Blissful Ignorance?
Exploring Our Stories in Our Christian Spiritual Formation
Last week, we introduced the first of the Three Primary Problems that impede our spiritual journeys in Jesus: The Discipleship Dilemma. To become more like Jesus, we grow to know Him and ourselves better, though modern Christianity often ignores or condemns inner exploration and work.
Let’s back up for a bit of context. We’re digging into The Great Omission, philosopher Dallas Willard’s phrase to describe modern Christianity. We talk about making disciples, but struggle to do so.
A disciple is an apprentice of Jesus for the purpose of becoming more like Him, yet few of us are part of communities that are structured or intended to form us. Convert us? Perhaps. Educate us? Probably. Engage us in service to our churches and communities? Hopefully.
But to form us? To purposefully, willfully, and openly guide us into living a life more like Christ? To become more sacrificial, kind, relationally shrewd, radically generous, uncommonly wise, and internally peaceful? To give up control, the need to get in the last word, and the relentless quest to be powerful? To be so centered, so grounded, so alive in God that we no longer need to perform, achieve, find our identity in people, or jockey for position? That we do the things God would have us do without even thinking about them?
Let’s be honest – do we really want communities like that? Sounds like a lot of time and work.
I attended a series of lectures this past weekend regarding Christian spiritual formation and how human beings change, given by a PhD serving in the mission field.
After the sessions ended, I asked the well-traveled speaker the same question I’ve been asking pastors and leaders for the past several years: Is “The Great Omission” an accurate term to describe modern Christianity? Despite the ubiquitous availability of Christian teaching, a startling abundance (I would argue a glut) of Christian media and resources, and (at least in many countries) wide availability of structured churches, is genuine spiritual formation missing?
He replied, “Yes. And it’s that way around the world.”
“Why? Why are there so few intentionally formative communities?”
“Because people don’t want it.”
I’m not quite ready to conclude the same, as there may be other factors in play.
As I introduced in a previous post called “The Wall,” if we accept the theory that there are six phases to our discipleship journey and modern church institutions only instruct and guide us in the first three, we may not even know there are deeper stages and experiences of our spiritual formation.
In other words, we may not desire deeper formation because we aren’t consciously aware that there is anything else to desire.
Perhaps we’re too busy, too anesthetized, too steeped in our religious power structures and traditions to notice (as Thoreau insightfully wrote) that we are living “lives of quiet desperation.” Though I remain hopeful that millions of people recognize that a life in Christ is far more than “the sinner’s prayer,” doing Christian things, and accumulating Bible knowledge.
Does Your Story Matter?
So just how important is it to explore and understand our stories, wounds, joys, families of origin, and key experiences in our journey to become more like Jesus?
As it turns out, it’s essential.
Let’s review one of the central premises with which we’ve been wrestling. We are powered by ideas: assumptions, principles, and conclusions that sit on the bedrock of our hearts. These ideas are not so much intellectual facts as they are experienced realities.
If our hearts are our roots, and ideas and desires are the soil in which our hearts are planted, these idea sets govern us, though largely in the background. Discipleship can therefore be described as the ongoing, progressive transformation of dark ideas to light ideas in the deepest parts of our souls.
It stands to reason that these ideas are most powerfully formed in us when our hearts are most supple and malleable – when we are children. So to mine for the ideas that power us, Jesus often invites us back into our stories – not only to our families of origin, but to key relationships, experiences, and events that have shaped us.
The More Things Change…
When I was in my twenties, I was heavily involved in the institutional church, which meant regular men’s retreats. They’ve become rather formulaic over the decades, something I discovered when, after a long hiatus, I attended one at a local church with my sons last year.
It looked the same as those I attended back in the 90s: a message from a famous athlete, maybe a car show, lots of talk about what it means to be a “man’s man,” jokes about women and sex, and a wrap-up session that obligatorily quoted from Gladiator or Saving Private Ryan.
And, to a one, the retreats featured messages and discussions concerning pornography.
I get it. According to the porn-blocking software Covenant Eyes, it’s a $13 billion+ industry just in the U.S. alone. 1 in 5 mobile searches are for porn, and around 28,000 users look at it every second. 1 in 5 youth pastors and 1 in 7 senior pastors use porn regularly, which represents over 50,000 church leaders stateside.
Inevitably, the retreat speakers would reinforce the relational and social damage caused by objectifying women, men, and children, the need for personal accountability and porn-blocking devices, and the importance of prayer.
Yet, year after year, I’d hear the same types of messages and the same types of struggles from the same guys. It appeared the needle wasn’t moving. The shame was palpable.
What I didn’t hear were any invitations to explore the ideas and desires that were driving porn addictions in the first place.
To the speakers, the problem was clear: we’re sinners. Their solutions were as clear: accountability and technology.
Can those be good and helpful? Sure. But they are obviously insufficient.
Minister and mental health counselor Jay Stringer writes, “One of the reasons accountability fails to produce our desired results is that it becomes exclusively focused on lust and pornography…For community to be effective, we certainly have to address our sexual struggles. But we must do so through the lens that our sexual brokenness is simultaneously showing us the way to healing. Community is where we gather to understand and participate in one another’s stories and together shape the destiny of our collective future.” (italics mine)
Meaning, it isn’t enough to simply acknowledge our harmful behaviors. We choose harm and hurt because of underlying desires and ideas, which are most powerfully shaped by our stories.
To a one, the men and women I’ve known who struggle with porn have deep longings and desires that were good but became corrupted. They longed for acceptance, for belonging. They longed to be known. When those good desires were rejected, abused, or ignored (usually in their early years), desire turned to lust and lust turned to addiction.
If we don’t explore our stories and deal with them authentically, the sin may remain, our discipleship will be stunted, and our capacity to love as Jesus loves will be curtailed.
Weird Science
PTSD treatment pioneer Bessel Van Der Kolk notes how modern neuroscience affirms the need to explore our stories: “…our early experiences become prototypes for all our later connections with others, and how our most intimate sense of self is created in our minute-to-minute exchanges with our caregivers.”
If our hearts are secure in our early relationships, we are likely to form secure and healthy relationships later in life. But if our hearts are not carefully sought after, secured, and loved in flourishing attachments as children, we may struggle to find the same as adults.
If a deep disciple is someone capable of and willing to form loving, secure, self-giving relationships, the importance of evaluating our stories comes into clearer view. How our hearts were molded as children has a tremendous impact on how we relate to God, others, and ourselves now.
While this type of story exploration is socially and culturally acceptable in counseling rooms and recovery groups, it’s barely mentioned in the broader body.
The temptation may be to dismiss the importance of exploring our hearts and stories if we didn’t suffer something dramatic at home: alcoholism or abuse, for instance. But even if we grew up in more stable environments, what if our hearts today exhibit unexplained, constant anxiety? What about patterns of people-pleasing, conflict-avoidance, berating self-talk, hidden anger, passive-aggressive tendencies, or the relentless need to perform and achieve?
Every story is worth exploring because every person is worth exploring.
If Jesus is our model (being the most relationally secure human being to ever walk the planet), even these subtler, more socially acceptable destructive behaviors are areas for exploration and healing as we dive into the deep end of discipleship. Our capacity to love well depends on it.
As psychiatrist Curt Thompson notes, “Christian anthropology reveals, somewhat counterintuitively, that the depth and intensity of our desire for and unity with God directly and proportionately mirror the degree to which we become the truest version of our individual selves. “
And we can’t become the truest versions of ourselves if we don’t know ourselves, and that includes a slow, gentle, compassionate saunter back into the relationships and experiences that formed us.
