Ep 37: Houston, We Have a Problem (Part II)

In this bonus episode of the Soil & Roots podcast, we step back from our deep dive into the Formation Gap to revisit the Three Primary Problems shaping modern discipleship.

Drawing on insights from Dallas Willard and the concept of the Great Omission, we explore why so many followers of Jesus feel spiritually stuck. The episode walks through two of the central challenges: the Discipleship Dilemma and the Formation Gap.

 

TRANSCRIPTION

The Three Primary Problems Part II

Listen to this episode here!

We’re in the middle of Season 3, and we’re taking a short break from our deep dive into the Formation Gap with these two bonus episodes.

We’re reviewing and expanding on our exploration of the Three Primary Problems, though if you’re already comfortable with them, feel free to skip ahead to the next episode.

If not, pull up the free resource on soilandroots.org called “The Three Primary Problems.”  We’ll be referencing it again today, as we did last episode. We’re doing a flyby of the Discipleship Dilemma and the Formation Gap.

We’ve been exploring the Great Omission – that’s the term philosopher Dallas Willard gave to our current age.  We talk a lot about making disciples, but we struggle to actually make them.  We may be faithful in attending church, doing Bible studies, and praying, but in our quieter moments, we feel disconnected. Disconnected from God, others, and maybe even ourselves.  We silently wonder, “Is there more to the Christian life than this? Shouldn’t I be experiencing a more vibrant, more holistic, more powerful, deeper connection to God and the world around me?”

A disciple is an apprentice of Jesus, and the point is that we become more like Him from the inside out over time.  That we think like He thinks, love like He loves, and learn to do the things He taught us to do.

Sometimes this journey is called spiritual formation – the ongoing formation of our innermost being, our hearts.  It’s not just about increasing our knowledge about God and the Bible – it’s about the lifelong formation of our character.  And this journey is a partnership.  We must intend to become formed – it doesn’t happen by osmosis.

Dallas Willard concluded that very few of us attend churches that intentionally and carefully form us.  Many churches don’t see their purpose as forming the character of their congregants, and many people don’t expect that from their churches.  Most churches don’t have a plan, program, or strategy for character formation. Most discipleship training programs center around learning proper beliefs and doctrine, and that may or may not translate to spiritual formation.

We also looked at this Great Omission from the perspective of The Critical Journey – a book that theorizes that our life in Christ can be described in six stages. The modern church excels at helping us into and through the first three.  However, it’s rare for a church to be aware of or prepared to guide us into the latter stages: The Journey Inward, The Journey Outward, and a Life of Love.

In other words, many followers of Jesus get stuck in Stage 3 and never move into the deeper realms of the faith.  This contributes to the Great Omission, and it’s a key driver of why some people aren’t experiencing the “abundant life,” a life of peace, or a life of deep satisfaction and abiding in God.

 

The Discipleship Dilemma

Let’s pick up where we left off last episode and look at the second Primary Problem on our chart: the Discipleship Dilemma.

You’ve heard me say before that God has placed us into four relationships: with Him, others, ourselves, and creation and culture.

When I teach Soil and Roots or speak with someone about it in the context of these four relationships, everyone is comfortable relating to God.  Most people are comfortable viewing discipleship through the lens of their relationships with others.  A lot of people haven’t been taught about our role as rulers of creation, so it tends to be new to them.

But the one relationship that makes some people nervous is the relationship with ourselves.  Back to our description of discipleship: it involves getting to know Jesus better and getting to know ourselves, and that means dealing authentically with our stories.  It’s the concept of “double knowledge.”

Some folks have at least two hesitations when embracing the fact that discipleship must include getting to know ourselves and our stories.

The first is that it seems un-Christian and selfish to focus on ourselves and our history, our story.

The second is that we may doubt that we can ever really grow to become more like Jesus because of our sin.

So, let’s chat through these two hesitations.

 

Is Self-Knowledge Selfish?

 

1. Is it selfish and un-Christian to focus on getting to know our own hearts? Is going back into our stories a waste of time?

If we struggle with this, it’s often because our hearts have been taught that the answer to all our ills is to pray more, read more of the Bible, and do more Christian things. Serve more people. Right?  The way to overcome our stories is to get our minds off ourselves.  We die to self.  We pick up our cross.  We’re Christians. We suck it up.

 

Is it selfish and un-Christian to explore how God made you and how He is weaving your story into His, if your desire is to become more like Him?  There’s a world of difference between being self-focused when our desire is to build ourselves up and exploring our stories because we desire to love Jesus and others more.

The Bible routinely advocates for understanding ourselves and our stories as a means of growing in Christ.  If you look at the Old Testament, God is constantly calling Israel to remember, remember. remember.  To go back.

I’ve mentioned three of several New Testament examples of Jesus inviting someone to deal authentically with their story in order to be freed from it, to be healed from it, and to move forward with Him. The rich young ruler, Peter, and the woman at the well. Two of them allowed Jesus to take them back into their stories for healing, one did not. The rich young ruler left Jesus and continued coping.

One of the most powerful stories in the Bible for me is the story of the woman at the well.

There are lots of opinions about the show “The Chosen,” though the nine-minute segment depicting Jesus’ conversation with this woman is one of the most powerful and moving things I’ve ever seen on video.

If you haven’t seen it, just search for “Chosen, woman at the well,” and you’ll find it. I’ve linked to it in the blog post as well.

As you watch Jesus and the woman converse, you’ll see that Jesus is leading her into deeper and deeper levels of her heart.

She remains guarded and skeptical (even hostile) until Jesus begins digging into her story.  He asks her a question He already knows the answer to, and He uses that to remind her of her past. She’s been married five times and is now sleeping with a guy who isn’t her husband.

She’s a smart lady and determines that Jesus is a prophet, but Jesus doesn’t stop there.  In the video, he presses her, and He starts naming the men she’s been with and pieces of her story.  It’s painful for her, and she asks Him, “Why are you doing this?”

But He uses her story to reveal her pain and to prove that He is the only answer to her spiritual thirst. She has been trying to numb her pain and find her identity in men, but Jesus gently shows her that He is the only person who can heal her and make her whole.  And He does it by dealing gently and authentically with her story.

In the video, which is marvelously acted, you see the woman’s face change as she realizes what’s going on and who Jesus really is.  She realizes that the Messiah has come to her, knows who she is and what she’s done, and is still inviting her to embrace the God she thought was far off, inaccessible, and unloving.

I’ve always found her final response beautiful and mystifying:  “Come see a man who has told me all the things I have done.”  Come see this man who knows the harm that’s been done to me, and the harm I’ve caused others, and still found me.  Still embraced me. Still invited me. In the video, she actually runs and skips down the dirt path towards town, overcome with joy that the Messiah purposely came and embraced her, a half-breed, outcast whore, and invited her into His family.

So, is it selfish to explore our stories with Jesus?  To spend time with Him and trusted friends to name things that haven’t been named, bring truth to lies, to authentically acknowledge harm done to us and harm we’ve caused others?  Digging into our stories is one of the most selfless, loving things we can do.

 

Can We Truly Become More Like Jesus?

 

2. Our second hesitation about better understanding ourselves, our hearts, and our stories may be believing that we can actually change. Can we truly become more like Jesus while at the same time acknowledging our struggle with sin? Can we really expect to grow to sin less and love more? Can we really desire what Jesus desires and love what He loves?

Typically, we go to Jeremiah 17:9 and Romans 7 to prove our point.  Jeremiah tells us, “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; Who can understand it?^[1]

And Romans 7 is the passage where Paul bemoans the conflict between his sin nature and the spiritual nature.  He asks, as we all do, why he does what he shouldn’t do and doesn’t do what he should.

If you grew up in a church or family that beat the sin out of you, you may find yourself wondering if you can become more like Jesus. It’s not that you take your sin lightly; some people do – it’s the opposite.

It’s here that we need to pause and note that creating doctrine from isolated passages is dangerous.

A few verses later in Jeremiah, he writes, “Heal me, O Lord, and I will be healed; Save me, and I will be saved.”^[2]

Romans 7 is followed by Romans 8, where Paul discusses freedom from bondage and victory in Christ.

Paul is painfully and refreshingly honest.  He struggles with sin.  We struggle with sin.  But does that mean we shouldn’t hope and expect to grow into more of who Jesus is?

I don’t think anyone would claim Paul hadn’t grown.  He was a murderer of Christians but then became arguably the second most impactful human being on the planet for the Kingdom.  He learned the secret of being content.  He rejoiced in his sufferings.  He had a clean conscience because of the care and love he extended to his churches.  Paul grew in Christ.

If you read Peter’s epistles, it’s hard to even recognize the brash, foot-in-mouth disciple from the Gospels.  He closes his second Epistle with, “but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”^[3]

John 15 indicates that, as we grow in Christ, we bear much fruit.  As we become more like Jesus, we learn to do the things Jesus did.

In Colossians 3, Paul encourages us to put on the characteristics of Christ.

Taken as a whole, Scripture clearly points us to the reality that we can and should grow to become more like Jesus.  We can and should expect that, as disciples, we will grow to hate and detest our sin, sin less, and grow to love Jesus, others, ourselves, and His creation more.  If we don’t have hope in that, what’s the point of being a disciple?

There is great freedom, healing, and growth awaiting those of us who choose to dig into our own hearts.  If we feel stuck in our discipleship and our relationship with God, it may well be His invitation to spend some time uncovering the hidden ideas that power us, even if it takes us to painful, difficult relationships and situations from our past.

 

The Formation Gap

Alright, let’s finish up these two bonus episodes with a quick review of the Formation Gap.  We’re spending the entire season on it, so let’s just make a few high-level points.

We’ve recognized that these five key elements of formation (time, habit, community, intimacy, and instruction) are front and center and prevalent in virtually every formative human experience. They are most prevalent in early childhood and also in marriage, the military, college, some sports clubs, and pretty much any environment that intentionally attempts to help us grow more like someone else. And we find all five interwoven and assumed in the New Testament church.

Where we don’t find all five front and center is in modern-day discipleship.

If you’re about to get married, you’ll expect to reorganize your life, your priorities, your time, your habits, around your new spouse and the new community you are forming.

If you’re about to go to college, you’ll expect to spend loads of time there, engage in new habits, form new communities, and be instructed through a systematic, progressive approach.

If you join the military and want to be formed into a soldier, you’ll expect to live with your fellow soldiers, learn new habits, be a part of a specific community, and engage in ways that build trust with your company.

But when we join a church or Bible study, what is our expectation? Do we expect to spend a lot of time with people in our church outside of a weekend service?  Have we been introduced to various spiritual habits such as silence, solitude, fasting, celebration, confession, or service?  Are we being trained how to practice and evaluate these habits?  Is our church community now our primary community, or are we split among many communities?  Is our church the place we go to be vulnerable, transparent, and appropriately intimate with each other as we dive into the deep end of discipleship? And are we experiencing teaching and instruction that slowly, gradually, guides us into the more complex aspects of Christianity?

Or is our church experience something different?  Perhaps it’s a weekly event we attend to fill up the rest of the week.  Or to hear a good sermon.  Or to connect with a few friends, which is great, but friends with whom we don’t have too much else in common.

How many of these five elements are truly present in our spiritual formation with any intentionality and purpose?  Perhaps three? Two?

 

The Struggle with the Five Elements

Why might it be a struggle for us to intentionally incorporate all five elements into our journey to become more like Jesus?

Certainly, we struggle with the typical modern lifestyle.  We’ve been conditioned to think that our so-called “church life” is distinct, separate, and removed from the rest of our lives.  Church is something we go to, not the primary community in which we live and operate.

Time is almost always a factor.  With all the work, hobbies, distractions, leisure, and commitments we take on, carving out time to do the hard work of journeying together in our formation sometimes seems impossible.  It isn’t – but it seems that way.

The idea of spiritual disciplines has disappeared from some corners of Christianity.  Experimenting with, practicing, and discovering new habits to deepen our four relationships may just not be on our radar.

Plus, much of the West really does function from the idea that our growth in Christ is primarily intellectual.  We just need to be taught the right doctrine.  This unconscious assumption about how human beings are formed is largely a product of the Enlightenment – that we are what we think.

The problem is that, as we’ve explored, these ideas that govern and power us are largely experienced realities, not intellectual conclusions.  The process of digging into our hearts is not about uncovering our thoughts – that doesn’t take much effort. It’s about uncovering the assumptions we operate on, formed by experience and relationships.

Why do we say grace is freely given yet still try to perform our way into the Kingdom?  Why do we claim we’re image bearers of God yet still talk to ourselves and sometimes others as if we’re rejects, garbage, and less than human? Why do we claim that God is in control, yet still find ourselves anxious and obsessing about the future?

Spiritual formation is not simply an intellectual exercise because human beings aren’t brains on sticks.  We are formed more through experience and relationship; thus, our spiritual formation must make space and time for them. Deep experiences and deep relationships; experiences steeped in the kingdom of light with people who are steeped in the kingdom of light.

Anyone who desires to engage in spiritual formation, to learn to do the things that Jesus taught, to become more like Him, is fighting some very powerful dark ideas in the air.  These dark ideas influence us from our infancy onward and are often more powerful and impactful than we ever realize.

Dark ideas such as:

-We are what we think

-We really can’t become more like Jesus

-Suffering and sorrow are to be avoided and resolved at all costs

-Love and relationships aren’t supposed to be risky

-I’m a disintegrated being living in a disintegrated world

 

These types of dark ideas in the air are everywhere, often in our churches and Christian communities.

That’s why those who do choose to incorporate all five elements into their spiritual journey experience genuine moments of deconstruction or, as it were, deprogramming.  Discovering and confronting dark ideas in the air and dark ideas in our soil, our hearts, involves some walking back and undoing things our hearts had embraced and accepted as good.

When we intentionally move into spiritual formative, five-element communities, we often do become people of incredible depth, but that journey sometimes involves more “un-learning” than learning.  Sometimes our journey into deep discipleship is more about subtraction than addition.

Either way, if we wish to become deep disciples, we should evaluate our walk with Jesus in light of these Five Key Elements.  Does our spiritual formation intentionally embody and embrace time, habits, community, intimacy, and instruction? If not, why not? If so, how might we invite others into our formative communities?

 

Good News

There is wonderful news regarding the Three Primary Problems. They are all reversible!  We can be sure of that because both the New Testament and church history prove it.

If we recapture and live the Gospel of the Kingdom, if we restore the idea that knowing Jesus better means exploring our own hearts as well, and if we recreate communities where our spiritual formation is our primary purpose, we should expect the Kingdom to increase and expand. And perhaps we’d get that revival we’re always praying for.

It’s not easy – in fact, the Kingdom of God often grows more through pain and loss than it does through big events and hoopla.  No, it won’t be easy.  But it will be very, very good.

I hope you find our new visual aid helpful.  It has been for me.

 

^[1] New American Standard Bible: 1995 update (Je 17:9). (1995). The Lockman Foundation.

^[2] New American Standard Bible: 1995 update (Je 17:14). (1995). The Lockman Foundation.

^[3] New American Standard Bible: 1995 update (2 Pe 3:18). (1995). The Lockman Foundation.