The last week has been an object lesson in my fourth characteristic of Christian maturity. Because I have four (yes, four, it's ridiculous) chronic health conditions, I am classed as clinically vulnerable to Covid-19. One of those conditions was caused by a genetic inheritence which I have passed on to at least one of my children, although advances in medicine meant that it was diagnosed very early in their life and corrected through surgery. Another has been caused by my own choices and then exacerbated by other circumstances. Another was quite possibly triggered by a period of intense stress. And then another just arrived like the icing on the cake. I mention all this not because I'm inviting either empathy or disapproval, but because it highlights the undoubted link between the body and the rest of life. And I have Covid-19 so my body has been talking to me a lot week; in fact, it's been hard to hear anything else.
I don't mean to suggest that the link between the body and our minds, upbringing and lifestyle is simple; quite the contrary. As someone who is part of the chronic fatigue universe, I can tell you that nothing rankles quite as much as a Facebook friend offering a simple solution, whether that be daily mindfulness or a kale enema. Sorry Facebook friend, I don't like kale, wherever you're putting it! Saying that there is a link between what is happening in the mind and what is happening in the body is not the same as showing direct causation either way. How does stress affect the way our immune system works? How does debilitating illness affect our mental health? We have some pointers, but no answers.
So it is with the inner life and the outer, public life. Jesus says, 'The mouth speaks what the heart is full of,' (Matthew 12:34, Luke 6:45) as if to point out the inevitability of the link: what is really going on inside is going to come out one way or another. Yet I have found that in Christians, there are at least two ways in which we sometimes work to disconnect the inner and outer lives.
One way of trying to break the link between the inner life and outer life is an approach to faith still being worked out as the New Testament is being written. This approach (in its extreme form it's called antinomianism) says that if we are right with God our behaviour doesn't really matter that much. For some Christians that might mean that we prioritise getting the right doctrine. For others it might be about having the right political beliefs. Ot perhaps even that we have a soul that is being saved so it doesn't really matter what we do with our body. There is a sense that being right (on the inside) is more important than living right. Whatever faith is, it's not something that necessarily has a lot to do with how you actually live.
The letter of James dismisses this view quite comprehensively. Early in his letter, James says it's impossible for a Christian to say either, 'I'm an activist, I leave the faith stuff to others,' or, 'I'm a believer, that's all that matters.' James says both positions are untenable: 'You get to see my faith by my actions' (Jas 2:18), the implication being that the two are inextricably linked.
James says that our lives will tell the truth about what we are like on the inside. If we really believe and trust in the way of Jesus, that will have a noticeable effect on the way we live. If we are just giving rational assent to a set of beliefs, maybe less so. The key is this: our lives will teach us what we really believe too, not just those that are watching.
The other way that Christians can suffer from purposefully trying to disconnect their interior and exterior lives is when they find themselves in a situation in which they have to carry on performing the public activities of faith when that faith is crumbling - or completely absent - on the inside. This is a common problem in believing communities of all kinds, but Jesus has a particular problem with performative faith. (Maybe he would have called out some virtue signalling in our culture, but not for the reason the right does today: I think he would want people to go further, to be more radical, to do more than post to social media.)
The insult that Jesus uses most (Yes, Jesus insulted people) is hypocrite: the person whose behaviour is not the (whole) truth of who they really are. At first look, this sounds like terrible news for the Christian hiding their brokenness and doubt - great, I get condemnation for being a hypocrite on top of everything! Yet when Jesus talks about the kind of person we should be, he offer us genuine good news through honesty. It's not the person who is perfect inside and out that Jesus promotes to us as a role model of authenticity, but rather the person who comes to God wretched and broken, in need of love and forgiveness. 'Everyone who exalts themselves with be humbled, and the one who humbles themselves will be exalted.' (Luke 18:9-14)
I love this; I'm so grateful. Jesus loves the real us, being real. He would rather I come to God in all my mess than pretend to be OK. As communities of faith we need to honour people's confession of questioning, sin and brokenness as part of genuine maturity and not of backsliding. (Of course these can all be signs of immaturity, but in those cases they are rarely brought before God and God's family.) In my experience, great harm is done to God's people by the requirement that Christians perform happy, successful faith all the time.
A mature faith goes beyond a simple authenticity of the inner life and outer life, although this in itself is a noble life goal. I believe that God calls us each of us to partnership, a partnership with God, others and creation that is universal in the sense of being for all of us, but also unique in being a call to us, in our lives and bodies, in our contexts and with our gifts, abilities, passions and relationships. James Fowler puts it like this, using the word vocation (being called):
The other way that Christians can suffer from purposefully trying to disconnect their interior and exterior lives is when they find themselves in a situation in which they have to carry on performing the public activities of faith when that faith is crumbling - or completely absent - on the inside. This is a common problem in believing communities of all kinds, but Jesus has a particular problem with performative faith. (Maybe he would have called out some virtue signalling in our culture, but not for the reason the right does today: I think he would want people to go further, to be more radical, to do more than post to social media.)
The insult that Jesus uses most (Yes, Jesus insulted people) is hypocrite: the person whose behaviour is not the (whole) truth of who they really are. At first look, this sounds like terrible news for the Christian hiding their brokenness and doubt - great, I get condemnation for being a hypocrite on top of everything! Yet when Jesus talks about the kind of person we should be, he offer us genuine good news through honesty. It's not the person who is perfect inside and out that Jesus promotes to us as a role model of authenticity, but rather the person who comes to God wretched and broken, in need of love and forgiveness. 'Everyone who exalts themselves with be humbled, and the one who humbles themselves will be exalted.' (Luke 18:9-14)
I love this; I'm so grateful. Jesus loves the real us, being real. He would rather I come to God in all my mess than pretend to be OK. As communities of faith we need to honour people's confession of questioning, sin and brokenness as part of genuine maturity and not of backsliding. (Of course these can all be signs of immaturity, but in those cases they are rarely brought before God and God's family.) In my experience, great harm is done to God's people by the requirement that Christians perform happy, successful faith all the time.
A mature faith goes beyond a simple authenticity of the inner life and outer life, although this in itself is a noble life goal. I believe that God calls us each of us to partnership, a partnership with God, others and creation that is universal in the sense of being for all of us, but also unique in being a call to us, in our lives and bodies, in our contexts and with our gifts, abilities, passions and relationships. James Fowler puts it like this, using the word vocation (being called):
Vocation is the response a person makes with their total self to the address of God and the to calling to partnership. The shaping of vocation as a total response of the self to the address of God involves the orchestration of our leisure, our relationships, our work, our private life, our public life, and the resources we steward, so as to put it all at the disposal of God's purposes in the services of God and neighbour.
(from Becoming Adult, Becoming Christian)
The Christian community that I know that has most embodied this miracles of living authentically, investing deeply in the secret life of the inner person and the life of world-changing praxis, is Church of the Saviour in Washington DC. One of the church's seminal books is called Journey Inward, Journey Outward by Elizabeth O'Connor. It always brings to mind the strangeness of the labyrinth, that one must go right to the centre before coming out the way you came in. I hate walks like that! Yet the labyrinth teaches you that after you spend time in the inner place, the journey out is like looking at the same place from a completely different angle: everything is changed if you care to look! Read it at your own peril.
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Photo of Grace Cathedral labyrinth by Wally Gobertz on Flickr
2 comments:
Great book - Journey Inward and journey outwards - Faith and Action - one journey not two. The realisation was the most significant moment in my faith journey - it felt like coming home. But of course that's not the end of the story.
Get well Simon. This is no time to be blogging! Blessings, Angela
As a Reiki practitioner I'm immersed in a discourse that the mental/emotional life has a simple and direct connection to the body. The general idea is that if you fix the emotions that the body will get better. If the body isn't better, it's because you weren't, on some level, willing to let go emotionally.
This narrative obviously has benefit for many people, but it is problematic when people fail to get better.
This is something I'm thinking about. How to describe unwellness in a way that gives hope for healing, but which doesn't make failure to heal a character flaw.
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