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Wednesday, April 20, 2005
The Spiritual Journey Notebook.
It still sits on my bookshelf in my office as a reminder, and I got it as a graduation gift from high school some 21 years ago from my youth pastor.
See, the first couple of years in high school I had made an arrangement with God that He could stay in heaven and do his thing and execute His plan, but after that plan involved the unexpected death of my father I'd rather not have any part of said plan. It wasn't antagonistic or anything like that. Just that I wasn't a big fan of the plan and I'd prefer to handle life on my own, thank you very much.
Before that, my Christian walk was just going to church and taking part in the liturgy that particular denomination espoused. I was even an altar boy and helped out with communion and such. I can still recite the creeds and respond to the priest at the appropriate times when I visit my mom's Episcopal church.
Then my father died and I executed my plan of amicable distance between God and myself. We'd be acquaintances, but not friends. It worked pretty well for a couple of years.
Naturally, God doesn't let that kind of thing continue for very long and the next thing I know I'm having a life-crisis kind of thing which caused me to reevaluate that arrangement, and I spent my last two years trying to grow in a...
...relationship...
...with...
...Christ.
I'd never heard those words before and they seemed interesting enough, and the youth pastor at a church was always there and took an interest in my and my elementary questions. Then, when graduation rolled around he gave our entire class the Spiritual Journey Notebook.
It was a tabbed, three-ring small binder, with all sorts of checklists. The lists involved Bible study, scripture memory, giving records, missions work, church service, community service, fellowship opportunities, reading lists, goals and such. It was supposed to highlight the stuff we should be doing for a worthy walk with Christ.
And it was too much.
There wasn't enough time to do all the stuff in The Spiritual Journey Notebook and do anything else...much less go to class or work or hang out with friends or shower or drive to the mall. Nothing.
So...naturally...I stopped doing it. I guessed I simply didn't have what it took to be really spiritual, so I made another arrangement with God: I'd just try my best and hope he understood and gave me grace and mercy.
Thankfully, God put a guy in my path who, for whatever reason, chose to take an interest in me and my spiritual life while I was in college and he really helped out a lot. The first thing he did was show me that a worthy walk wasn't something you could check off, no matter how well-intentioned the Spiritual Journey Notebook might be.
Yep. Charles actually started off showing me what a walk with Christ was by showing me precisely what a spiritual walk with Christ WASN'T...which is the same thing Paul does in Colossians 2: 16--23.
See, it follows a summary in chapter 2: 6, which says, "As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him..." The rest of the chapter is a discussion of that, and in verse 8 he warns of empty deception, and then proceeds to tell us what that walk with Christ IS NOT.
Verse 16 & 17 read: "Therefore let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day--things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ."
In other words, the Christian life is not LEGALISM. It has nothing to do with following a list of rules and regulations that aren't found in Scripture. It isn't having a "quiet time" every day or avoiding certain movies/music/television or tithing, etc. It isn't rules and regulations and checklists.
Verses 18 & 19 read: "Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflating without cause by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God."
In other words, the Christian life is not MYSTICISM. It has nothing to do with a focus on experiences above all else. It isn't angels with high fives and pizza when you do something well, and it isn't ecstatic experiences with singing at church and it isn't icons and all sorts of other experience-based "realities."
Verses 20--23 read: "If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, 'Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!' (which refer to things destined to perish with the using--in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men? Thee are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence."
In other words, the Christian life is not AESCETICISM. Trying to do good things so God will like you better. This is similar to legalism, but it has more to do with the motivation of doing things...which is that God won't like you unless you're doing them, hence you have to avoid certain behaviors and attitudes or God and you will be on bad terms. It's almost like punishing yourself to get God's favor.
So, while tomorrow we'll focus on what a worthy walk truly IS, for today, how have you seen or experienced one of these three attempts at the spiritual life and what they do to people's long-term spirituality?
Brent 5:01 AM
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