Our fourth key element of spiritual formation is intimacy. Though every human longs for it, it remains elusive, particularly in Western culture and churches. A “loneliness epidemic” continues to plague the West, even though we have more time and opportunity to be in relationships.
We explore surprising findings in neuroscience that suggest we may be viewing our relationships with God, ourselves, and others as separate connections, yet they arenโt so easily separated.
TRANSCRIPTION
Intimacy in Spiritual Formation
An Inauspicious Beginning
Jessica and I were married in 1995 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was a wonderful few days of celebration with family and friends.
During our rehearsal dinner the night before the ceremony, we exchanged gifts with the bridesmaids and groomsmen, and with each other.
At one particularly emotional moment of the evening, Jessica tearfully opened a small jewelry box and handed me a small golden key tied to a ribbon.ย She told me that it was the โkey to her heart,โ and that she was now giving it to me.ย I was now entrusted with protecting and securing her heart, and this little gold key symbolized her love and devotion to me as we began our journey together.
It was a beautiful moment and a genuine act of sacrifice and trust on her part. I was very touched.
The following day, we got married, and the day after that, we headed out of town to our honeymoon in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
As far as honeymoons go, it probably wasnโt the best experience. Forgotten luggage, some food poisoning, a second-degree sunburn, and even some motion sickness werenโt particularly enjoyable events at the time but make for great stories now.
However, as we were packing up to leave South Carolina and start the trip home, I realized with a sudden lump in my throat that I was missing something. I couldnโt find the small, golden key Jessica had given me just days before. I tore through our hotel room, took our luggage apart, ransacked my clothing and toiletriesโฆall to no avail.
Within just a week of saying, โI do,โ I had successfully lost the key to my wifeโs heart.
Fortunately, Jess is a forgiving person, and weโve forged a fantastic marriage, but sometimes our efforts to develop intimate relationships donโt go as planned.
Which brings us to the fourth key element of our spiritual formation: intimacy.
This entire season is focused on the Third Primary Problem, the Formation Gap.
Weโve proposed that New Testament discipleship embodies five critical elements, five necessary things in our journey to become more like the person of Jesus: time, habit, community, intimacy, and instruction.
A Brief Review of Time
Earlier this season, we explored time as a key element in our formation.ย As we began to introduce the idea of Greenhouses, what we also refer to as โFive Element Communities, what role does time play?
1.ย Time in intentional relationships. We seek to reorient and re-prioritize our lives so that we spend purposeful, celebrated time in specific discipling relationships. With God, others, ourselves, and His creation.
2.ย We are present in time. Weโre moving towards being present, spiritually attuned, gently pursuing, wisely inviting, in our relationships with God, others, self, and creation. A disciple minimizes distractions so we can be present in our relationships.
3. We encourage more dialogue, less monologue. We intentionally cultivate an environment where doubts, questions, concerns, and polite dissent are welcomed and encouraged in our time exploring both of Godโs books, primarily His first.
And we broke down time a bit more, focusing on our relationships.
In regard to our time with God: Five-element communities create time and space for so-called spiritual disciplines, or habits. And God is with us, obviously in our relationships with Him, but He also reveals Himself and relates to us through the three other relationships.
In regard to our time with others: Sometimes discipleship is more caught than taught, so we intentionally spend time with mature disciples and fellow sojourners: people who desire to think, behave, and love a lot like Jesus.
Regarding time with ourselves:ย This refersย to Season 2 and Heartview. Being courageously curious about why we think, behave, speak, and form the relationships we do.ย And that means digging into our stories. We invite God and trusted friends into the process of helping us identify how our hearts are showing their true desires and ideas through our Eight Indicators.
A Greenhouse focuses on the overall story of the Bible, which is the story of the King and His kingdom. And it focuses on exploring our own stories and how they fit into Godโs grand narrative.
A Brief Review of Habit
Then we explored the use of habits and spiritual disciplines in the life of a disciple. And we explored them in light of our four relationships.
ยท God still speaks, and disciples in Five-element communities practice the habit of listening for His voice.
ยทย We practice the habit of listening to othersโ hearts, not just their words.ย We practice asking โwhyโ related questions โ inviting others to dig beneath the surface to explore their own hearts for the purposes of healing, redemption, and restoration.
ยทย Disciples practice the habit of listening to their own hearts.ย We practice Heartview.ย We pay attention to our thoughts, behaviors, relationships, and feelings. We pay attention to our words, our health, and our approach towards time and money.ย These outward indicators point us to our inward reality โ the ideas and desires in our inner self, our roots.
ยท And we practice habits related to ruling, stewarding Godโs earth, which is the very first thing He told us to do.
A Brief Review of Community
Then we spent quite a few episodes on community, the third key element.
- We introduced the idea of โsitcom community,โ where everybody knows your name. That human beings long for committed, primary communities, but these have been largely discarded in the modern West. Instead, we find ourselves trying to keep any number of disparate communities together, and we canโt form the intimate relationships needed for spiritual formation.
- We discussed the Westโs assumptions about โprofessionalโ Christianity, which tends to create celebrity Christians and the underlying idea that we go to church to โbe taught,โ rather than to โbe formed.โ And we tend not to explore the Bible and Godโs second book of creation ourselves, because we just assume the professionals will tell us.ย That isnโt the Biblical model.
- We also compared and contrasted five-element communities with what most of us experience at church, in our small groups, or in our Bible studies.ย Weโre suggesting that Five-element communities are somewhat unique in that they exist specifically to solve the Three Primary Problems.
- We form these sitcom-type, committed communities for the purpose of becoming more like Jesus (knowing His story and our story) in the environment, the ethos of the Kingdom.
- We also talked about a few of the dangers that we expect to find in our communities, including the potential presence of covert and overt narcissists, understanding that they often seek out Christian communities. ย
An Introduction to Intimacy
And that brings us to the fourth element of our communities: intimacy.
When I first tried to articulate the five elements, I wrestled with different words to describe what the Gospels and Acts portray about people in these communities.ย โTransparencyโ is a good word.ย โTrustโ is a fantastic description.ย โVulnerabilityโ certainly describes Jesus, Peter, Paul, and the women who served with them. โAuthenticโ was a potential candidate, but it seems to have developed some strange overtones today.
And I actually tried to stay away from the word โintimacy,โ because it has become over-sexualized in our modern-day culture. In fairness, one of the common definitions of โintimacyโ is sexual intercourse.
But other definitions paint a more holistic picture:
ยท a close, familiar, and usually affectionate or loving personal relationship with another person or group.
ยท a close association with or detailed knowledge or deep understanding of a place, subject, period of history, etc.
ยท an act or expression serving as a token of familiarity, affection, or the like
ยท the quality of being comfortable, warm, or familiar
ยท privacy, especially as suitable to the telling of a secret[1]
Considering the extraordinary language and actions God uses to convey His love for people in the Old Testament, and how thatโs carried through in the New Testament in Jesus, the Gospels, and the writings of Paul and Peter, I realized I needed the strongest word possible to convey a depth of relationship in community.
And when we consider that the God of the universe is so intent on being with us, He actually resides in us in the person of the Holy Spirit, there was really no more debate.ย The best word to describe a critical element of community formation is โintimacy.โ
A close, familiar, and usually affectionate and loving personal relationship with another person or group.ย With a detailed knowledge or deep understanding. The quality of being comfortable, warm, and familiar.
Isnโt this what human beings long for, in our relationship with God and others?
Neuroscience Curt Thompson wrote, โOur deepest desire and highest hope is that there will be someone looking for us, and that this person will always be there for us and will pursue our hearts with a genuine desire to truly know us. Our greatest need as human beings it to be known, and to know that the person who knows us will be there for us.โ[2]
In other words, our deepest desire is for intimacy. To be known in a safe, secure, trusted relationship.
Weโre now far enough along in our exploration of Greenhouses that these elements begin to merge together.ย Itโs difficult to talk about intimacy without mentioning time or habit, for instance.
Modern evangelicalism is built on and stresses the idea that human beings can have a personal, intimate relationship with God in Jesus Christ.
We assume that growing in our relationship with the King of kings involves time. Itโs impossible to get to know someone well, and certainly intimately, if we donโt spend time with them.
And any real relationship involves various habits. In human relationships, this may be as simple as getting together for coffee once a week, taking walks together, or working together.ย Any relationship intended to become intimate must involve repeated behaviors.ย We grow in our intimacy with God through these habits, such as prayer, silence, and confession.
In modern Christianity, weโre well-trained and constantly reminded of our need to grow in our intimacy with God.
And we study, practice, and honor the relationship of marriage.ย It is, after all, a living metaphor of Jesusโ relationship with the entire community of His apprentices.ย Not that we always get marriage right, but at least we have abundant teachings and models of how we should develop intimacy in marriage.
Calvin and Self
But when we start talking about intimacy in relationships with ourselves and other humans in the community, things may get a little complicated.
In our postmodern churches, we tend to assume that we can have and develop a relationship with God apart from our relationship with others.
After all, the point is to accept Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior.ย We develop our private prayer life.ย We have our personal quiet time.ย We read our Bibles alone, and we do our devotionals alone.ย Many of the spiritual disciplines weโve explored are practicedโฆalone.
Knowledge of self is important. John Calvin wrote, โWe cannot expect to know God fully if we are not willing to know ourselves, for one depends on the other.โ[3]
To be sure, Calvin wasnโt talking about the Myers-Briggs personality test or the Enneagram. Calvin is encouraging us to confront our own hearts so that we find our need for God.
Kevin DeYoung further clarifies Calvinโs point, โKnow God. Know yourself. Know yourself to know your need of God. Know God to know you are not gods.โ[4]
Still, thereโs an important principle here.ย Our relationship with God depends on our relationship with ourselves. ย On our willingness to uncover and confront our own hearts, our ideas, our desires.ย Apparently, our ability to deepen our relationship with God depends on our willingness to deepen our understanding of ourselves.
Slightly Off-Topic
A short sidebar here.ย If you Google personality tests and assessments such as Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, Kolbe, or StrengthsFinder and read various Christian perspectives, youโre probably going to get an eye full.ย And I donโt mean about the accuracy of these tests.
Some Christians hold to the idea that studying and understanding your personality and talents is tantamount to self-worship and idolatry.
This type of criticism is a bit mystifying.ย If you walk into an art gallery and find a particular painting captivating, youโre going to want to study it.ย Youโre going to learn about its history and study its style.ย You may spend hours exploring the colors, the shapes, and the sizes.ย Youโll want to understand the story of why and how the artist created the painting.
Human beings are the Creatorโs crowning achievement. You are the work of a divine artist. And, frankly, youโre worth exploring. So, to take the time to better understand how your Creator wired you, what sort of talents and gifts Heโs given you, what your passions are, is to simply appreciate the wonder and creativity of your Creator and to learn more about his work of art.
So, providing we donโt use these tests as excuses to sin or rationalize some sort of self-worship (and I donโt think thatโs why most people take them), I think theyโre rather fascinating and should be enjoyed.
Surely, we can find better things to argue about.
Ok, back to the topic.
God desires an intimate, trusted relationship with us, and our ability to grow in that relationship is dependent on our willingness to dig into our own hearts.
Intimacy in Community
But weโre primarily talking about intimacy in community. What does it mean to form trusted relationships in which both parties are known, deeply known, in safety and security?
Weโre going to focus on another remark by Curt Thompson that Iโve wrestled with for some time.ย The reason I find his quote so challenging is that he connects dots that modern Christianity normally doesnโt.
He writes, โYou cannot know God if you do not experience being known by HimโฆAnd the degree that you are known by Him will be reflected in the way in which you are known by other people. In other words, your relationship with God is a direct reflection on the depth of your relationship with others.โ[5]
He makes two main points:
1. We know God by experiencing God
2. How well we know God is a reflection of how well weโre known by other people.
This is not a typical Christian sentiment โ that my experiencing God is a reflection of my being known by other people.
He goes on, โPerhaps you have not experienced what it means to be truly known; consequently, you have limited experience in opening yourself up to God in this way.โ[6]
Ouch.
Between Calvin and Thompson, weโre beginning to get a more unified, more dependent picture of intimacy in a relationship.
Our connections to God, ourselves, and others do not function in independent, isolated relationships. Instead, they form a type of interconnected relational matrix, and each one has a deep impact on the others.
Let me just add that this isnโt only true for our current relationships.ย Our past relationships and stories impact our ability or willingness to be deeply connected to people and to God today.
If weโre cold, distant, and detached with ourselves, that will be our pattern with others and with God.ย If we refuse to dig into our own hearts to explore our true ideas and desires, we wonโt explore the hearts of others, and we wonโt explore the heart of God.
But if we have a deep desire to know others and invite them into trusted relationships, chances are we routinely explore our own hearts, and also willingly engage with God in deeper and deeper places.
Next time we run into an avowed atheist, we might ask them how they relate to themselves. We might ask them about their story, about how others have treated them. We might inquire if theyโve ever been truly, deeply known by someone who is safe, someone who sought their goodness. Many people hate or disavow God, but it has nothing to do with apologetics or theology or even ideology.
Loneliness epidemic
Now weโre beginning to see why โintimacyโ made it into the five key elements. If every human being comes into the world longing to be known, and the depth of our relationship with God is directly tied to our being known by other people, then being in a community of people who genuinely desire to know us is vital to our spiritual formation โ to our hearts being formed into the likeness of Jesus.
So why does modern society struggle so much with this? Why do our Christian communities struggle so much with this?
Jeremy Linneman reports:
โAmericans are lonelier than everโeven though opportunities for social connection have exponentially increased. Even with affordable phone calls and free email, weโre talking to each other less. Despite the prevalence of car ownership and the low cost of cross-country air travel, weโre spending less time with our families.
After decades of bowling leagues, Americans began bowling alone. Today, in the age of social media, weโre not even bowling.
Weโre scrolling alone.โ[7]
He goes on, โThe former surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, was the first to call loneliness an epidemic. Murthy has shown that loneliness causes โan insidious type of stressโ that leads to chronic inflammation and an increased risk of heart disease, arthritis, and diabetes. Loneliness has the same effect on mortality as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.โ[8]
Author Rosaria Butterfield actually thinks the modern church breeds loneliness, particularly for single people.
โShe (Butterfield) believes we have declared independence from each other in our culture and, sadly, in our churches. Once upon a time, the church was โof one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in commonโ (Acts 4:32). Shared time, shared food, shared possessions. Shared identity. They were the early church โ a family bound together by the blood of Jesus.
Many of our churches today have left behind that picture of the family of God, though. The contemporary Western churchโs โabsolutely low or nonexistent culture of family of Godโ has fostered an unparalleled depth of loneliness, with single women in particular buried at the bottom.โ[9]
Itโs one thing if youโre married and have a family. At least we have some sort of home community.
But singles are often treated unconsciously as outcasts or as projects to be redeemed.ย If they donโt get โmarried off,โ something must be wrong with them.
The solution? A radical recapturing of new testament community.ย But not just with people who are at the same stage of life as we are.
โRosaria strongly warns against homogeneous small groups, particularly those that separate by age, sex, season of life, or common sin struggles. โWhat single women need are not more single women. What young families need are not more young families.โ Why? Rosaria continues, โSmall groups that are organized by a sociological category really weaken relationships across differences in a church. And it weakens our ability to really serve one another.โ[10]
A major challenge with a loneliness epidemic is that is becomes so normative, so accepted as an unconscious idea in the culture, many of us who struggle with loneliness donโt even know weโre lonely. And Iโm not just talking about people who willingly isolate themselves.ย We can be just as lonely sitting in church, sitting in a small group, and sitting in Sunday school.
It isnโt the fact weโre present or not physically present with other people โ itโs the degree to which we know others and are willing to be known.
So why might we resist genuine intimacy in our relationships with others and God?
The Risk of Intimacy
Because itโs inherently risky.
Back to Curt Thompson, he writes, โIf you allow yourself to be known by God, you invite a different and frankly more terrifying experience. You are now in a vulnerable position.ย If you permit others to know you, they can make their own assessment of your worth.ย They can react to you.ย You grant them the option to love you or to reject you. In essence, you must โ must โ trust another with yourself.โ[11]
Ah, now weโre getting to the soil and roots. Intimacy requires risk. To open ourselves up to God and others means we lay ourselves bare. In a sense, it means voluntarily being emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually naked.
And, as our first father and mother so powerfully experienced, our reaction to shame is not to stay naked. Itโs to grab some fig leaves.
To invite intimacy means that others will see our warts, our pride, our prejudices, our mistakes. And letโs face it, modern Christianity in the west places such pressure on our performance, on obedience, on doing and saying the things weโre supposed to do, the last thing we want is for others to know we may not be performing and obeying the way we should.
Have you ever met someone at church and thought, โNow this is someone who has it all together?โ Only to discover that, as you get to know them over time, you begin to see patterns and cracks and behaviors that strongly suggest not all is well in Camelot.
Not that they are aware or confessional โ theyโre attempting to maintain a certain image – but that you just notice certain things as the normal honeymoon stage of any relationship wears off.
Many Christians are extraordinarily image-conscious.ย We have a deep need to be seen a certain way in order to conform to what we believe the image of a โgood Christianโ should look like.
Ironically, we actually diminish and minimize what it means to be human in a relationship when we fight so hard to maintain a Christian image.
Weโre far better defined by our shared struggles than by whether we raise our hands during a worship song or can quote Bible verses.
But letโs face it.ย Not only do we not want to be truly known, but we also donโt want to get hurt.ย We donโt want our hearts broken; we donโt want to lose face, our reputation, or someoneโs approval.ย Our hearts make a calculation โ itโs actually better to have never loved at all than to have loved and lost.
Yet this is the way of Christ, and itโs the way of His apprentices.ย We do lay ourselves bare, we do take the risk of divulging ourselves, sharing ourselves, giving ourselves away in what we hope are healthy, trusted relationships.ย Not to take that risk is to deny our humanity, our deepest desire to know and be known.
Intimacy is not something to just be given away to everyone. Thatโs what prostitutes do, and it slowly fractures and kills their souls. No, we cultivate intimacy through consistent, trusted interactions with other people. We follow Jesus, who certainly didnโt give Himself to everyone. He didnโt trust everyone; He didnโt share His heart with everyone. Nor should we.
He was intimate, vulnerable with His community, His inner circle. His three closest friends and nine others, the women who ministered with Him. Lazarus, Mary, Martha.
And He did give His heart to many who left Him, abandoned Him, and one, in particular, who betrayed Him.ย Such is the way of offering our hearts to others.ย Sometimes they get broken.
Weโll close with a wonderful quote from C.S. Lewis that may be surprising to some of our evangelical ears. Lewis is making the point that God, in His mercy and creativity, draws us to Him in all sorts of intimate, intentional ways. And perhaps we are most intimate with God when we are most honest with Him โ even if our honesty doesnโt fit our refined Christian image.
Lewis wrote:
โHe works on all of us in all sorts of ways, not only through what we think our โreligious life.โ He works through Nature, through our own bodies, through books, sometimes through experiences which seem (at the time) anti-Christian. When a young man who has been going to church in a routine way honestly realizes that he does not believe in Christianity and stops going โ provided he does it for honestyโs sake and not just to annoy his parents โ the spirt of Christ is probably nearer to him then than it ever was before. But above all, He works on us through each other.โ[12]
โBut above all, He works on us through each other.โ Through our relationships. Our friends, our family, our communities. Though vulnerable, transparent, at times really frustrating relationships.
[1] Dictionary.com. Intimacy. Retrieved May 31, 2023, from https://www.dictionary.com/browse/intimacy.
[2] Young, A. (Creator). (2018, April 17). Why Your Family of Origin Impacts Your Life More Than Anything Else [Audio podcast episode]. The Place We Find Ourselves. https://theplacewefindourselves.libsyn.com/2-why-your-family-of-origin-impacts-your-life-more-than-anything-else
[3] Thompson, C. (2015). The Soul of Shame (p. 108). Inter-Varsity Press.
[4] https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevin-deyoung/a-calvin-clarification/
[5] Thompson, C. (2010). Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising Connections Between Neuroscience and Spiritual Practices that can Transform your Life and Relationship (p. 24). Tyndale Momentum.
[6] Thompson, C. (2010). Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising Connections Between Neuroscience and Spiritual Practices that can Transform your Life and Relationship (p. 24). Tyndale Momentum.
[7] https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/church-respond-loneliness-epidemic/
[8] https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/church-respond-loneliness-epidemic/
[9] https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/is-the-church-breeding-loneliness
[10] https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/is-the-church-breeding-loneliness
[11] Thompson, C. (2010). Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising Connections Between Neuroscience and Spiritual Practices that can Transform your Life and Relationship (p. 25). Tyndale Momentum.
[12] Lewis, C.S. (1980). Mere Christianity. (p. 190). HarperOne.
