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- Herausgeber: IVP Formatio
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Serie: Transforming Resources
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
M. Robert Mulholland Jr. defines spiritual formation as "the process of being formed in the image of Christ for the sake of others." Compact and solid, this definition encompasses the dynamics of a vital Christian life and counters our culture's tendency to make spirituality a trivial matter or reduce it to a private affair between "me and Jesus." In Invitation to a Journey, Mulholland helps Christians new and old understand that we become like Christ gradually, not instantly. Not every personality is suited to an early morning quiet time, so Mulholland frees different personality types to express their piety differently. He reviews the classical spiritual disciplines and demonstrates the importance of undertaking our spiritual journey with (and for the sake of) others. This road map for spiritual formation is profoundly biblical and down to earth. In the finest tradition of spiritual literature, it is a vital help to Christians at any stage of their journey. In this revised and expanded edition, readers will find: - Additions, revisions, and new foreword by Ruth Haley Barton, - Spiritual practices for individual and group application, and - A study guide to provide spiritual direction for groups seeking spiritual companionship for one another on the journey of transformation.
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INVITATIONTO A JOURNEY
A Road Map for Spiritual Formation
Foreword, Practices and Study Guide by RUTH HALEY BARTON
To
Darrell
John
Steve
Steve
brothers
in Christ
and
God’s nurturing
community
FOREWORD
Ruth Haley Barton
When the student is ready, the teacher will appear,” the saying goes. That is certainly what happened to me with Bob Mulholland and his book Invitation to a Journey. When I encountered the book you have in your hands, I was in my early thirties and had come to the end of what typical evangelical discipleship models had to offer. I had already begun seeking spiritual direction and other spiritual practices (solitude, silence, lectio divina, the examen) that came from the broader Christian tradition but had somehow been missing in my own. But all of this was on the down low. No one in the circles I was a part of seemed to know how to deal with me at that point—the questions I was asking, the dead ends I was acknowledging in my Christian growth, the longing I had for more of God, and my utter disillusionment about the fact that many of us who had been Christians for so long were not really changing.
Truth is, no one beyond my immediate family knew the lengths to which I was going to seek out more.
GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS
The good news is that these “new” avenues I was exploring were working! Outside the confines of my narrow religious upbringing, I was finding life, joy, intimacy with God and freedom from bondage to the false self beyond what I had thought possible. The bad news is that there was no way to talk about it without being accused of being New Age, Buddhist or just plain liberal. It was quite the conundrum—the best thing that had happened to me in a long time was something I couldn’t share freely with most of the Christian people I knew. I knew I believed in God and Jesus, but that was about it.
Then I enrolled in seminary. Imagine my wonder and surprise when one of my first seminary courses was called “Introduction to Spiritual Formation” (who even knew what that was at the time?) and the course description seemed to be describing exactly what I had been experiencing—especially hints about the classic stages of faith! I registered immediately, and one of the assigned texts was Invitation to a Journey by M. Robert Mulholland.
My teacher had appeared.
NEW TESTAMENT PERSPECTIVES
That was 1994. Invitation to a Journey had just been published, and I was riveted. Here was a New Testament scholar and theologian who was unpacking what I had been experiencing spiritually but from a deeply biblical, richly theological point of view. I entered in with heart, soul, mind and strength. Recently when I pulled out the coursework from that long-ago class, I was amazed to discover an entire journal devoted to the reflections, prayers, wrestlings, groanings and wonderments inspired by this text—all on the way to greater wholeness in Christ. I am even able to note aspects of Bob’s teachings that I resisted and argued with then but that make all the sense in the world now, so many years of spiritual journeying later.
I see now that God used this book to change my life as well as the trajectory of my path in ministry. Finally, I was able to understand—from a strongly biblical and theological perspective—what had been happening to me in the context of the spiritual disciplines I was practicing outside my former box. Finally, I was able to explain to those who were afraid I was falling off the Christian path that what was happening in my spiritual life was orthodox, deeply rooted in our own Christian tradition. And when it came to the church, finally I had the confidence to begin communicating a clear and nuanced biblical rationale for why spiritual formation is central to the message of the gospel and therefore central to the mission of the church.
Since then I have shared Mulholland’s book wherever I go. When I need to choose one book to provide the biblical and theological underpinnings for those seeking a more intentional journey of spiritual transformation, this is it. There are several things that make it such a seminal work. First, his definition of spiritual formation is so clear, compelling and biblical that it is impossible to dismiss it, even for those who tend to be suspicious. Second, his systematic, brick-on-brick approach to laying a clear, biblical and theological foundation gives us all a solid place to stand as we consider how to engage more deeply in our journey toward wholeness in Christ and how we might help others. And third, his approach to describing the process of spiritual formation is highly integrative and therefore, quite comprehensive.
He integrates personal spiritual disciplines with the communal aspects of our faith.
He brings together psychology, spirituality and an understanding of the human personality in fruitful synergy.
He is precise in his ability to talk about sin, but always in the context of grace eloquently described.
He insists that we must live in the creative tension between the more personal aspects of our spiritual journey and the world where we live it out—rather than allowing us to give in to one side of the polarity or the other.
At every turn he demonstrates that the process of being formed in the image of Christ is always a means of opening to God’s grace in our own lives and it is always for the sake of others. And he does all this in a relatively slim volume, which is no small thing!
A TOOLFOR TRANSFORMATION
Before his death, Bob continued to be my teacher, and our teacher, in the Transforming Center (transformingcenter.org) through his writings and as faculty in our Transforming Community experience. His teachings on spiritual formation as the process of being formed in the image of Christ for the sake of others continue to resonate, inform and challenge us on every level. He is a theologian. His creation gifts to the body of Christ include a sharp mind, an ability to think and communicate precisely and incisively, along with years of study as a theologian. These gifts are powerfully in evidence in Invitation to a Journey. What a great privilege it has been to work with material I have been steeped in for so long in order to extend its impact as a tool for transformation!
In this new and expanded edition, you will find spiritual practices that are intended to be means of God’s grace—concrete ways of opening to God’s transforming work in your life in very personal ways. On occasion, when it seemed like a little more guidance was needed for how to practice certain disciplines, I have suggested other Transforming Resources. You will also find discussion questions and sharing opportunities designed to create space for you to be a means of grace to one another in the body of Christ.
To fully engage the content of this book, you will need time, both for your personal practice and also in your group. Mulholland’s work is so packed with depth and meaning, you may not be able to fully process it by trying to cover one chapter per meeting. You might need to embark on this journey in a more open-ended way, determined to allow as much time as needed. At the same time, you can be sure that God is gracious and will work with whatever time and space you are able to give it.
My desire in having done this work is very simple. I am praying that these additions will make this beloved work even more effective as a tool for transformation—for the glory of God, for the abundance of our own lives and for the sake of others. Lord knows we all need it!
PROLOGUE
Spiritual formation has become one of the major movements of the late twentieth century. Spiritualities of all varieties have emerged on the landscape of our culture—Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Zen, various Eastern meditation techniques, New Age spirituality and a confusing welter of cults, to say nothing of chemically induced alterations of consciousness. In the face of a radical loss of meaning, value and purpose engendered by a largely materialistic, hedonistic, consumer society, human hearts are hungering for deeper realities in which their fragmented lives can find some measure of wholeness and integrity, deeper experiences with God through which their troubled lives can find meaning, value, purpose and identity.
The Christian community, which should have been a clear voice of liberation and wholeness in the wilderness of human bondage and brokenness, has too often been merely an echo of the culture, further confusing those on a wandering and haphazard quest for wholeness. A multitude of Christian “gurus” have emerged who promise their followers life, liberty and the perfection of happiness. Superficial pop spiritualities abound, promising heaven on earth but producing only failure and frustration for those genuinely hungering and thirsting after God.
Perhaps such a failed or frustrated quest is what has brought you to this book. I pray that you will find here not another quick journey down a dead-end road, but an invitation to step through the narrow gate onto the difficult road of the classic Christian journey toward wholeness in Christ.
I do not know what your perception of Christian discipleship might be, but much contemporary Christian spirituality tends to view the spiritual life as a static possession rather than a dynamic and ever-developing growth toward wholeness in the image of Christ. When spirituality is viewed as a static possession, the way to spiritual wholeness is seen as the acquisition of information and techniques that enable us to gain possession of the desired state of spirituality. Discipleship is perceived as “my” spiritual life and tends to be defined by actions that ensure its possession. Thus the endless quest for techniques, methods, programs by which we hope to “achieve” spiritual fulfillment. The hidden premise behind all of this is the unquestioned assumption that we alone are in control of our spirituality. In brief, we assume we are in control of our relationship with God.
When spirituality is viewed as a journey, however, the way to spiritual wholeness is seen to lie in an increasingly faithful response to the One whose purpose shapes our path, whose grace redeems our detours, whose power liberates us from crippling bondages of the prior journey and whose transforming presence meets us at each turn in the road. In other words, holistic spirituality is a pilgrimage of deepening responsiveness to God’s control of our life and being.
Let me briefly sketch for you where we will be going together in this book. In the first part, “The Road Map: The Nature of Spiritual Formation,” I want to share with you what may appear to be a rather simplistic definition of spiritual formation: Spiritual formation is a process of being formed in the image of Christ for the sake of others. Upon closer examination, however, you will discover that this definition encompasses the essential dynamics of spiritual formation and effectively counters cultural dynamics that work against holistic spirituality.
In the second part, “The Vehicle: Personality and Piety,” I will share with you some insights about the integration of personality and spiritual formation. Too often spiritual formation is seen as something “added on” to our personality that solves all our emotional, psychological, physical and mental problems. When this happens, potentially serious emotional, psychological, physical or mental problems can be repressed or covered over with a veneer of “spirituality” that claims to solve the problem. In such instances, persons are often told, “You just need to pray more, go to church more, read your Bible more, be more obedient to God, deal with unconfessed sin in your life, and everything will be fine.” This is like telling persons with broken legs that they just need to run more and strengthen their muscles. Our spirituality is not an add-on, it is the very essence of our being. We are spiritual beings whose emotions, psychology, body and mind are the incarnation of our spiritual life in the world. We will see that holistic spirituality always takes place in the midst of our emotional, psychological, physical and mental conditions and emerges out of them.
We will also see in part two that in holistic spirituality any one-size-fits-all prescription is not realistic. We are unique persons, and our relationship with God always manifests that individuality. Our process of spiritual formation toward wholeness may be very different from others.’
In the third part, “The Journey: Spiritual Disciplines,” we will think together about the nature of spiritual disciplines. Here we will consider not only the classical disciplines of the Christian tradition such as prayer, spiritual reading and liturgy (which in its broad sense is related not only to worship but also to daily office, fasting, study, retreat), but also, and particularly, those very individualized spiritual disciplines that the Spirit of God brings into our lives to shape us in the image of Christ.
In the final part, “Companions on the Way: Corporate and Social Spirituality,” we will conclude with the corporate and social dimensions of spiritual formation, an aspect frequently missed in the faddishness of spiritual formation these days. As John Wesley constantly emphasized, there can be no personal holiness without social holiness. Much of what passes for spiritual formation these days is a very privatized, individualized experience. It does not enliven and enrich the body of Christ, nor is it vitally dependent on the body of Christ for its own wholeness. Neither does it play itself out in the dynamics of life in the world. It doesn’t bring the reality of relationship with God and Jesus Christ to bear on the brokenness and the pain in the world around us. Thus corporate and social spirituality is an essential part of our holistic spiritual formation.
PART ONE
THE ROAD MAP
The Nature of Spiritual Formation
There are many definitions of spiritual formation. Some call for unquestioned and absolute obedience to a leader or a ruling group. Some call for certain evidences that are believed to confirm one’s spirituality (such as speaking in tongues or handling snakes). Some promise plenty and prosperity to those who fulfill certain requirements. Some consist of dos and don’ts. Some seem to allow almost any behavior as part of their spirituality.
How does one select from such a welter of options? Perhaps selection is not the correct step. It may be better for me to develop a working definition of spiritual formation that has integrity with the scriptural witness to life in relationship with God, and let you work out its relationship to whatever other definition of spiritual formation you may have adopted.
In this section we will develop a fourfold definition of spiritual formation as (1) a process (2) of being formed (3) in the image of Christ (4) for the sake of others.
Scripture is quite clear in its insistence that we have fallen short of God’s purposes for our creation. It is equally clear in its revelation that God works graciously through all the aspects of human life to bring us to the fulfillment of God’s will for our wholeness. Thus spiritual formation is a process of involvement with God’s gracious work. But spiritual formation as a process will be seen to move against the grain of our instant gratification culture and the possessiveness of an acquisitive society. Once we understand spiritual formation as a process, all of life becomes spiritual formation. Cooperation with God’s gracious work moves us toward the wholeness of Christ. Rebellion against God’s gracious work moves us into destructive and dehumanizing emptiness, into increasingly dysfunctional lives that are self-destructive and treat others as objects to be manipulated and used for our own purposes.
Scripture is also clear in its witness to the fact that only God can liberate us from our bondage, heal our brokenness, cleanse us from our uncleanness and bring life out of our deadness. We cannot do it by ourselves. Thus spiritual formation is the experience of being shaped by God toward wholeness. But spiritual formation as “being formed” will also be seen to move against the grain of our do-it-yourself culture and our powerful need to be in control of our existence. Generally, we like to lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Self-reliance is deeply ingrained in us. To allow someone else to control our life is seen as weakness, to be avoided at all costs. The English poet William Henley captured the spirit of our culture well when he wrote, “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”1 But spiritual formation as “being formed” will reveal that God is the initiator of our growth toward wholeness and we are to be pliable clay in God’s hand.
Scripture reveals from the very beginning that human wholeness is associated with the image of God. We are created in the image of God (Gen 1:26-27). The New Testament parallel to this is that we are to become the likeness of Christ (2 Cor 3:18), who is “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15). Spiritual formation in the image of Christ will also be seen to move against the grain of our self-actualization culture and prevailing perspectives which tend to create God in our image. The image of Christ will be seen as the ultimate reality of human wholeness, the consummation for which each heart longs. It will, however, also be seen to be cruciform in the essence of its nature; a dying is involved in our growth toward wholeness, a cross on which we lose our old self with its bondages and brokenness.
Finally, Scripture reveals that human wholeness is always actualized in nurturing one another toward wholeness, whether within the covenant community of God’s people or in the role of God’s people in healing brokenness and injustice in the world. Spiritual formation “for the sake of others” will be seen to move against the grain of a privatized and individualized religion and the deep-seated belief that spiritual life is a matter between the individual and God. There can be no wholeness in the image of Christ which is not incarnate in our relationships with others, both in the body of Christ and in the world.
- one -
THE PROCESS
Gracious and loving God, you know the deep inner patterns of my life that keep me from being totally yours. You know the misformed structures of my being that hold me in bondage to something less than your high purpose for my life. You also know my reluctance to let you have your way with me in these areas. Hear the deeper cry of my heart for wholeness and by your grace enable me to be open to your transforming presence in this reading. Lord, have mercy.
When we say that the Christian journey is a process, we express a truth that is both well-known and well-nigh unknown at the same time. If you ask most Christians about their spiritual pilgrimage, they will say that it is a day-by-day experience with its ups and downs, its victories and defeats, its successes and failures. In brief, it is a process. But if you were to ask them how God works transformation in their lives, many would indicate that God zaps them at some point and instantly changes them. How often Christians struggle to create the setting in which God can zap them out of their brokenness and into wholeness!
We live in an instant-gratification culture. Just sit near a vending machine and watch what happens when people do not get the product they have paid for. They will begin to complain to anyone handy or even begin to abuse the machine. This silly example illustrates a deeper dimension of our culture. We have generally come to expect immediate returns on our investments of time and resources. If we have a need, we have only to find the right place, product or procedure and invest the right amount of time, energy and resources, and our need will be met. It is not surprising that we, as members of an instant gratification culture, tend to become impatient with any process of development that requires of us more than a limited involvement of our time and energies. If we do not receive the desired results almost instantly, we become impatient and frustrated.
Often our spiritual quest becomes a search for the right technique, the proper method, the perfect program that can immediately deliver the desired results of spiritual maturity and wholeness. Or we try to create the atmosphere for the “right” spiritual moment, that “perfect” setting in which God can touch us into instantaneous wholeness. If only we can find the right trick, the right book or the right guru, go to the right retreat, hear the right sermon, instantly we will be transformed into a new person at a new level of spirituality and wholeness. Kenneth Leech, a leading Anglican writer in spirituality, sums up the situation well:
In the years since the 1960’s we have seen “the popular unfolding of an authentically spiritual quest. . . . ” Yet linked with this search for authentic experiential knowledge of God and of “inner space” there has been a narrowing of vision, a desire for instant ecstasy, instant salvation. . . . It is the quest for the correct method, the right mantra, the short cut which brings insight, which has marked so much of the recent spiritual undergrowth.1
It is not that right techniques, right methods and right programs are not beneficial. Nor should we minimize the importance of transforming spiritual moments on our pilgrimage. All these are important. But there is something about the nature of spiritual wholeness and the growth toward that wholeness that is very much a process.
THE REALITYOF PROCESS
Spiritual growth is, in large measure, patterned on the nature of physical growth. We do not expect to put an infant into its crib at night and in the morning find a child, an adolescent or yet an adult. We expect that infant to grow into maturity according to the processes that God has ordained for physical growth to wholeness. The same thing is true of our spiritual life.
Yes, there are spurts of growth in our spiritual development. A few years ago I had a little boy. Then, within a year, he became a man. He went through one of those adolescent growth spurts. He grew almost a foot in height, his voice dropped into a deep bass, he began to shave, his body filled out—he was a different person. The same thing happens in our spiritual life. For a while we may live on a plateau of life and relationship with God. Then one of those moments comes in which we experience a growth spurt and find ourselves on a new level of life and relationship with God. We experience God in a new and different way. We see ourselves and life in a new perspective. Old things pass away, and new things take their place. But if we mistake such a growth spurt for all there is in spirituality, then we are not prepared for the long haul toward spiritual wholeness. We will tend to languish as we wait for another spurt to come along. Or we will try to reproduce the setting in which the previous spurt took place, hoping to create another such experience.
What we don’t realize is that often a period of apparent spiritual stagnation, a time in which we don’t feel as if we are going anywhere, a phase of life in which our relationship with God seems weak or nonexistent, the time of dryness, of darkness—what the mothers and fathers of the church speak of as the desert experience—is filled with nurturing down below the surface that we never see. The great Scottish Christian novelist George MacDonald puts it this way:
To give us the spiritual gift we desire, God may have to begin far back in our spirit, in regions unknown to us, and do much work that we can be aware of only in the results. . . . In the gulf of our unknown being God works behind our consciousness. With His holy influence, with His own presence. . . . He may be approaching our consciousness from behind, coming forward through regions of our darkness into our light, long before we begin to be aware that He is answering our request—has answered it, and is visiting His child.2
Or, as the seventeenth-century French spiritual writer François Fénelon says, “God hides his work, in the spiritual order as in the natural order under an unnoticeable sequence of events.”3
This hidden work of God is a nurturing that prepares us for what appears to be a quantum leap forward. What we see as the quantum leap may actually be only the smallest part of what has been going on in a long, steady process of grace, working far beyond our knowing and understanding, to bring us to that point where we are ready for God to move us into a new level of spiritual awareness and a new depth of wholeness in relationship with God in Christ. There simply is no instantaneous event of putting your quarter in the slot and seeing spiritual formation drop down where you can reach it, whole and complete.
Our culture, however, tends to train us in this manner. You do the right thing, put the money in the proper slot, push the right button and get the product you want at the bottom. Remember the vending machine where people do not get the product instantly? They start kicking and pounding on the machine. We have a tendency to do the same thing with God. We adopt some new spiritual technique. We find a new coin and a new slot to put it in. We put it in and push a new button, but nothing seems to happen. What do we do? We start kicking and beating on God: “Why don’t you do something?” Or we discard that technique and go to find another coin and another machine.
The idea of spiritual growth as a continuous process rubs harshly against the deeply ingrained instant gratification mode of our culture. Perhaps one of our first spiritual struggles for genuine growth toward wholeness will be against this strongly entrenched approach to life. There is much in our culture that infiltrates our attitudes unconsciously and makes us expect spiritual formation to happen instantaneously rather than through the steady progress of a process.
OPTIONOR NECESSITY?
Once we begin to realize that genuine spiritual growth is a continuous and sometimes difficult process, we may be tempted to think that it is an option we can take or leave. For many Christians, the quest for the deeper life in Christ is viewed as a discipline for the dedicated disciple, a pursuit for the particularly pious, a spiritual frill for those who have the time or inclination, a spiritual fad for trendy Christians.
We fail to realize that the process of spiritual shaping is a primal reality of human existence. Everyone is in a process of spiritual formation! Every thought we hold, every decision we make, every action we take, every emotion we allow to shape our behavior, every response we make to the world around us, every relationship we enter into, every reaction we have toward the things that surround us and impinge upon our lives—all of these things, little by little, are shaping us into some kind of being. We are being shaped into either the wholeness of the image of Christ or a horribly destructive caricature of that image, destructive not only to ourselves but also to others, for we inflict our brokenness upon them. This wholeness or destructiveness radically conditions our relationship with God, ourselves and others, as well as our involvement in the dehumanizing structures and dynamics of the broken world around us. We become either agents of God’s healing and liberating grace, or carriers of the sickness of the world. The direction of our spiritual growth infuses all we do with intimations of either life or death.
C. S. Lewis states it in his inimitable way:
Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.4
Spiritual formation is not an option! The inescapable conclusion is that life itself is a process of spiritual development. The only choice we have is whether that growth moves us toward wholeness in Christ or toward an increasingly dehumanized and destructive mode of being.
The Christian journey, therefore, is an intentional and continual commitment to a lifelong process of growth toward wholeness in Christ. It is a process of “growing up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (Eph 4:15), until we “attain to . . . mature personhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4:13). It is for this purpose that God is present and active in every moment of our lives.
PRACTICE: PRAYINGWITH YOUR PERSONAL GRACED HISTORY
In the prologue, Dr. Mulholland invites us to pay attention to our own perceptions and experience of Christian discipleship. He describes spirituality that is viewed as a “static possession” we feel we can achieve and control or as a “journey that unfolds” through an “increasingly faithful response to the One whose purpose shapes our path, whose grace redeems our detours, whose power liberates us from crippling bondages of the prior journey and whose transforming presence meets us at each turn in the road.”
Prayerfully reflect on your spiritual life in the past and at the present time. Write or draw a spiritual review in which you look back on the different stages of your life and how you experienced your relationship with God and your own spirituality during each stage.
As you reflect on past and current experiences, which of the descriptive words and phrases best describe your spiritual life at each stage—static; acquisitive; your own action; endless quest for techniques, methods and programs; control; or an “increasingly faithful response to the One who shapes your path”? When and how has
God’s grace redeemed your detours?
God’s power liberated you from the crippling bondage of your prior journey?
God’s transforming presence met you at each turn in the road?
How has your understanding of the spiritual life changed over time? How does Mulholland’s definition of spiritual formation resonate with your experience?
- two -
BEING FORMED
God of our creation and re-creation, you who are constantly at work to shape me in the wholeness of Christ, you know the hardness of the structures of my being that resist your shaping touch. You know the deep inner rigidities of my being that reject your changing grace. By your grace soften my hardness and rigidity; help me to become pliable in your hands. Even as I read this, may there be a melting of my innate resistance to your transforming love.
Spiritual formation is a process of being formed in the image of Christ, a journey into becoming persons of compassion, persons who forgive, persons who care deeply for others and the world, persons who offer themselves to God to become agents of divine grace in the lives of others and their world—in brief, persons who love and serve as Jesus did.
Now, if I had said spiritual formation was a process of “forming ourselves” in the image of Christ, I suspect we would have been much more comfortable. The difference between forming ourselves and being formed is the vital issue of control.
Almost from the moment of birth we engage in a struggle for control of that portion of the world we live in. Can we get our parents to provide for our needs and wants when we want and how we want? Can we get our playmates to play our way, or will they control us to play their way? Can we control situations and others to fulfill our agenda, or are we manipulated into serving others? Can we create enough of a security structure around our lives that we will be able to control life’s adversities? Or, to put it in very contemporary terms, why shouldn’t a woman’s control of her life allow her to terminate the life of her unborn child? Why shouldn’t my control of my life allow me to choose the time and means of its end? Why shouldn’t we provide free contraceptives to our youth so their sexual behavior can be under their control and not under the control of the fear of sexually transmitted diseases? If you do not believe that control is a major issue in your life, study the ways you respond when someone or something disrupts your plan for the day.
Our constant struggle with the issue of control is a crucial part of our spiritual pilgrimage. I don’t mind spiritual formation at all as long as I can be in control of it. As long as I can set the limits on its pace and its direction, I have no problem. What I do have a problem with is getting my control structures out of the way of my spiritual formation and letting God take control. In the final analysis there is nothing we can do to transform ourselves into persons who love and serve as Jesus did except make ourselves available for God to do that work of transforming grace in our lives.
I’D RATHER DO IT MYSELF
This aspect of spiritual formation runs against the grain of our whole acculturation. We are a do-it-yourself culture. We are what I call an objectivizing, informational-functional culture.
An objectivizing culture is one that views the world primarily as an object “out there” to be grasped and controlled for our own purposes. We are the subjects whose role in life is to appropriate the objects in our world and use them to impose our will upon the world. The Quaker writer Parker Palmer describes it well:
We are well-educated people who have been schooled in a way of knowing that treats the world as an object to be dissected and manipulated, a way of knowing that gives us power over the world. . . . [We] have used [our] knowledge to rearrange the world to satisfy [our] drive for power, distorting and deranging life rather than loving it for the gift it is.1
