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Book: Renovation of the Church by Kent Carlson and Mike Lueken
Chapter: Spiritual Formation: Do You Really Want To Be Healed?
"Since the Donner experience, we have been enthralled with the possibility that human beings can actually change and become more like Jesus. We've oriented our church around this conviction. We have tried to take seriously Jesus' charge to 'make disciples' (Matthew 28:19). As we apprentice under Jesus, by God's grace we can
Put to death the misdeeds of the body. (Roman 8:13)
Be made new in the attitude of your minds. (Ephesians 4:23)
Put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. (Ephesians 4:24)
As Paul says, we were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.' (Romans 6:4) People increasingly immersed in the Kingdom of God will experience an authentic heart-level change. They will gradually become new and better people. This is not an addendum to the gospel but a central tenet of it. This is not for the elite few who are interested but normative for all who put their trust in Jesus.
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Perhaps our greatest lesson from the past decade is that it is spiritually formative to be dissatisfied and unable to resolve all that dissatisfaction. In fact, there is hardly a better catalyst for transformation than to not get what we want. Sitting in the dissatisfaction, without frantically trying to resolve it, can do wonders for the human soul.
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Ronald Rolheiser observes:
'Our lives become consumed with the idea that unless we somehow experience everything, travel everywhere, see everything, and are a part of a large number of other people's experiences, then our own lives are small and meaningless. We become impatient with every hunger, every ache, and every non-consummated area within our lives and we become convinced that unless every pleasure we yearn for is tasted, we will be unhappy. We stand before life too greedy, too full of expectations that cannot be realized, and unable to accept that here, in this life, all symphonies remain unfinished. When this happens an obsessive restlessness leaves us unable to rest or be satisfied because we are convinced that all lack, all tension, and all unfulfilled yearning is tragic. Thus, it becomes tragic to be alone; to be unmarried; to be married, but not completely fulfilled romantically and sexually; to not be good-looking; or, be unhealthy, aged, or handicapped. It become tragic to be caught up in duties and commitments which limit our freedom, tragic to be poor, tragic to go through life and not be able to taste every pleasure on earth and fulfill every potential inside of us. When we are obsessed in this way it is hard to be contemplative. We are too focused on our own heartaches to be very open and receptive.'
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One man's story illustrates the split between salvation and transformation. We met over several weeks to discuss his struggling marriage. He is a long-time Christian and has been in the church for much of his life. He is well-versed in the language of the Christian subculture. After hearing his story, it was obvious his marital system needed to be overhauled. They had fallen into a series of destructive ruts, and no amount of tweaking was going to help. Since I was talking to him, we focused on God's invitation to trust and follow in spite of his circumstances. We talked about what it would look like to choose a path of spiritual formation in this situation. The only thing he could control was who he was becoming. In spite of whatever else had to happen, for the marriage to get better, he was going to have to get better. There were specific issues in the relationship where he had been passive and complicit. Moving toward Christlikeness meant counter-intuitive action. He couldn't keep relating the same way and hope for a different result. It was time for him to make a holy mess. He needed to courageously wade into some long-overdue conflicts with his wife. He needed to initiate conversation about the marriage. But this pushed him beyond his comfort zone. He kept hesitating to make a move. Did he want to be healed? He was stuck.
Now he is a good man, a nice guy. This man loves god and does his best to follow Jesus. Obviously, there are situations and relationships in life that don't get fixed (and maybe can't get fixed). The fact was, his spiritual formation might not improve his marriage at all. It is, after all, a broken world. But the end result of the marriage was not the point. The tragedy is that this man has drifted along for years as a 'happy' and 'nice' Christian, without realizing the gospel he believes invites him, indeed calls him, to transformation. He doesn't have to live with fear, passivity, and complicity. Transformation is possible through the Spirit of the resurrected Christ.
Somewhere along the way, though, it became acceptable for this man---and many of us---to profess faith in Christ without signing up to be transformed. Perhaps this inform's Dallas Willard's remarks:
In our efforts to orient our church around spiritual formation, we discovered how tempting it is for people to settle for a cheap alternative rather than the real thing. Some of us are consoled by the fact that, while we may not be experiencing transformation, at least we are frustrated by our complacency. We are satisfied with our spiritual dissatisfaction. We may be dealing with the same sin issue we were a decade ago, but at least we are frustrated about it. We may even like the impression others have of us as being frustrated by our lack of spiritual maturity. If we can't actually change, we can at least relish the fact that people think of us as wanting to change. We settle for impressing a few people. As C.S. Lewis said, 'We are far too easily pleased.' As Jesus put it, we have 'received [our] reward in full' (Matthew 6:5)."
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(and here are a few more shorter snippets from the chapter that I just couldn't leave out here)
~"We study to conquer, not to be changed. We dig deeper into the Bible to sharpen our understanding of its content and meaning, not to have it sharpen us."
~"We are afraid of turning grace into works. So instead, we turn grace into divine magic that does everything for us."
~"Generalities are a good hiding place. 'Jesus died for my sins' is less scandalous than 'Jesus dies for my out-of-control anger that severely damages the people I love most.' 'I'm a sinner' is easier to admit than 'I'm a lustaholic.' In generalities, no one is exposed. But no one really grows. Real transformation happens in the unattractive details of our lives."
~"Our anger comes easily and routinely because of our many years of training in it."
~"Our issues and conditions have a way of leaking into our identity and becoming part of who we are. We forge a bond with our dark side. We hate our sins, but we also love them. We want freedom from our struggles, but we want to hold on to them. We can't live another day wit them, but we can't imagine life without them....Spiritual formation into Jesus' likeness is liberation from sin conditions, but who will we be after we are changed? What will life be like without anger or lust or fear or control? The uncertainty solidifies us as a dabbler in Christian discipleship."
~"We learned about the impact of hurry on the human soul when we started the retreat with four hours of solitude---and found out later that half the group spent most of the time sound asleep! Their bodies were ravished by their ruthless commitment to hurry."
