The Contemplative Crisis

Where do you experience  God’s salvation? Normally the question would be: “Do you know how God’s salvation is offered to you in Christ?”  Or another question might be: “Where were you when you were saved?” Both these questions focus on knowing and experiencing salvation at some point in the past. However, we live in the present and experience God in the present, including salvation. Salvation and healing/wholeness are sometimes used interchangeably in Luke’s gospel and this is how I would like to use this term although I understand that in certain situations, ‘being saved’ is what the word salvation is reduced to. My question today is, “Where do you experience God’s salvation in daily life, now?”

Let me give you an example of experiencing God’s salvation. Ben, a boy of about 3 yrs of age, invites Sarah, his godmother, to dance with him to a Wiggles song on the DVD on the television. He does not know that Sarah  suffers from depression. He invites her to dance however. Sarah gets up and begins to dance and as she does so, she experiences a moment of knowing that an inner healing has taken place by giving herself to the music and the situation. She has moved from a place of woundedness and sadness, and being held by depression due to recent tragic events, to a place where she has experienced wholeness and joy. Sarah could see this situation as a gift of God and a moment when she experienced salvation.

In John’s gospel, ch 5 vss 1-9, Jesus invites an unnamed crippled man who sits beside the pool of  Bethesda to be healed. Of course he would want healing we think. He has been crippled for 38 years (Jn 5:5). That’s why he has had his relatives bring him each day to sit beside the pool. But if he accepts the invitation by Jesus to get up and walk, it will mean a total change in his lifestyle. It will mean no longer saying to people: “I am the man beside the pool crippled.” How he views himself and his identity will change by accepting the healing. An uncertain future is opening up before him. The same invitation was offered to Blind Bartimaeus when Jesus said to him: “What do you want me to do for you?” (Mk 10: 46) The rich young ruler who came to Jesus asking what must he do for eternal life was offered the invitation to leave finding his security in his wealth and to trust God in everyday life (Mk 10:17ff). Attached to the invitation by Jesus to be healed or set free is the disturbing thought that one’s life will not be the same again. Salvation will bring transformation – and change. Although willing  to acknowledge their crippled  and  blind states, the man beside the pool of Bethesda and Bartimeaus were totally unprepared for Jesus turning up and bring with him, salvation into their particular situation. (See also Zacchaeus, Lk 19:1-10)

Sometimes people we meet are so wounded and hurt that they are crippled. They  constantly retell their story as, “I was injured by this event or person and I no longer feel as if I have control over my life. I have lost everything, even my sense of identity. I am so defined and scared by this event or person that I cannot move back to a place of health again.” How do we encourage these people to move to a place where they experience freedom from their crippling story? The key lies in them experiencing  Jesus coming into their life and bringing his salvation/healing.  In a particular situation of their everyday life, when they experience his presence, they are able to experience his salvation. So what we could do is ask them to learn and notice when God invites them to experience his salvation in their everyday life, just as the cripple beside the pool was invited to experience God’s salvation unexpectedly in an unexpected way. The crippled man expected the waters to be stirred  forming little waves indicating it was now possible to be healed -  if he got into the water in time. Instead he got Jesus helping him to his feet;  healing him and setting him free from his past. This was his moment of salvation/healing.

Often though, we use inappropriate substitutes to fill the hole and to banish the pain which cripples us. A common one is to seek long and deep intimate conversations with a few friends to temporally numb the pain and daub the soothing balm on our wounds. They provide much needed support. But if we stop and look at what’s happening,  we’re avoiding the issue (of our crippled and hurt life), and using our intimate friendships to put a band aid on our wounds. If it is pointed out that we are relying on our friends too much or simply using them to avoid facing the pain within which cripples us, we reply in anger that we need these friendships, they are what keep us going.  However, they are really bringing us each day to the pool where we sit waiting for a miracle to happen.  In effect, they are colluding with us in allowing us to maintain our status as a victim. But we must be willing to surrender this false identify and allow God to approach us and invite us to be healed.

Another inappropriate solution to our pain and the feeling of being divorced  from God is to do what Elijah did. Following his confrontation with the prophets of Baal and their slaughter on Mt Carmel (1 Kings ch’s 18-19), he became exhausted and afraid for his life due to threats made by the queen of Israel,  Jezebel. He embarked on a search for salvation but used an inappropriate means to grasp it. He went down to Mt Horeb (also known as Mt Sinai), where God had appeared to Moses and given him the ten commandments. Did Elijah find what he sought by going to Mt Sinai? No he didn’t. He expected to be re-commissioned like Moses or given some new gift to bring back to his fellow countrymen, but God wasn’t in the fire, the roaring wind which split the rocks, or the cloud. It was the small still voice that God’s voice could be heard. This became a moment when Elijah experienced God’s salvation in the small still voice of God. God was alive and present to him and his needs.

On particular practice I’ve found useful is to read Scripture with our imagination. Using our imagination, we place ourselves in the scene and enter into a dialogue with Jesus. (This is commonly called the Ignatian method.) The following meditation and exercise is designed to train your eyes and heart to become more aware of when and where you experience God’s salvation in your daily life.

Read the story of the crippled man in John 5:1-9 several times until it becomes quite familiar.

Imagine that you are the crippled man sitting beside the pool of Bethesda.

What does the surrounding area look like? What are the sounds you can hear? Is it hot or cool? What  can you smell or touch? Are there any other people with you? Who are they and what are they doing?

You see Jesus coming in and approaching. What does he look like? He turns and sees you. How do you feel?

Then Jesus says to you, “Do you want to be healed.” What do you want to say to him as a result of this question? Spend a bit of time talking to him about his question. Then Jesus invites you to take his hand and to get to your feet and take your mat home. You accept his offer and get up. How do you feel now? How does it feel to be walking with your mat home? What thoughts are going through your head? Do you like being healed? What are you expecting tomorrow will be like when you wake up in bed and realize that you won’t be going to the pool to sit beside it for the rest of the day?

We have all been given two ears to listen with.
In one ear, we have heard the voice of those who criticise us and say,
‘You’ll never be any good’,
or that, ‘You messed that up’,
or ‘You’ll never learn’,
or ‘You’re not able to be a leader’.
It might have been our family which has told us this,
with sometimes just a look,
sometimes at the top of their voice,
the message we hear is loud and clear.
It might have been a boss,
a leader who is stressed and frustrated and tired
and has taken their anger out on you.
But we must turn down the volume of that voice in our ear
and listen with our other ear to God’s voice which
we hear in Scripture
we hear in the voice of encouragement by friends
we hear from those who walk beside us at our pace
we hear from strangers who comment on our abilities which we shyly deny
although God has impressed them into us from our birth.
We must listen to the voice of God in our other ear which says
‘You are deeply loved by me.’
‘You have been chosen by me and are precious in my sight.’  (Is 43:4)
‘You are the apple of my eye.’  (Ps 17:8)
‘Your days are written by me before anyone of them has come to pass.’  (139:16)
and
‘I have appointed you to go and bear fruit which will last.’ (Jn 15:16)
We must do this everyday
in the morning
before we turn on the radio
before we read the newspaper
before we use the internet
before we watch the television
before we forget to listen to God’s voice
in the silence, in solitude and in our prayer
because it is in this place that we find our renewal.

“It’s too easy to lose touch with who we are and become obsessed with what we are not. We become alienated from our very selves as we develop bad habits that verge on addictions. We are convinced by television commercials and become obsessed with the latest laptop computer, the newest model of an automobile and the miracle drug that will solve our weight problem, our sexual dysfunction or our struggles to have a good night’s sleep. We desperately crave affection or attention and will do anything to obtain it. We live in the present for a fleeting moment, only to return quickly to tomorrow’s worries and concerns. We become so consumed with our careers and roles that we end up defining ourselves by what we do. We are restless and weighed down with the guilt and regrets of the past.”

So writes Albert Haase, a Franciscan and professor of spirituality at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, Illinois in his book, Coming Home to your True Self, p 37. His words describe what many of us are and because we sense that this might be our condition, fear peering inside our lives to discover that what he’s said might be true. How do we become free from these obsessions, restless desires and unsatisfied ambitions?

Our hearts and our lives can be likened to a donut and in the middle of them is a gapping hole into which we stuff all sorts of things in order to find fulfilment or to cover up the hole. We become quite skilled at doing this and become people whose lives are consumed by filling these needs. Haase calls this the construction of the false self; a false self which we project out into the world but at the cost of ignoring our true inner self which was made for God. Haase makes a helpful description of the things we are likely to become obsessed by or slaves to. They all begin with the letter P. (He could have been a primary school teacher in an earlier life with a skill like this.) The empty P’s as he calls them are:

Pleasure

Praise

Power

Prestige

Position (in our work, family or church which gives us a sense of importance or power)

Popularity

People (filling up our lives with lots of relationships to hide the loneliness within)

Productivity

Possessions

Perfection

What shall we do? It is at this point that the Bible readings for Lent are helpful at illuminating what must change within us and how this might occur. On 14 March the reading will be the parable of the lost son and his elder brother. The younger son took his inheritance, wasted it and came to his senses in the pig pen. But this is our story too, of those who come to their senses in the pig pen of their lives lived out in suburbia. We have left the household of the Father and have become obsessed in filling the hole in our lives and spent all that we have trying to fulfil the “Empty P’s”. We are destitute. But by returning to the Father and accepting his welcome embrace and grace, we can begin to build a new life. (The elder son was just as lost as the younger one, but did not realise it. He works to obtain his Father’s praise. He fills his life with perfectionism, focused on productivity. He is unable to feel pleasure such is his performance driven life.)

On 21 March the story of Mary anointing the feet of Jesus from Jn 12:1-8 will be studied. This devotion and sacrifice by Mary highlights that she has abandoned seeking praise (she is criticised by Judas), popularity and prestige (by effectively washing the feet of Jesus like the household slave would do). Her possessions have no claim on her heart as she has had to sacrifice much in order to purchase the costly perfume which is poured out on his feet in utter devotion to her Lord. 

Then the Good Friday readings come upon us, often catching us out because we are still not prepared with what will now happen in the last week of the life of Jesus of Nazareth (Luke 22:14-23:49). The annual Passover dinner with his disciples turns into a farewell dinner; a new covenant is instituted between God and humanity; and the betrayal by Judas strips back the veneer over human nature to reveal the basest and darkest qualities which lie just beneath the surface. Judas is addicted to power and possessions; he will do anything (even betraying an innocent man) in order to meet their insatiable thirst. Just after Jesus announces that he is going to be betrayed by one of his own disciples, two of the disciples make a grab for the best seats in the kingdom and reveal their own slavery to position and power.

The rulers, religious teachers and Pilate who silence Jesus by crucifying him are exposed as men who are constantly seeking praise. Their hunger for prestige and popularity has blinded them to the coming of Jesus the Messiah and the momentous moment in history that they have become participants in. Peter caves in to the accusation by a servant girl that he is a disciple of Jesus and denies him. Peter, we now see, wants people to love him; he is afraid and will seek popularity rather than standing with Jesus.

But Easter Sunday is about a new day dawning; of evidence of God’s power and redemption; that by death Jesus has done with the penalty of sin and the resurrection is the evidence and justification that God has accepted his death and work on the cross for us. The resurrection is proof that the power of God working through the Holy Spirit is able to transform even death men to live again (Rom 4:24-25); this same power can set us free from the “Empty P’s” (Rom 6:5-11; 8:11). There is new life revealed in Jesus the resurrection and the life (Jn 11:25), a new life beyond our hostage to these “Empty P’s” which is able to transform us – now; today, tomorrow, for all eternity. The purpose of Easter is to remove the penalty of following the Empty P’s, and to set us free from the power they have over our lives. Easter points us to the essence of Christianity: that one died so that all may become the righteousness of God, not only free from the Empty P’s, but free to give ourselves to the one who redeems us, God. Surely the fact that we are no longer slaves to the Empty P’s, but sons and daughters of the Father should inspire us to give our lives, time, talents and money to him who has loved us and died for us?

I have just returned to work after three weeks of holiday. Each time I meet someone they ask, ‘How was it?’ My best reply is that it was a mixed blessing. It wasn’t the happiest of times. My lower back was strained on Christmas Eve and its only just come good after a box of anti-inflammatory drugs, physiotherapy and persistent exercises the physiotherapist taught me, so a good deal of the holiday was focused on getting better. The cause of my sore back was carrying shopping bags, but the deeper cause was my body was saying it had had enough. After a busy year and the approaching Christmas demands and church services, it (my back) ‘went’. I painfully worked through the next two Sunday services, including a New Year’s service, and finished off organising things which need to be attended to while I was away and then went on holidays. I should have recognised the signs earlier, but didn’t.

Quite soon after commencing my holidays I drifted into a place which I like to call ‘unfaith’. It is not that I would deny the Creed; it is rather that I lacked the motivation and the heart to affirm it. People who enter this place are indifferent to the things of God. Something had come and taken me captive. My heart, emotions, mind and spirit felt dead. This condition is well known and documented, but rarely spoken of in the church, where a triumphalism underlies much of its life and activities. When called ‘spiritual depression’ as I have heard some call it, it sounds as bad as a catching a cold. It’s not. It’s more like developing influenza and sometimes it has fatal consequences to the Christian taken down by it. It was not that I now blatantly disbelieved in God; it was that he had become remote, even irrelevant. I now found myself in a place where I struggled to believe.

This condition which I call, ‘unfaith’ is not an active unbelief, but a half way house of not being active in my belief in Jesus, the church, miracles, God’s activity in the world and all that stuff. Unfaith is both a feeling and a disposition toward God of indifference in spite of continuing to claim to know something of God. ‘Unfaith’ has a range of expressions and degrees in its condition. At its worst, it’s an indulgence in being passive, waiting for proof by the proud. A milder version is sensed in the testimony of those at church who have had God do some amazing miracle in their lives which provided them with proof of his existence, (or even some mighty deliverance), but now they seem so lifeless in their faith. Their desperate prayer was answered – but now there seems a hollow commitment to a life of pursuing an intimacy with God. The lights have gone out although they continue to go through the motions. I think it strikes those who read questionable theological material which corrodes their faith and leaves them in a place of nowhere, uncertain about anything. Unfaith is probably lurking the in the background as the reason why some leave the institutional church. Due to hurt and pride, they move from being able to say ‘we believe in the holy catholic church’ to ‘we believe that our own individual faith is the only true position’ and leave to search for something which is found beyond the church.

This place of unfaith was not a place I was unfamiliar with however. I had entered this place from time to time in the past, and I had noticed that each time it has been due to exhaustion, be it my mind (from study), my body (from long hours of physical work as a carpenter), my heart and spirituality (from ministry), or my emotions (from draining and difficult pastoral situations). Unfaith is not doubt; doubt is actively questioning, standing outside and judging the truths of Christianity, whereas unfaith is a place where we would like to exercise our faith, but feel dead, weighed down by a shadowy feeling. Unfaith is a place we are taken to and held captive by exhaustion, lethargy; it is a spiritual torpor. It is the place which Elijah experienced under the broom tree (1 Kings 19:4) following a major demonstration of God’s power and answer to prayer. Elijah has a belief in God enough to pray – that his life would be taken, but not enough faith to remember the goodness of God, God’s covenant faithfulness, his call and God’s protection. This malaise of unfaith is often erroneously labelled ‘demonic oppression’ by the overzealous. It is not a lack of mental assent to Christian doctrine, but a condition of the heart whose channels have been well charted by Ignatius of Loyola in his retreat guide: The Spiritual Exercises, in which he notes that we experience alternating periods of desolation and consolation in our relationship with God. In a subsection of The Spiritual Exercises, called “The Rules for Discernment of Spirits”, he notes the symptoms of desolation, the ways of dealing with it when it strikes, the benefits of this condition and how to prepare ourselves for the time when we will enter it for it will surely strike sooner or later.

So at the commencement of my holidays I felt as if I had been led into a wilderness experience: being immersed in a place of barrenness, of silence and feeling remote from day to day life back in civilization. The wilderness was where the children of God spent forty years; it is where Elijah ended up, where Jesus went and countless others throughout history have traversed the dangerous journey through it. We even speak of ‘the political wilderness’ when a leading politician makes a bid for the leadership of their party and fails. They go to the back bench of parliament to lick their wounds and to plot another attempt at getting the numbers.

But unfaith is a normal experience for the Christian that brings with it, some benefits, albeit that it is an unpleasant experience to undergo. It is the place in which we are purged, where we are weaned from our unconscious addiction to adrenalin which is released each time we engage in a ministry situation, even those situations in which both parties are blessed by God. The body’s loss of being regularly flooded with adrenalin sends shockwaves throughout it as withdrawal takes place. Because we do not live as disembodied spirits, our minds, heart, cardio-vascular system and psyche experience a low level shock in response to not having this constant stimulation of adrenalin. (I had to visit the doctor to obtain a new script for my blood pressure tablets and discovered that my blood pressure was about 10 points lower on holidays. I didn’t feel any better, I felt terrible, but my body blood pressure level was saying it was good for me to be away from stress, even good stress and the adrenalin.) It’s good for us physically to withdrawal from this over stimulation or long term health issues will emerge that can remain masked behind a busy and hectic lifestyle. A benefit of this place of unfaith is that we are taught or rather, brought back to earth and brought back to face our humanity again. We are after all, only unworthy servants of our master who are expected to do nothing more and nothing less than what he requires (Lk 17:10), and his yoke is easy and his burden is light (Matt 11:28-29), although we are inclined to forget this as we undertake projects which are beyond our powers or for causes which we assume are God’s causes. The painful experience of being broken free from our ego driven agendas and programs is experienced as unfaith because we end up in a place waiting around for a new assignment from the Lord. It’s not comfortable waiting in recovery. The terse but poignant reflections by Henri Nouwen of his experience of this place are profoundly beautiful and perhaps the best work he ever produced. (The Inner Voice Of Love: A Journey Through Anguish To Freedom”, 1996).

Our experience of unfaith helps reconnect us with the fact that we need to be compassionate toward those broken, exhausted or worn down by life’s struggles and the need to express some compassion toward ourselves as well. In this place of unfaith we relearn again what we have forgotten deep down, that we are saved by grace and not by what we do. It jolts us back into the awareness that we have been given a ministry, not because we are anyone special, or possess superior abilities, intelligence, looks or giftedness, but simply because of God’s love, sovereign choice (election) and grace (1 Cor 1:26-31). This newly recovered awareness helps break the confusion we so often and so easily slip into making between who we are and what we do (our performance), in this place, painful as it is. Due to this experience, the Psalms take on a whole new dimension and we discover that the Bible is not only a faithful record of God’s acts and revelation of his character, but is a faithful record by God’s people of their own responses as they struggle in their faith and trust in God. The Psalms in particular, express the yearnings and disappointments God’s people had with God. In this place of ‘unfaith’ the richness of the Psalms is rediscovered and we are again immersed in the honesty of their authors and touched by their willingness to be so vulnerable, so naked, in their condition and struggle which would be covered up in our modern church. (See for example: Ps 30:1-12; Ps 22:6; Ps 88:15; Ps 119:71 and Ps 77.)

Can we find our way back again out of this deadening condition, to safety, to where God is experienced again? Yes and no. There are a number of things we can do. When lost in the Australian bush, the best thing to do is sit down and wait to be found. Going against all our instincts to find our way home, we must not, but sit and wait. Those who panic and allow fear to take control of them, rush off through the bush and get more lost, over heat and then throw off their clothes to cool down. Searchers just follow the line of cast off clothes from one item to another in order to find them. If they are fortunate, they will be found only suffering from the embarrassment of being lost. The more severe, from hypothermia and dehydration. The best thing to do is wait for God, like the watchman on walls of Jerusalem looking for the first signs in the sky that the dawn was about to break over the horizon (Ps 130:6). We need to wait for our emotions to recover again and not to panic. It is a normal Christian experience as the Psalms testify. It is also good to remember that the deserts are where we begin to hear the voice of God again, not just in the hectic busyness of life and ministry commitments.

Slowly picking up our regular spiritual disciplines are helpful, but without over doing it. Regular everything is good; patterns help re-establish our equilibrium again. Pray a little, but often. Go easy on yourself because you will eventually be brought out into the ‘spacious place’ again (Ps 18:19). The Psalmist is correct in recognising that his deliverance will not come from his own efforts or by whipping himself with guilt or by undertaking a frenzy of religious activities (our natural inclination). It will come from the LORD with whom is constant love and redemption from this place of death and desolation. This place of unfaith is not one I would like to experience again for quite a while, and generally diligence and attention to one’s lifestyle, spiritual disciplines and the number of commitments undertaken are the best protection for being led into this place again, but occasionally its necessary for God himself to take us into this place, if only to discover, that its him alone that we seek and whom we serve.

What did I do on my holidays? Lots of things, from house maintenance, to bogie boarding on the surf; camping, to swimming in a river. The two main things I did work on throughout my holidays was recovering from a sore back which occurred on Christmas Eve; and the other, was to wait for the Lord again, to bring restoration after a demanding year in 2009. My holidays were basically spent in this place of unfaith, recovering. Like the Psalmist of 130, I have also come into the place of hope too – in what God has done and will do in my life this year. The sense of life and communion with God is returning, but it’s taken time and I’m still a work in progress.