Spiritual Formation and Childhood
We’ve touched on a few “Ideas in the Air” (underlying cultural assumptions we typically accept without considering) that dramatically impact our discipleship.
One of them is that Jesus’ primary goal was to save us from our sins. This leads to the idea that we are to “accept Jesus,” stop goofing around, and tell others to do the same.
Strahan Coleman writes, “Now I want to be careful here, because of course the Scriptures do tell us that Jesus died for our sins…But they’re also clear that this wasn’t the main reason He came.
Forgiveness wasn’t Christ’s ultimate goal on the cross. Reconciliation was. And there’s an important difference. Reconciliation literally means the restoration of friendship. So many of us are like children who feel as though God has forgiven us, but that He doesn’t like us. It’s entirely possible to believe you’re forgiven but not that you’re liked.”
This “transactional” gospel has potentially harmful downstream consequences.
“Because if forgiveness is the pinnacle of the gospel, then behavior modification, mission, and repentance are the most important threads. Sometimes I wonder if this is all the world has seen or learned from us over the years: a transactional spirituality more obsessed with the evil in the world and our personal sin than with the wonder of divine friendship that God’s love came to give us.”
Coleman may be on to something that ties into this central question of spiritual formation with which we’ve been wrestling: How does one person become more like another? If the point of the Christian life is to become more attuned to God, others, and ourselves and become more like Jesus (to think, act, relate, and love more like Him), how does that transformation happen? And what role do relationships and friendship play in our formation?
Missed It By That Much
I’ve asked you to consider that human beings intuitively design and engage in formative ecosystems all the time and that these cultures almost always embody five key elements: time, habit, community, intimacy, and instruction (though modern Christian discipleship is often an outlier).
Western Christianity tends to function from the idea that instruction is the primary (if not sole) influence on our formation.
The modern Christian spiritual formation movement is about 50 years old and tends to focus on habits as a key formative factor. It encourages us to experiment with and practice various disciplines, some of which have been lost to history: silence, solitude, frugality, simplicity, contemplative prayer, fasting, etc.
Unfortunately, these two camps are sometimes at odds. The instructional bunch may accuse those in the spiritual formation effort of being too experiential or unbiblical. Those in the spiritual formation effort often arrive there because they have experienced the downsides of institutional Christianity and are concerned about a lack of character formation, relationship, love, unity, and charity in the more instructional circles.
However, perhaps both groups are simply focusing on two of the five elements, which means we still have some room to grow!
Baby, Baby
When is the most formative time in a person’s life? When is the human heart most supple, most susceptible, most embracing of ideas and desires?
I suspect we would agree that childhood is our most spiritually formative period. I’ve read several places that our character and personality are molded and solidified by the time we’re six, eight, or ten years old. I suspect this is why so many marketers, advertisers, media outlets, influencers, governments, and churches want to get a hold of our kids as early as possible. We are most influenceable when our hearts are young, tender, innocent, and longing for connection.
Uncovering the five elements in our early lives is a no-brainer. In a healthy environment, at least three of these factors are present while we’re still in the womb. Mom is obviously always with her child, and she frequently communicates with her baby through words, humming, singing, etc. They experience a unique and unmatched physical and emotional intimacy. Maybe Dad and other friends and family talk to the child or (with permission, I hope) feel the baby kick as the child’s community rallies around him before he even sees their faces.
After birth, these elements intensify. The baby is constantly held, cuddled, comforted, and adored through various acts of community and intimacy. Habits are established immediately: eating, sleeping, changing, burping, play. Some of these habits are instilled without instruction, though spoken commands come early. Jessica and I taught both of our boys a few hand signs before they could talk: “I want more,” “All done,” and “Please.”
There’s something emotional, experiential, and even mystical about the formation of a child’s heart as she experiences the five elements. Her healthy development molds her into a vibrant, joyful human being, interconnected with and dependent on flourishing vital relationships.
Just a Theory?
Just for giggles, let’s explore a little psychology. Attachment theory, at least according to Google AI, is “a psychological concept that explains how early relationships between infants and their primary caregivers significantly impact a person’s emotional development and future relationships.”
Our ability and capacity to form secure, healthy, lasting relationships with God, others, and ourselves are deeply impacted by whether we experienced those with our initial caregivers. This period molds our ideas (the assumptions and conclusions that unconsciously power and govern us) about God, others, and ourselves. But remember, ideas aren’t so much intellectual conclusions as they are experienced realities.
The old example is that if you had an emotionally detached or abusive father, you might be inclined to relate to God the Father similarly. Time and instruction may be present in this scenario, but habits, community, and intimacy may be missing or even damaging. So today, you may find It hard to trust and relate to God. However, if your father was attuned to you and you enjoyed a healthy emotional relationship with Him, you may find it much easier to embrace and experience God as Father.
If a child grows up in a family culture where the unspoken rule is, “We don’t talk about such and such,” or she never sees her caregivers argue, cry, or apologize, she will often be formed in the idea that authority figures are to be obeyed but not relied on for attunement or emotional fulfillment. As she matures, she will generally assume that God relates the same way. Her early childhood was missing certain habits, relational intimacy, and deep community.
A few posts ago, we mentioned neuroscientist Curt Thompson, who notes that “when each one of us comes into the world, we enter it looking for someone looking for us. Our greatest need as human beings is to be known, and to know that the person who knows us will be there for us.”
This “knowing” goes far beyond physical presence and provision. Thompson also writes, “We can grow up in homes in which the food finds the table, the money finds the college funds, and the family even finds church each Sunday; but somehow our hearts remain undiscovered by the two people we most need to know – our parents.”
Our capacity and desire to experience security in God, others, and ourselves are somehow tied to our earliest years and relationships, and to how those relationships flourished (or didn’t) in the context of the five elements. Were we gently and lovingly formed in a small culture where someone wanted to discover and know our hearts? If not, are we aware of it today?
Full Circle
You may now think this is one of the oddest articles on discipleship you’ve read, but hear me out. We aim to love more like Jesus, the most emotionally stable and relationally secure person in history. If we want to become more like Him, developing secure relational attachments to Him, others, and ourselves is critical to our spiritual formation. Since He embodies and exemplifies these five elements, we should carefully examine how they are (or aren’t) manifested in our own lives.
Let’s tie this back to Coleman’s comments above. Are we functioning from the idea that Jesus’ primary goal is to save us from our sins or that His rescue is a means to a deeper end – mainly an intimate friendship with us? Is our discipleship transactional or relational?
A friend once asked me how I experienced Jesus in prayer. He then asked how I thought Jesus experienced me.
“What do you mean? Why would Jesus experience me?”
My response uncovered a transactional idea of Jesus. Of course, He experiences me, and He experiences you. He delights in doing so. God not only loves you. He likes you.
To be uncomfortably candid, a faith centered only on the forgiveness of sins doesn’t really require five elements. It requires us to show up to church, repent, and maybe tell others about Jesus without expecting to develop a relationship with them.
But if we seek to think, act, relate, and love more like Jesus, we can revisit the most formative time in our lives and creatively and winsomely brainstorm how we might carry the five elements forward today.
There’s no rocket science here. Just consider a close friendship you’ve enjoyed, and you’ll probably discover the same patterns as early childhood. Were the five elements present? Did you make time for each other and do things together? Were you vulnerable and raw with each other? Did you form habits together and help each other make decisions or avoid pitfalls? Did that friendship form you? Can you look back and see how the experience of the other person made you kinder, gentler, or a better listener?
What if God desires that for each of us, though in an even grander, more compassionate way?
This suggests that people who wish to become more like Jesus for the good of mankind and creation should consider how to form and foster communities that might look different from what many experience today. Discipleship ecosystems could learn from healthy families with young children, the “college experience,” AA, or deep friendships.
If our hearts are best formed through a powerful and wonderful mix of these five elements, and are transformed more through relationship and experience than through instruction alone, then these types of spiritual formation communities may just be some of the most radical, quizzical, odd groups in town.
Kind of like Jesus and His strange followers, and those bizarre people in Acts 2:42-47.
