The Misery of Lukewarmness

Nobody orders lukewarm coffee. When you go to the coffee shop and approach the barista, she may give you two choice: hot or iced. Never "lukewarm."

Lukewarm is not pleasurable in any sense. But how does a coffee become lukewarm? When it sits there, forgotten, ignored. Because whether it's iced or hot when you order it, leave it alone long enough, it gravitates to room temperature.

In the spiritual life, "lukewarmness" is the temperature of neglect. And yet, if we are honest, it is the temperature at which a great many of us live the spiritual life.

The risen Christ says as much to the church in Laodicea: "I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth" (Revelation 3:15-16). It is a startling image. We might expect him to prefer lukewarm to cold. He does not. There is something about the in-between state that is worse than either extreme, and anyone who has lived there knows why.

Last night I was reading the Life of St. Teresa of Avila. She's one of four female Doctors of the Church. Her Interior Castle is the foundation/template for an epic fantasy series I am developing, The Seven Mansions.

While I was reading her Life she described how for many years she was in such a divided, lukewarm condition, particularly with regard to prayer.

Usually we think of the "lukewarm" Christian as someone who is just too "comfortable." But she says the opposite. She says it's one of the most miserable ways a person can live:

“I should say that it is one of the most painful lives, I think, that one can imagine; for neither did I enjoy God nor did I find happiness in the world. When I was experiencing the enjoyments of the world, I felt sorrow when I recalled what I owed to God. When I was with God, my attachments to the world disturbed me” (Life, Ch. 8).

Think of it like this. You take a bath. You started it nice and hot. But then, the water cooled off. You sit there, stuck in the water. You can't enjoy the warmth anymore. But you know as soon as you get out you'll be cold, and the towel is on the other side of the room. So you get "stuck" in that lukewarmness, neither hot, neither cold... but it's not "comfortable" either. It's just kind of... meh...

The same is true of our spiritual lives. And how many Christians go through their lives in a kind of meh?

The lukewarm soul is not at peace. It is pulled in two directions, but can't seem to move fully toward either.

James speaks likewise of this condition when he writes of someone who is "double-minded and unstable in every way" (James 1:8). The Greek word translated as "double-minded" is dipsychos, literally “double-souled.”

It is not that such a person has two opinions. It is that they have, in effect, two selves, two loves, two centers of gravity. And they're stuck. Torn down the middle. Unable to find any peace, any solace.

 

Where the Trouble Begins

Part of the problem is how we picture conversion. Most of us imagine it as a sequence. First, I deal with the sin. I turn from it, I turn to God, the sin is remitted, and then God gives me grace. We think of this grace like some kind of "ticket to heaven." It has our name on it, but it's not really in our possession. It exists wholly outside of ourselves, as if being held by the ticket master until we finally arrive at the pearly turnstile in heaven. We think of it as God's attitude toward us, or some kind of "declaration" as if it were a judge simply declaring a guilty person innocent. It changes my standing, but it does not necessarily change me.

I know this picture well because this was more or less how I thought about conversion for most of my life. A one-time declaration, something that was supposed to give me peace, a kind of assurance of heaven. The problem was, internally, I was stuck with affections for both godly and worldly things. I had a foot on both sides of the righteousness divide.

This is basically the trap, the "stuckness" that's like sitting in a lukewarm bath. If grace is something entirely outside of me, then I can certainly think about it. I can have faith that the "ticket" is there waiting for me. But it leaves me the way I was. A divided soul. It leaves me in this perpetual and unresolvable condition, saint and sinner at the same time, stuck in the tension, nothing resolved on either side.

That is not a description of freedom. It is the very definition James described as being double-minded, or double-souled. It's lukewarm. It is Teresa’s misery: enjoying neither God nor the world, because I am pulled in both directions, with no consolation from either God or the world, because when I gravitate one direction of the other it causes angst.

But Scripture, taken as a whole, does not speak of conversion in that way. Not when taken as a whole. It really reverses that entire sequence.

Consider what Jeremiah writes. He does not say, “We will turn to you, O Lord, so that you may restore us.” He prays, ”Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored” (Lamentations 5:21).

Turning is God’s work before it is ours. Through Ezekiel the Lord promises, "A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes" (Ezekiel 36:26-27).

God does not wait for the heart of stone to get softer. Stones don't do that. He replaces the heart of stone entirely. Paul says it as such: "for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure" (Philippians 2:13).

In other words, grace itself turns us to God. It's an encounter with the lover of our souls. And in that very encounter, as darkness can only be overcome by an encounter with light, he turns us from sin, and sin is thereby remitted. The order matters. And it relies on a more expansive definition of "grace" than an attitude in God's mind apart from us, or a ticket waiting at the pearly gates.

 

Being Holy

What does it mean to be "holy"? Well, literally, it means to be "set apart." But set apart for what exactly?

Well, let's consider the tabernacle or the temple in the Old Testament. Why was it holy? Was it merely holy because God commanded it to be built? No, it was holy because that's where God resided with His people.

Now, consider, what Paul says we are. Temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). Set apart. As Christ was made flesh and dwelled (literally: tabernacled) among us, (see John 1), being now united to Him, as a bride to a bridegroom, one in flesh, we become new tabernacles of God, now vessels for holiness. Not because we've managed to discipline ourselves into it, or because we've chased away all our sin, or merely because we're following God's instructions. It's because He dwells here, in communion with us.

Holiness is not some kind of "treat" that God keeps in a bowl in heaven. It's not the toy that the pediatrician pulls down in a basket after your check-up so you can pick whichever trinket appeals to you the most.

We sometimes think of sanctification (which means, how we're made holy) as a distribution of goods. He lowers the basket so you can take whatever it is about it that appeals, or not. We think of it like a kind of afterthought, the special "reward" for going to the doctor's office, for enduring the check-up without too much whining.

That is not the biblical picture.

Holiness is God giving us himself.

Peter says we "may become participants of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). Grace, the virtues, the gifts of the Spirit, the fruits of the Spirit, the beatitudes: these are not separate commodities. They are the many ways a simple God gets himself into a complex humanity. He accommodates himself to us so that his life and ours can actually come together.

And once you see that, it's obvious why "lukewarmness" is so miserable. God’s life cannot coexist with sin and vice any more than light can coexist with darkness in the same space. "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it" (John 1:5).

It's not that we have to somehow chase away darkness, and only then will the light move in. You can't "get ride" of darkness, because darkness is simply the absence of light. As Augustine described it, sin is a privation of the good. It is an absence, and an absence can only be resolved by a presence.

When God gives us his life, vice is not negotiated with; it is chased out. The image in us is reconstituted from the first Adam to the second: "Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven" (1 Corinthians 15:49).

 

Living It

So what do we do with this?

First, don't wait to pray, or really "devote" yourself to God, until you've fixed yourself up. Until you've gotten rid of the sin. That's like trying to sweep away darkness with a broom. You can sweep away all night long, but it'll remain dark no matter how much sweeping you do, because your broom has no impact on it. The darkness will only leave when the light rises and shines again through the window of your soul. This light, though, does not remain outside of you, even though the source of the light comes from the sun, which is outside of you. Light is diffusive. It enters the room, it reflects off its surfaces, it dwells there. So, don't think you have to "fix your sin" problem, or be pristine before you can grow closer to God. That sequence is backward, and it keeps you lukewarm, because you are working with tools (your own discipline and willpower) that cannot dispel darkness by effort alone. Go to Him with the heart you actually have. James gives the order: "Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you" (James 4:8). Nearness comes first; then the cleansing.

Second, treat prayer as encounter, not transaction. If holiness is God giving himself, then the point of your daily time with him is not to collect something, not to get a little "toy" from the basket, but to receive God Himself. Sit with him. Let Him be present to you. Teresa’s Interior Castle is an image of the soul as an entire castle of crystal or diamond where God dwells at the center. The journey is simply toward Him. The closer we get to Him, the more we grow in holiness. The more we draw to the fiery furnace of love—where nothing is lukewarm.

Third, recognize that there will still be a pull from the world. Conversion is not only a one-time event, there is a "deeper conversion" which is a constant "uncovering" of the things in our storehouse that we're shielding from the light that is already shining through the window and door of our hearts. So, when you find your prayer is dry, your faith life seems tepid, that the world is pulling you and tempting you toward temporary and worldly pleasures, do not despair. Teresa felt it too. The very disturbance we feel in that lukewarmness is actually a grace. We wouldn't feel it if we had given ourselves entirely to the world, if we were cold. The disturbance comes because we recognize, on account of the light received, that there are things we're still grasping, covering-up, protecting. Things that are not as they should be. God lets us feel that disturbance, that kind of misery in lukewarmness, precisely because He wants us to be unified, undivided, true temples illuminated fully in His presence.

In our growth in holiness, in what we call "sanctification," there must be cooperation. We cannot leave the dust-blankets over all the things we'd like to keep in darkness. In cooperation, though, we remove the blankets, which is nothing more than simply allowing what's hidden in darkness to finally encounter the light. It's not your act of pulling off the blanket that illuminates it, but it does finally open up what's hidden to be finally consumed by the light, the light that shines from within consuming every shadow.

Nobody chooses "lukewarm." Not at the coffee shop. Why then, do we settle for it in our spiritual lives, in our relationship with God? This is the condition of the great majority of those who call themselves Christians, and it's precisely why so many Christians wallow in misery. Suffering comes to us, no matter. The holiest of us are often those who suffer the most (think of Jesus, the Apostles, etc.). But how does the "darkness" in suffering get dispelled? When the light of the world enters suffering. Then, even your suffering becomes redemptive because He who redeems the world, who is the light, has entered into it. In that way, well, when we experience suffering or sorrow, we don't get a pat-answer from God explaining why suffering happens or what it means. We get God, Himself, who enters into it, who meets us there, and shines His light and love in and through suffering in a way that draws us into His very heart.

What are we clinging to, holding onto, of worldly things that in our neglect are leaving our souls in a tepid condition? It happens often through neglect. When we encounter what's hot, then let it sit there, untouched, unenjoyed. God wants you to enjoy Him fully. So don't settle for the lukewarm.

 

God Bless,

Judah