma they had recently faced . Two thirds of the young people either couldn’t describe a moral problem or described problems that are not moral at all . For example , one said his most recent moral dilemma arose when he pulled in to a parking space and didn’t have enough quarters for the meter .
They didn’t understand that a moral dilemma arises when two legitimate moral values clash . Their default position was that moral choices are just a question of what feels right inside , whether it arouses a comfortable emotion . One student uttered this typical response : “ I mean , I guess what makes something right is how I feel about it . But different people feel different ways , so I couldn’t speak on behalf of anyone else as to what’s right and wrong .
If you believe that the ultimate oracle is the True Self inside , then of course you become emotivist — you make moral judgments on the basis of the feelings that burble up . Of course you become a relativist . One True Self has no basis to judge or argue with another True Self . Of course you become an individualist , since the ultimate arbiter is the authentic self within and not any community standard or external horizon of significance without . Of course you lose contact with the moral vocabulary that is needed to think about these questions . Of course the inner life becomes more level — instead of inspiring peaks and despairing abysses , ethical decision making is just gentle rolling foothills , nothing to get too hepped up about .
As I reflected on that citation, I realized how much the last sentance characterized my state of mind as I engage the day to day moral dilemmas in my life. The implications run deep.
How God has worked in my life
Notes from a talk at Central Church of Christ Sarasota, FL. 2008
Time will not permit me to retrace all the steps of my journey over the past decades, but I will share this with you. We are on a never-ending journey. When I reach heaven, I won’t suddenly “know God” and “know the whole story”. We’ll always be learning—even in heaven.
I believed, (until the past 5 or so years) that life was “getting things together”. I lived to get:
Control – manage my work life, my family life, my Christianity
Stability – manage my finances, be stable in my work and get ahead
Predictability – God would be pleased with me.
If I achieved this, I would be successful “Financially, in my work life, in my family or home life, and in my religious life.” I believed that I had to:
- decide what I want out of life, and
- decide how to get it done
If I did this, I was successful.
There are only two ways to look at life: Decide what you want and get it done
Or
Live each day in search of God
I went with the first philosophy. I believed it to be true even in my religious life—
“Decide what God wanted of you and get it done.”
But I learned that it doesn’t work that way.
You will find a card in my Bible dated Jan. 4, 2003. What is recorded there is the product of an intensive personal search for God’s direction culminated by several days of retreat with Ann in the Smokey Mountains. On one side you will find Psalms 37:3-8:
Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this
He will make righteousness shine like the dawn,
the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.
Be still before the LORD; and wait patiently for him;
Do not fret when men succeed in their ways,
when they carry out their wicked schemes
Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil.
It was from that passage God revealed to me instructions for the journey ahead.
- Trust in the LORD and do good.
- Delight yourself in the LORD.
- Commit your way to the LORD.
- Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him.
- Refrain from anger and turn from wrath.
Also, from that retreat experience came some spiritual commitments, which I recorded, on the other side of the card. They are:
- Continually and consistently seek the presence of God
- Continue to identify and remove the “beam from MY eye”
- Strive for balance between my inner focus and outreach. Be salt and light.
- Continue to pursue a deeper relationship with my spouse.
- Strengthen spiritual disciplines in my life on a day-to-day basis by adopting a “Rule of Life”—intentionality.
- Develop a deeper understanding of spiritual leadership and model that understanding in my own leadership.
That retreat experience, joined with the journey before, carved out my pathway for the last three years.
Now, we think of commitments in an odd way. We think we need to be “committed” as Christians.
I’ll commit to 30 minutes of prayer daily.
I’ll commit to an hour of Bible study daily.
I’ll commit to Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights.
I’ll commit to the spiritual disciplines.
If I achieve this, I’ll be successful. But in my life, this hasn’t worked. Are these things bad? No, of course not. But if we’re doing them to be “committed Christians” or to be “successful in God’s sight”, we’ve missed the boat. Who has given you that image for what God has called you to do?
A. W. Tozer said,
“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God. For this reason the gravest question before the church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at any time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like.” (book – “Knowledge of the Holy”)
Why don’t we stop being committing Christians, and start being “submissive” Christians? Commitment still leaves ME in control. Jesus did not ask for commitment. He asked for surrender. That’s what God asks of us. He wants our surrender to Him . . . not a commitment to activities. And when I think of surrender, I think militarily. If you surrender, you are stripped of everything. You are stripped naked!
If this tweaks your mind, you may think, “I can’t”, “I must”, “I couldn’t”. But keep in mind that it’s not a determination. It’s a transformation. IF I stop trying to make it happen; IF I stop using MY will power (I’m still in control, aren’t I?); IF I can relax and let God work; THEN, and only then, will it become a transformation. That’s what submission is. That’s what surrender is.
Even when “I determined” to do God’s will (on my own power), God brought tremendous good into it. My life, up till then, wasn’t negative. God was still working and using me. But after I came to realize to simply submit is when I really bloomed.
More important than any decision I might make it that each of us put our trust and confidence in God alone. Consider the words of Psalm 73:
. . . I am always with you;
you hold me by my right hand.
You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will make me into glory.
Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heat
and my portion forever.
I want to close my remarks with lyrics from a song I heard recently and they express the thoughts of my heart in these days:
Give me one pure and holy passion
Give me one magnificent obsession
Give me one glorious ambition for my life
To know and follow hard after You
To grow as your disciple in your truth
This world is empty, pale, and poor
Compared to knowing you, my LORD
Lead me on and I will run after you.
We all want to be heard. It is central to the nature of our being, a sort of validation of our existence, for someone to pay attention to us.
And because of this, in some cases, it may be that the best way to defeat a really horrible idea in the mind of another is not to refuse to listen, or be the first to launch a pre-emptive attack to convince them otherwise, but first really to listen. And it may be that we also learn some things along the way we would not have known otherwise.
No guarantee of that, of course, but we may. And even if we learn nothing intellectually, we will undoubtedly grow in the virtue of patience.
It’s a liberating experience, to be free to listen to and learn from people with whom one disagrees about deeply important matters. Hospitality, in other words, is not merely a gift to the recipient but to the giver.
Lee Camp