“All you can do, Richard,” I tell myself, “is sow the seed.”
Much of the “success” of any talk I give isn’t really in my hands. It’s mostly up to the person listening and the status of their heart. And I don’t have access to their heart. God does, but I don’t. My job is to just sow the seed.
I’ve become more focused on fidelity than to the task than maximizing “effectiveness.” I try to do my very, very best, and once I’m done I’m at peace.
Richard Beck
Theosis, or divinization (“divinization may also refer to apotheosis, lit. “making divine”), is a transformative process whose aim is likeness to or union with God, as taught by the Eastern Orthodox Church and Eastern Catholic Churches.
Recently I came across a blog post that used the word theosis. I was unfamiliar with theosis and, as is my usual habit, I hit define. I got the above definition.
I was intrigued on a couple of counts. First, since our pastor is currently preaching a series from Colossians, why haven’t I heard “theosis” ? Well, DUH, did you read definition, really? Secondly, I was curious how Orthodox/Catholic views might contrast and/or expand my views of “being Christ-like”. The post is long but worth the read. But, with regard to theosis I have included an excerpt below. I found it helpful and broadening.
We are the culture of “selfies.” We not only want to see how we look, we want to know how we’re doing. We analyze ourselves, measure ourselves, compare ourselves, judge ourselves, in all of which we imagine ourselves to be doing something useful. Modernity is dominated by the image of progress. We have internalized this notion and made it the model and form of our self-awareness.
In 1922, the Frenchman, Émile Coué, proposed the phrase, “Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better” (“Tous les jours, à tous points de vue, je vais de mieux en mieux”). It remains a popular mantra for self-help gurus. It may or may not be true. The notion is that auto-suggestion can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is modernity as prayer.
This same mantra could be taken as a parody of how some view the work of theosis. We do well to take warning from St. Silouan’s single experience of praise for his spiritual life. I do not mean that we do not need encouragement – we do. But awareness of our “progress” is likely to be worse than deadly. The spiritual life, and particularly that which we call theosis, cannot and must not be measured or compared. It is Peter walking on the water. Everything is fine until you notice that you’re walking on water!
How would we measure theosis, were we to undertake something so foolhardy? Would it be by noting that we “sin less?” Strangely, I can think of no saint whose self-awareness is described as “sinning less.” It’s always quite the opposite. I could imagine the suggestion that theosis be measured by whether we know God more. But, given that the knowledge of God is infinite, “more,” is an almost meaningless concept. In truth, there are no measures in these matters. The notion of “progress” in theosis is simply the wrong question.
In my experience as a confessor over the years, I have seen no good come from trying to judge or measure progress in our lives. In a culture that is enthralled to the “self” (a false construct if ever there was one), it is almost certain that the attention we give to perceiving progress is nothing more than feeding an inner delusion. In blunt terms, “Who cares?”
The proper attention of the spiritual life is God as we know Him in the face of Jesus Christ. On a primary level, this attention is expressed as we keep the commandments given to us by Christ.
Our culture forms and shapes in each of us the heart of a “manager.” We want to control, to shape, to predict, to compare, to direct, etc. Such a heart has a habit of reducing its world to the things that can be controlled, shaped, predicted, compared and directed. It diminishes human beings as well as the world in which we live. It has no place in the life of the soul.
The proper attention of the spiritual life is God as we know Him in the face of Jesus Christ. On a primary level, this attention is expressed as we keep the commandments given to us by Christ.
Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” Jn 14:21
This is not an approach to God through “the law.” The commandments of Christ are a true icon of Christ. All that He asks of us – love of God, love of neighbor, love of enemy – are images of His own character and face. He can be seen “in the least of these my brothers.” But the question, “I am loving my neighbor/enemy more?” is beside the point, a nurturing of a false consciousness. Love them now. Everything else is vanity.
Dan Ariel, a behavioral economist, is the author of Predictably Irrational. The premise of the book and behavioral economics is that human beings do not always always think and act in rational ways but more often are very irrational in our decisions and actions and those irrational responses are, in fact, predictable. Because current economic policy assumes rational responses, Ariely argues those policies are flawed because our behavior is not rational but irrational and predictably so. The book is interesting and worthy of consideration. Here is an excerpt that I thought interesting not only from an economic prospective but also from a spiritual and religious view.
In the chapter entitled The Cost of Social Norms (Why We Are Happy to Do Things , but Not When We Are Paid to Do Them) , the author examines the reality that we live in two different worlds – one where social norms prevail and the other where market norms prevail.
Social norms are wrapped up in our social nature and our need for community. They are usually warm and fuzzy. Instant paybacks are not required: you may help move your neighbor’s couch, but this doesn’t mean he has to come right over and move yours. It’s like opening a door for someone: it provides pleasure for both of you, and reciprocity is not immediately required.
The second world, the one governed by market norms, is very different. There is nothing warm and fuzzy about it. The exchanges are sharp-edged: wages, prices, rents, interest, and cost-and-benefits. Such market relationships are not necessarily evil or mean – in fact they include self-reliance, inventiveness, and individualism – but they do imply comparable benefits and prompt payments. When you are in the domain of market norms, you get what you pay for – that’s just the way it is. It is clear that when we keep social norms and market norms on their separate paths, life hums along pretty well. … When social and market norms collide, trouble sets in.
Ariely developed experiments to explore the effects of social and market norms. There were several experiments cited. However, this statement summarizes, in general, the conclusions of the experiments:
So we live in two worlds: one characterized by social exchanges and the other characterized by market exchanges. And we apply different norms to these two kinds of relationships. Moreover, introducing market norms into social changes, as we have seen, violates the social norms and hurts the relationships. Once this type of mistake has been committed, recovering a social relationship is difficult.
This study illustrates well the point:
My good friends Uri Gneezy (a professor at the University of California at San Diego) and Aldo Rustichini (a professor at the University of Minnesota) provided a very clever test of the long-term effects of a switch from social to market norms.
A few years ago, they studied a day care center in Israel to determine whether imposing a fine on parents who arrived late to pick up their children was a useful deterrent. Uri and Aldo concluded that the fine didn’t work well and in fact it had long-term negative effects. Why? Before the fine was introduced, the teachers and parents had a social contract, with social norms about being late. Thus, if parents were late – as they occasionally were -they felt guilty about it-and their guilt compelled them to be more prompt in picking up their kids in the future. (In Israel, guilt seems to be an effective way to get compliance.) But once the fine was imposed, the day care center had inadvertently replaced the social norms with market norms. Now that the parents were paying for their tardiness, they interpreted the situation in terms of market norms. In other words, since they were being fined, they could decide for themselves whether to be late or not, and they frequently chose to be late. Needless to say, this was not what the day care center intended.
But the real story only started here. The most interesting part occurred a few weeks later, when the day care center removed the fine. Now he center was back to the social norm. Would the parents also return to the social norm? Would their guilt return as well? Not at all. Once the fine was removed, the behavior of the parent didn’t change. They continued to pick up their kids late. In act, when the fine was removed, there was a slight increase in the number of tardy pickups (after all, both the social norms and the fine had been removed).
This experiment illustrates an unfortunate fact: when a social norm collides with a market norm, the social norm goes away for a long time. In other words, social relationships are not easy to reestablish. Once the bloom is off the rose-once a social norm is trumped by a market norm – it will rarely return.
The church has chosen to adopt market norms (consumerism) to achieve what it believed it could not accomplish, or accomplish as well, with social norms. It has subjugated social norms (koinonia, community, love, body) to market norms. The result has been similar to the experience of the Isreali daycare. Once the market norms prevail, church members feel they are paying for their “misbehavior” or they feel a sense of entitlement and expect to receive “what they are paying for”. As I begin to understand how social and market norms interrelate, it becomes clearer why so many churches are struggling.
What bothers me the most is the conclusion that once a social norm is trumped by a market norm – it will rarely return. The implication is that consumer churches cannot just reinstate social norms and expect to return to being the church (become), the body of Christ. For leaders of churches who are searching to escape the grasp of consumerism, this seems to negate a strategy that would simply trash the market norms and expect that koinonia, community, love, body, et al will be restored. It is an interesting and challenging problem. I am going to give it more thought.
The Second Half
In the first half, my faith was misguided. Transition to the second half brought a deeper and more truthful understanding of faith.
A faith centered, not in my ability to effect my salvation through rule keeping, but a faith in a Trinitarian God, through whom all things were created and exist. Faithfulness is no longer measured by rule keeping, Faithfulness is now defined defined by love for God with all my heart, soul, strength and mind. And love for my neighbor as myself.
The following are some scripture passages prominent in my transition:
Isaiah 6:5 NIV
“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
Psalm 73:16-17 NIV
When I tried to understand all this, it troubled me deeply till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny.
John 6:29 NIV
Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
Romans 3:20 NIV
Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.
Romans 7:6 NIV
But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.
Ephesians 2:8-10,13 NIV
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. [For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
Galatians 5:22-23 NIV
… the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self- control. …
2 Corinthians 3:3-6 NIV
You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. Such confidence we have through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
1 Timothy 4:10 NIV
That is why we labor and strive, because we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, and especially of those who believe.
It is important to understand that transition into the second half is not a discrete event, but is a continual process extending to the end of life.Although my faith is distinctly different, I am fully aware that I have only begun to plumb the depth and breath of my relationship with the Infinite.
An understanding essential to faith development is illustrated by the following:
This image reflects my mindset in the first half. The solid lines represent the known. As knowledge increases, the unknown, represented by dotted lines, is reduced permitting greater control over my life. The implications to faith development are profound. Transcendence is squeezed out. (Thanks Leonard Allen)
The second image illustrates my mindset in the second half. Rather than driving out the unknown, it is embraced. The more that is learned the more there is to be learned. Rather than reducing transcendence, it is enlarged. The immensity of that reality is overwhelming. (Thanks Leonard Allen)
The following images depict my relationship to God in the first half and the second half. (Thanks Pastor Paul)
My faith in the first half was misguided, but the faith challenges of the first half are also challenges to my faith in the second half. Sin, myopia and disenchantment, each in their particular fashion, ultimately sabotage our efforts to become the beings we were created to be. Creatures created in the image of their creator.
Hopefully, the preceding has provided a second half framework that provides some insight into the challenges to my faith in the second half.
Faith challenges in the Second Half
People look at you and think you’re saints, but beneath the skin you’re total frauds.”
Matthew 23:28 MSG
The simplest way I can describe the difference between my faith in the first half and my faith in the second half is: The first half was DO, the second half is BE. However, that description is a caricature and fails to embrace the deep paradox of Christian faith, which is BE and DO.
That paradox is apparent in 2 Peter 1:2-9
His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins. 2Peter 1:2-9
Peter asserts , if the qualities that keep us from being ineffective and unproductive are missing, we are near-sighted and blind and have forgotten our sins are forgiven.
Forgetfulness is an affliction of our humanity. More obvious in my later years, memory has been a challenge throughout my life. Reasons for that are in dispute, but the problem is real. It seems to me that scripture is in some way God’s acknowledgement of humanity’s propensity to forget. Scripture tells stories of forgetting and continually admonishes readers to remember. Though it may seem a remote possibility that we could forget what God has done for us through the sacrifice of Jesus for our sins, evidence to the contrary abounds, both in scripture and in our lives. A source of forgetfulness is distraction. Opportunities for distraction are endless in the modern age.
A struggle that was waged and lost in the Garden of Eden is still relevant for me in the latter years of my faith journey.
The following quotes captures the essence of this challenge.
I fear, that more often than not, we yield to easily to what is doable and practical and popular. In that process we sacrifice the pursuit of our heart’s desire to seek and know God. We find ourselves giving in to our doubts, settling for keeping a checklist of things we know we can do, or can soon learn how to do, instead of pursuing what matters most and living with the adventure and anxiety that pursuing God requires. [adapted from “The Answer to How? is Yes”]
…our faith is not in our “certainty” but in our “confidence,” and the difference between those two terms is trust. Jerad Byas
Trusting God is not a priority when you believe that life’s ambition should be to achieve control, create stability and predictability, and provide safety and security for your family and yourself. Any degree of success in life is measured by the presence of those factors. If it was to be, it was up to me.
Although God has taught me otherwise, The threat of self-sufficiency to my faith remains a constant companion. In the second half self-sufficiency resides not co much in accomplishment but in certainty. Certainty, not about my ability to achieve, but certainty about my rightness, the self-delusion of infallibility. Self-sufficiency based on achievement is is easily refuted by failure. Self-sufficiency established on perceived infallibility is unyielding.
A whole lot of us go through life assuming that we are basically right , basically all the time, about basically everything : about our political and intellectual convictions , our religious and moral beliefs , our assessment of other people , our memories , our grasp of facts . As absurd as it sounds when we stop to think about it , our steady state seems to be one of unconsciously assuming that we are very close to omniscient.
Schulz, Kathryn. Being Wrong
self-sufficiency makes God experience impossible! Richard Beck
… it is ultimately wrongness , not rightness , that can teach us who we are. When we know who we are , we have no recourse but God. ( i.e Psalm 73:16-17; Isa 6:1)
Augustine of Hippo, a fifth-century bishop and theologian, wrote, “The way to Christ is first through humility, second through humility, third through humility. If humility does not precede and accompany and follow every good work we do, if it is not before us to focus on, if it is not beside us to lean upon, if it is not behind us to fence us in, pride will wrench from our hand any good deed we do at the very moment we do it.
“In the struggle against your own weakness, humility is the greatest virtue. Humility is having an accurate assessment of your own nature and your own place in the cosmos. Humility is awareness that you are an underdog in the struggle against your own weakness. Humility is an awareness that your individual talents alone are inadequate to the tasks that have been assigned to you. Humility reminds you that you are not the center of the universe, but you serve a larger order.” The Road to Character, David Brooks
Biblically, salvation isn’t just about forgiveness, it’s also about mortal weakness and incapacity. As the church fathers pointed out, God might forgive you, but that doesn’t change the vulnerability of your mortal flesh to the forces of Sin and Death! Something has to change your very being if you want to be fully saved and liberated from Sin and Death. Richard Beck
As stated earlier :failure to manage sin is an uninterrupted thread that runs through the first half and second half. I have found no evidence that Paul’s admonitions in Ephesians 4:22-32 are less relevant in the modern age or in the second half.
I have found, in the second half, there is an added dimension to my struggle with sin that was not comprehended in the first half. That struggle relates to Jesus’ “..but I tell you…” statements in the sermon on the mount. Rohr describes it as an issue of integrity, “…Integrity largely has to do with purifying our intentions and a growing honesty about our actual motives.” .
I no longer have the shelter of doing good works. The presence of God’s Holy Spirit in me does not allow me to be satisfied with right actions but demands integrity, doing the right thing for the right reason. If the first half’s struggle with sin was a battle for my will, the second half’s struggle with sin is a battle for my soul. In deed, something had to change…
It is a battle that can only be won because…His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
Disenchantment …a skeptical stance toward robustly metaphysical and supernatural expressions, experiences, events, and beliefs within Christianity.
Please reference my comments on disenchantment in part 1 that are even more applicable to the second half because of the nature of my second half faith.
Disenchanted, doubting Christians tend to be preoccupied with their own thoughts about faith, working hard to get it all sorted out in their minds, getting the answers to all their questions about faith and the bible. The buffered self’s experience of faith isn’t an outward posture of receptivity but thinking a lot. Questions about God rather than experience with God seem to dominate the faith experience.
All this seems to suggest that edging back toward enchantment may involve getting us out of our heads. Beck
Walter Brueggemann says, “The gospel is… a truth widely held, but a truth greatly reduced. It is a truth that has been flattened, trivialized, and rendered inane. Partly, the gospel is simply an old habit among us, neither valued nor questioned. But more than that, our technical way of thinking reduces mystery to problem, transforms assurance into certitude, quality into quantity, and so takes the categories of biblical faith and represents them in manageable shapes.”
And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
This sentence, mostly hidden in the midst of Paul’s admonitions in Ephesians 4, addresses the most terrifying reality of my existence as a Christ follower. It is my understanding that despite all that I believe to be true about God …he loves me…he has forgiven me…saved me … Christ lives in me… ad infinitum, there is the possibility I can willfully disregard all those realities and choose to go my own way. Oh, how God’s Spirit in me must grieve.
This is a mystery that I have not yet fathomed, but God’s grace remains.
Gumball Machine prayer
Despite all those who are denouncing the idea of prayers for the victims … I will continue to pray for the victims and their families and for an end to this mindless violence, and I hope you will, too.
In fact, … I would posit that the lack of thought and prayers is probably the single biggest factor in what is behind them. Mike Huckabee
When we treat prayer like a gumball machine (in goes the prayer; out comes the result), we rob ourselves of deeper relationship with God. We can also do real damage to others.
At its best, this kind of talk about prayer reduces God to Santa Claus: We ask, and if we are good—if we put the right coin in the machine—God gives. At its worst, this theology condemns those who suffer most deeply by judging them to be “not prayerful enough” or “not good enough” to deserve presents from the Santa-God.
Aside from the additional violence this theology of prayer does to those who are suffering, it also abdicates the praying person of any responsibility for acting in the world. What happens next is up to the Santa-God, and we play no part in bringing about God’s will on earth. It is laissez-faire free market capitalism come to reside in American theology—the invisible hand does the work, and our job is to sit back and watch it work.
Mike Huckabee is not the first person to suggest that prayer works like a gumball machine. He’s part of a tradition of American thinking about prayer that judges those who suffer and absolves the praying person of any responsibility to act. It has been thriving for decades.
But applying this theology to gun violence may be the single most dangerous abuse of prayer in our lifetimes. This is a case in which we simply can’t afford to pray and walk away. If we need more prayer, as Huckabee posits, then it must be the kind of prayer that is unceasing, the kind that seamlessly transitions into the daily work of bringing about God’s kingdom on earth.
https://www.christiancentury.org/blog-post/guest-post/prayer-isn-t-gumball-machine
