Honoring other people's spiritual journeys.

We're all on a path. Spirituality doesn't get shot into us with a syringe.

 

It's a journey without a destination.

 

Correction. It doesn't have a destination in this life. But there will come a time when we arrive.

 

In this world, though, the journey is the destination.

 

There's a temptation for those of us who've come upon some deep spiritual truth, some great Biblical insight, or have learned a hard lesson through trial and tribulation, to use our experience to resolve the struggle for other people.  

 

We think if we can share our experience we can spare them of the pain that they have to go through as a part of their journey.

 

But when we do that we're behaving more like thieves than spiritual mentors.

 

We should never try to rob someone of the struggle that's part and parcel of their spiritual growth.

 

That doesn't mean we don't share insights that might spare people certain kinds of pain. But when we find people who are struggling with a certain part of their walk in faith, their spiritual path, the tendency is to run up to them, pick them up, and try to bring them to where we're at on our own journey.

 

Sometimes we even make the mistake of assuming we're further along on the journey than they are. Like we're the guide, and they're lost... and we have to bring them to our level.

 

Most of the time, though, when we make this assumption we're revealing that we aren't so far along the spiritual path as we'd like to think we are.

 

In the medieval era, there was a keen insight from many of the monastic communities that outlined a path of spiritual growth. They said that spiritual development comes through: (1) oratio [prayer]; (2) meditatio [meditation/study]; (3) contemplatio [contemplation].

 

In other words, we grow through prayer, further study, and constant reflection on what we learned. But there's something missing in this formula.

Something another monk, an Augustinian, named Martin Luther (who became known later as a Protestant Reformer), brought to the forefront of his spiritual program. It's something he learned from experience.

 

In his formulation, he maintained that we become spiritual masters (he used the term theologians... but he wasn't speaking about academics, exclusively) through (1) oratio [prayer]; (2) meditatio [meditation/study; and (3) tentatio [struggle]. 

 

In German (Luther's natural language) he used the word Anfechtungen in place of tentatio. That German word implies a lot of angst and turmoil in a struggle. It's part and parcel of what's required for spiritual growth.

 

It's not that contemplatio/contemplation was wrong. But mere "contemplation" can get really heady, really fast. For Luther, genuine contemplation happens in and through our struggles, our angst, our trials and tribulations.

 

Experience shows us this is true. If you've been "through it" in a season of your life and come through with a deeper faith, a more profound spirituality, you know what Luther was talking about.

 

It's why (for the most part) we associate youth with a lot of zeal... but we associate age with wisdom.  

 

Youthful zeal can sometimes become the cause (or a contributing factor) to our tentatio/Anfechtungen/struggle. It certainly was for me.

 

This is the insight that Franciscan Priest, Richard Rohr, outlines in his book Falling Upward: Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life.  

 

During the first part of our life (for some of us, this only lasts through our youth and some people live into their 90s and never get out of the first half of life) we are concerned with defining ourselves. We form an identity concept by differentiating ourselves from others.

 

That's why a lot of teenagers divide into cliques based on relatively trivial things like their style of dress or their music preferences.

 

It's why you're probably going to find more young pastors/preachers diving into intense debates about doctrines. They're certainly the ones more likely to get angry about it.

 

Because psychologically speaking they are using their doctrines as a security blanket. It's not really about the love of God so much as it is about a host of fears that perplex our youth/the first "half" of life.

 

We see the same thing play out in politics. I'd wager (based on what we see going on in the world) that the vast majority of politicians are stuck in first-half-of-life thinking. It's always about us versus them. We look for an identity by joining specific groups, imagining some kind of group-superiority, and casting the "other" as the enemy (or at least the opponent).

 

During the first half of life we focus on our differences. The things that separate us and define us differently than other people. We think this constitutes our identity so we fall into pretty deep trenches to protect this psychology of "self" which in turn makes it very difficult to truly respect other people who don't fit inside our categories/groups.

 

But like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly, if we're blessed enough to move past this "first half of life" ethos of the self... we can grow past it into what Father Rohr calls the "second half of life" sense of Being.

 

But employing Luther's insight, this transition always comes with tentatio/Anfechtungen. It requires a period of metamorphosis. A genuine struggle. It leads us into (what I've written to you about before) the Dark Night of the Soul.

 

When you get into the "second half" of life things like your corporate church life might start to feel a little trite. You still find value in it, and you continue to go, but you also have a sense that there's something missing, a depth that a lot of people there haven't quite reached. You don't judge them, though, for it. Instead, there's almost a sense of sadness that they don't have the eyes to see.

 

But it's no longer an "us versus them" ideology that defines us. We realize that the "identity" we constructed in our first half of life is really a false self. We've come to discover our true selves not by differentiation, not by focusing on our differences, but recognizing connection. 

 

We find a deeper connection to God. We find our identity in God's revelation to us - that we belong to Him as His children - and by consequence we find we have more empathy and compassion for those who we used to see as the enemy.

 

Because we no longer define ourselves by differentiating ourselves from people who might think differently than we do (be it in the domain or religion, politics, or anywhere) we learn to love them more. We have a heart for the other. We no longer cling to our "false self" identity structures because when our period of tentaio/struggle revealed that those structures weren't trustworthy we discovered we weren't destroyed as a result.

 

In fact, we learned through the struggle, that we were more valuable and more loved than we ever realized. We discovered a security that transcends worldly categories and rests instead in the heart of God.

 

Now, if you read all of this and it resonates, but you think you're still stuck in a "first half of life" concept of your self how can you move beyond that? Because once you realize this is a thing, and you see it's true, it's natural that you'll want to reach the second-half of life.

 

Because the first-half of life is defined by a lot of fear, doubt, judgment, and anxiety. 

  

The second-half of life is defined more by security, hope, compassion, and serenity.  

 

Well, some of us (like me) had to go through some REAL challenging periods of darkness and failure to get there. For some of us, that's what it takes. We have to experience some kind of grave personal failure, to lose something really important to us, to experience a ton of pain to get there.

 

We can also get there through deep love - which can elicit a struggle in a way. Or we can get there by leaning into the struggle when it comes, but dropping our pretenses, and by forcing ourselves to consider (this is a form of that deep/profound love) the people we used to think as the "enemy" or the "other" what their lives might be like... to try and view the world through their eyes... and to seek God with complete humility.

We can also initiate this "shift" from the first-half to the second-half of life by leaning into the struggle when something threatens our false-self identity. We can get there by doing a rigorous and honest assessment of our character defects and faults.

 

I'm not talking about a casual list of our past sins/mistakes. I'm taking about a genuine examination of the sinful condition behind our actual sins. Our flaws, the core issues in our character that we try to hide from other people because it doesn't fit the false-self image that we're trying to build.

 

Where has self-seeking been your primary motivating factor? Because almost all sin is a form of self-seeking at the core. Was it about pride? Did you crave the praise/recognition of others? Are you craving approval from people like your parents, or your coworkers, or a respected mentor? What fears have you buried? Are you afraid of being wrong? Why are you afraid of that? Are you afraid of not being loved, or are you afraid you're unlovable? Have you let the inaccurate judgments of other people define you? Have you let inaccurate judgments about yourself define you?

 

If you are genuinely honest about these things, these fundamental "defects" about who you are... the best way to start building that cocoon where you can grow into the next half of life is to talk about these defects with another human being. Someone you can trust. A spiritual mentor, perhaps, or someone you know who won't judge you. If it needs to be a professional like a psychiatrist that's fine, too. Because the point is that you need to get it out of your "head" and into the light, into the real world, by talking to someone about it.

 

You need to admit these flaws to yourself. I suggest you write them down. There's something about the act of putting pen to paper that makes it real.

 

You need to turn them over to God and let him fill your insufficiencies with his sufficiency. 

 

That's what Jesus was all about. That's why he said in the Sermon on the Mount that the "poor in spirit" are blessed! Only when we recognize our brokenness, our flaws, are we ready to receive what He has to give us.

 

Only then can we truly hear that we belong to God, that we have security in His promises, that our identity can't be shaken and rattled by anything in this world.

 

I know, I know... I started this whole e-mail by talking about respecting other people's journeys. You see, when you gain this insight about yourself, you won't be so trigger-happy to feel the need to push people past their struggles. When people are going through a period of tentatio/struggle we can encourage them, help them see God's truth in the midst of it, but we dare never rob them of the gift that is the struggle.

 

Blessings,

Judah

 

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