GROWING SPIRITUALLY, PART 1: “WHO AM I?”

Colossians 3:1-17

October 19, 2008 - Rev. Janet Robertson Duggins

In the more-or-less fundamentalist Christian faith I grew up in, the only step that really mattered on the journey of faith was the decision to follow Jesus.

It’s not that fundamentalists don’t think a Christian should continue to learn and grow in his or her faith; but that’s definitely not the significant part of the story. The really important part is the switch from unbeliever to believer, from outside to inside, and the rest is just the “happily ever after” part.

Most of us tend to understand the Christian life as much more an ongoing and unfolding journey of movement toward and with God. Maybe we can point to a particular moment in time when we could begin to say “I’m going to follow Jesus” or maybe it was a commitment that grew in us gradually until one day we realized it was part of us; In either case it’s our belief that God was preparing, guiding, inviting, and loving us before we knew it. It’s also our belief that God’s call to us is about more than getting our names on the rolls of heaven. In other words, God is not through with us when we accept Jesus, or make a public profession of faith, or start to know ourselves as “Christians.” We aren’t supposed to stay in that beginning place forever, with our faith unchanged in any way. To do that would make a mockery of Jesus’ call to us. There is supposed to be forward movement of some kind, some learning, some changing. We call that “spiritual growth.”

Jerry and I decided to spend a few weeks focusing on spiritual growth in sermons after some conversation we had regarding the surveys many of you responded to recently as part of our preparation for the visit of our consultant. There was a lot of useful and interesting information to be discovered in those surveys, and as you might have expected, there were diverse responses to almost every question. But one particular combination of responses struck us: quite a few people checked “I have a normal Christian life,” followed by (in the next question), “My devotional life is non-existent.”

If that was you, please don’t think I’m trying to pick on you! Truly, I’m not, and in fact I’m grateful for the thinking those responses inspired. But I will admit that, at first, as pastors, we were a little dismayed. How can it be that so many people don’t see prayer, or reading the Bible as part of a normal Christian life? Is it possible that many of us don’t connect being a Christian with a sense of connectedness to God? Have we as pastors, and we as a church, failed so badly at teaching the Christian faith?

But on reflection, I realized that isn’t quite it. It’s more that we have accepted - and unwittingly perpetuated – a too-narrow view of what spirituality and connection with God consist of. And that has led us to the mistaken idea that being really “spiritual” is just for some people, perhaps for those who are particularly holy or religious, folks who are sort of different from most of the rest of us, or have more time on their hands.

The phrasing of the question was perhaps unfortunate and served to confirm that idea: “devotional” does sound like a certain way of praying and reading the Bible, sitting in reflective silence, maybe, or perhaps humming a hymn, walking a labyrinth, or writing in a journal. Certainly those are great ways for some people to connect with God. But others say, “that’s just not me.” I think we do ourselves a disservice by not affirming the different ways people have of being in God’s presence.

We are aware of other differences we have – quiet and talkative, leader and follower, task-oriented and relational. We are aware of different viewpoints on everything under the sun; we know we have different backgrounds and knowledge and talents. We try and understand and work with all those differences. And we know how much those differences enrich the life of the church. So why shouldn’t we understand spirituality in a more complex way than just assuming that some of us are spiritual and some are not?

I want to show you one way of thinking about the different ways people approach faith. Please understand that this is just one way of thinking about it. I show it to you because since we are going to be thinking about spiritual growth for the next few weeks I think it’s really important to start out with understanding that we are not all the same spiritually, any more than we are the same in other ways. We are not all going to be helped to grow spiritually by the same things.

Some of us process faith, or relate to God primarily using our intellect or thinking abilities; some of us relate to God and process the life of faith on a feeling or emotional level. Some of us are at one end of this continuum and some of us are at the other; most of us are somewhere along it.

THINKING

FEELING

And then, we conceptualize or experience God differently, too: Some of us conceive of God as “transcendent,” in control but “out there,” mysterious and beyond us and our understanding; some of us would describe God as near, revealed, knowable – the big word for that is “immanent.”

God is mysterious God is near

Again, some of us are at one end of the spectrum while others are at the other; most of us are somewhere in the middle.

With those two dimensions in mind, a man named Urban Holmes who wrote a book called The History of Christian Spirituality identified four different spiritual “types” to describe the different ways we approach and experience God.

Of course this isn’t something you can determine with a definitive test like a blood test! And of course it’s not possible to categorize everybody neatly into a few boxes. That’s not really the point. But a lot of people have worked with this model, and found it to be very descriptive of the different way individuals experience faith.

Some of us experience and know God by means of what we can see, touch, imagine, and learn about. We like concepts and knowledge. We are theologians, and we are inspired by thinking about and discussing God and the Bible and the big ideas of the faith. We desire to understand. That’s head spirituality.

Some of us are all about the presence of God in our lives, seeking closeness to God, but also trying to discern and do what God wants us to do. We look to the Bible not for information as much as for connection, guidance, and wisdom for living, and we have confidence that it will be revealed there. That’s heart spirituality.

Others of us have a similar interest in the inner life and in connection with God but lean more to the view that God is big and mysterious and holy. We look and listen for God in scripture; we are comfortable with mystery and with some things being unknown. This is more about being than doing. This is contemplative spirituality.

Some of us have what I might call a kind of “big picture” spirituality that envisions a different sort of world. We are interested in justice and truth and making a difference. We look to the Bible for vision and inspiration. I’ve called it visionary spirituality but other words are sometimes used to describe this faith path: crusader, prophetic, or kingdom spirituality.

Later on some of the educators and counselors who made use of this typology added a couple additional categories. You might think of them as sort of a blending of these opposites:

A pilgrim spirituality combines the thinking and thirst for learning with the contemplative acceptance of mystery and the unknown. Here we are all about the questions and the journey.

And a servant spirituality unites the vision of a better world with a more personal and direct involvement. In this way of being spiritual, we are all about practical caring and action, about following Jesus’ example of love.

None of these types of spirituality is any better than any of the others. Each one has something to offer to the church and to the world.

And each one can become problematic if taken to an extreme: the head can be overly rationalistic and cold; hearts can become exclusive and closed to new ideas; contemplatives can get withdrawn from the real world; visionaries can turn rigid and fanatical; pilgrims can be reluctant to commit to any direction and can get so caught up in asking questions that they forget to consider any answers; the servant can get overwhelmed with busyness and all the needs there are and his or her own need to serve.

Fortunately, most people don’t conform rigidly to any one type!

Now… you might look at this and say, “I know right where I fit. That describes me to a T.” Or you might see something of yourself in several of these types. Most people do experience and relate to God in multiple ways, even if they generally have a preference for one way or another.

Whether you find this particular scheme useful or not doesn’t matter. It’s simply one a way of conceptualizing what makes us different in how we approach God and how we experience God. I find it really helpful in understanding why we come to church with different needs and expectations. I think it also can help us get past thinking that there is only one way of being spiritual.

The point is: we grow spiritually in many ways: prayer, and worship, and reflecting on scripture, certainly; but also by asking questions, through relationships, as we cope with hurts and challenges, in service, in taking a risk or a stand, by practicing love, in learning from successes and failures, in work, in giving, in quietness, in activity. And in all of that, we engage differently, we discern God differently… because we are different. And understanding something about who we are spiritually can help us discern what can help us grow, and what might be more of a frustration than a help.

Now don’t misunderstand: I’m not suggesting that spiritual growth is all up to us. That’s not it at all. It isn’t self help, but God’s Spirit working in us. But we can want it and believe it is possible and seek it, or we can dismiss it and evade it and run the other way.

I really believe that the “normal” Christian life includes growing spiritually. I think there’s no doubt that it’s part of what God intends for us. In one way or another, all of Paul’s letters – like the portion we read today from Colossians – are about urging Christians toward spiritual growth.

We hope our focus on spiritual growth for the next few weeks will challenge all of us to be open to growing in our faith. It’s not an abstract issue; We will be asking you to consider some questions about growing spiritually as they relate to your own life and commitment.

But it seems to me that the first question to ask about spiritual growth is this most basic one: “who am I?”

Certainly, in some ways God does want to transform us, heal our brokenness change our self-directed ways into Christ-like-ness, grow our faith and our love. But in another way, God is not interest in changing who you are, or making you into someone who isn’t you.

In fact, I read once that somebody defined spiritual growth as becoming who you were meant to be.

So let me leave you with that question, or rather, let me invite you to take that question with you this week. “Who am I?”