Spiritual Formation and the Inner Journey
Last week, I proposed that modern Christianity usually functions from a reduced and harmful idea of anthropology (what it means to be human), that we are “brains on sticks.” We simply need to be taught our way into spiritual formation. If we accumulate enough correct doctrine and biblical understanding, our discipleship journey is complete.
This idea (driven partly by Descartes’ flawed assertion that we are what we think) has created a culture (at least in Protestantism) that is hyper-focused on the weekend sermon, Bible studies, events, apologetics, and biblical teaching.
This has also led to the allowance and even promotion of controlling, insecure, narcissistic teachers and leaders littered throughout modern Christianity. As long as someone can teach the Bible with wit and conviction, they may get a pass on the other characteristics Paul so carefully lists as qualities of a leader and mature apprentice of Jesus.
Of course, biblical instruction, apologetics, and Bible studies are essential. Let’s just remind ourselves how scripturally literate the Pharisees were. Or, as J.C. Ryle points out, “A man possessed by thousands of demons recognized Jesus, but the men possessing thousands of scriptures couldn’t.”
The irony is that modern Christianity seems to be one of the few movements in which we assume we are being formed as long as we’re being instructed – that a weekly thirty-minute monologue is the formative pinnacle of our journey. That’s like asserting that a husband and wife are formed more alike simply by taking a weekly class, or that a civilian is formed into a soldier by nothing but studying books.
Discipleship is far more complex, relational, and experiential than simply adding information into our brains.
The Crux of the Matter
A young boy in the popular 1990s commercial asks his animal friends, “How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?” The turtle confesses he has never been able to eat one without biting into it and refers the boy to the wise owl. The owl decides to find out for himself, takes a few licks, bites into the lollipop, and concludes, “The answer is three.”
We’ve wrestled with the macro-challenge (The Great Omission) and the need for the inward journey as we become more like Jesus. We’re beginning to confront the fact that we may not have access to intentional communities and ecosystems to take this journey. These premises have prepared us to start exploring the vore (the Tootsie Roll at the center, as it were) of our spiritual formation.
How does one person become more like another person? Or, to use the Soil & Roots vernacular with which you’re becoming accustomed: how are our inner, bedrock ideas and desires formed and transformed?
Genuine discipleship is the ongoing formation of both our conscious and unconscious layers. If we’re eventually going to act, relate, and love more like Jesus without even thinking about it, these hidden parts of ourselves need attention. Ideas and desires are at least two ordinarily unconscious forces that power and govern us, and our hearts contain both light and dark versions. Therefore, healthy, life-giving spiritual formation transforms dark ideas and desires into light ones.
We become more like Jesus as our ideas and desires take on His likeness.
Heartview
The first step toward transforming hidden ideas and desires is to become aware of them. I’ve suggested an approach I call “Heartview,” which involves paying attention to our thought patterns, emotions, health, relationships, behaviors, words, and how we use time and money (the Eight Indicators).
For example, if we discover we suffer from a reckless and impulsive approach to money, that’s an outward indicator of an inward reality. It’s an invitation to explore why we’re reckless, which often involves going back into our story to uncover the ideas and desires that drive our financial behaviors.
This uncovering may be painful. Our impulsive money habits may result from a heart desperately searching to be known, validated, and soothed, perhaps due to key relationships that didn’t or don’t provide inner security. However, the highs from product purchases are short-lived and elusive, so we find ourselves repeating the same destructive behavior.
I had mentioned that the inward journey is best taken when we live in a sense of security and safety – when we’re immersed in God’s unconditional love. We now see why. Our mining expedition may be cut short if we start to uncover dark and harmful ideas and desires amid fear of rejection, judgment, or condemnation. If we begin to identify hurts, wounds, and insecurities planted in our hearts by those we trusted and loved without first being assured of our groundedness in God, we may find ourselves growing embittered and cold, rather than dealing authentically and compassionately with these revelations.
The inward journey typically means uncovering not only the ways we hurt ourselves and others but also the ways others have hurt us. It requires a courageous curiosity best planted in God’s reassurance that He isn’t going anywhere. Graciously, He often allows us to experience such assurance in a friend who is willing to join us on our inward journey and who, likewise, doesn’t go anywhere.
Idea Formation
We will take our time answering the question, “How is one person formed more like another?” because human beings are complex, and the journey to become more like Jesus is not nearly as simple and straightforward as we might assume.
Let’s start with these hidden ideas.
Ideas aren’t so much intellectual conclusions as they are experienced realities. A woman may believe she is a child of God, though she may still struggle with an eating disorder (a behavior, one of our Eight Indicators) rooted in self-hatred or relationship abandonment. Her belief is that God accepts her, though her idea is that she isn’t worth being accepted by anyone. She may have been instructed repeatedly that she is a marvelous creature of inestimable value, but her heart refuses to embrace that teaching. Something else beyond instruction is needed to help her heart experience the transformation of a dark idea into a light one.
I intellectually believe that God is in control and that I am safe in His care. Yet my thought patterns (another Heartview Indicator) reveal a different idea. I find myself constantly worrying about the future or ruminating on the past. A deep disciple lives joyfully in the present. He doesn’t concern himself with tomorrow or attempt to rewrite history mentally. I intellectually believe I am safe, but a different, harmful set of ideas powers my heart. I am experiencing inner disintegration or disconnectedness. Something else beyond instruction is needed to help my heart connect with my belief experientially.
Transformation: More Than Meets the Eye
Ideas are formed in three ways: initially, abruptly, and progressively.
Initially, we are born with a set of ideas in our hearts. We assume we are eternal beings. We come pre-loaded with some concepts of good and evil. The two-year-old who brazenly steals from his sibling often hides the theft because he knows it’s wrong, even before someone tells him it’s wrong.
Of course, we often talk ourselves out of some of these initial ideas. Many people reject the idea that we’re eternal creatures and clear definitions of right and wrong.
If we find ourselves confused, spending time in a first-grade classroom asking fundamental questions about life and morality will often bring us back around. Children are far more attuned to life-giving ideas than the rest of us.
Abrupt changes in our ideas occur most often through tragedy or divine intervention. Any abuse (emotional, verbal, sexual, spiritual) can cause sudden and remarkable changes in our hidden ideas, frequently bending us toward darkness. If a parent abandons a child, that child may suffer harmful changes to their ideas of identity, value, and purpose. A difficult illness, loss of a loved one, divorce, betrayal, job loss…these may all result in unconscious, hidden changes to core sets of ideas.
Tragedy doesn’t always result in harmful ideas. Sometimes, it can be the catalyst for strengthening and bolstering life-giving assumptions.
Divine intervention sometimes results in the sudden transformation of dark ideas. Some who come into the Kingdom quickly, for example, experience an immediate transformation of ideas of identity (their hearts embrace their adoption into God’s family), value (their self-condemnation is transformed into forgiveness), or power (their hearts relinquish control).
However, while we arrive with some ideas already implanted and may experience abrupt shifts at times, most of our spiritual formation happens progressively. Though hearts and spirits break quickly, they don’t heal nearly as fast.
Progressive Formation
Many people following Jesus unconsciously function from the idea that we need to perform to earn and keep God’s favor. If we look carefully (just like peering into one of those 1990s Magic Eye puzzles), we’ll find this idea interwoven into all sorts of Christian teachings and subcultures. Yes, God loves us unconditionally, but…we need to evangelize more, pray more, serve more, give more, and attend more. Just like the child who begins to wonder if he can ever live up to his parents’ expectations, our hearts start to wonder if God really likes us when we fail to do all the stuff we’re supposed to do.
God is unfathomably patient, kind, gracious, and tender – though those words don’t describe the idea systems many of us were raised in, Christian or otherwise.
If we grew up in the West, this idea is also deeply ingrained in our societies: Get good grades, become the top athlete, and look like this supermodel. Watch commercials for five minutes, and you’ll be reminded about the car you don’t have, the money you should have made, the looks you used to enjoy, and the stuff you have yet to buy.
We live in an idea system that subtly and not-so-subtly strong-arms us into embracing constant, impossible comparisons. Comparisons are, by necessity, indications that we aren’t measuring up—thus, we need to perform better. Even if our faith communities don’t embrace this idea, the broader culture is so strong that we often transpose it back onto God anyway.
A harmful idea like this doesn’t reform overnight, and it doesn’t reform simply by being told it isn’t true or good. It doesn’t transform from dark to light, from hurtful to helpful, merely by repeating that God loves His children unconditionally.
If our hearts are rooted in the idea that we are what we perform, a progressive transformation of that idea must be experienced, not simply taught. Our hearts may need to be saturated in a relationship with someone who loves us just because we exist and not for what we can do for them. We accept the love and care of someone who wants to know us for no other reason than that we are worth being known.
The dark idea of performance is unwound and undone by experiencing a love that knows and accepts us without attempting to control, manipulate, or compel us. This transformation is not a one-time event. Our hearts come to embrace unconditional love by experiencing it again and again, through perhaps an unlimited number of expressions.
A quiet night sitting on the porch with our spouse. The wild and recklessly abandoned hug of a three-year-old child. The whisper of a morning breeze. The listening ear of a loyal friend who lets you share the same story for the hundredth time because doing so is healing. Letting God speak first in our prayers. Holding someone’s hand as they lie in a hospital room.
I’m not saying that sharing Jesus, serving, reading, studying, and praying more is bad—far from it. But there’s a difference between “doing more” because we quietly fear disappointing a temperamental God (or other people) and doing more because we are so free, so joyful, so passionately in love with God, so enveloped by His love for us that we engage Him, others, and the world with a bright heart and calm inner life.
The progressive transformation of dark ideas is a patient, gentle adventure that usually involves all five elements (time, habit, community, intimacy, and instruction). And it’s deeply relational, not simply intellectual.
We are not, after all, human doings. We are human beings.
There is much, much more to come.
