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jenny_islanderI am skipping between the main text and the study guide today.
Foster portrays the spiritual life, also known as the Good Life or as abundant life, as a narrow way, but not, as is often imagined, a gate. Instead it is a path. On one side is any attempt to get everything perfectly right through human will. On the other is the assumption that we need do nothing and God will sort it all out. Both of these go nowhere. Foster calls them sheer dropoffs; I prefer to think of them as thorns and heavy brush, because it is possible to get out of them and back to the path--not without looking silly or feeling pain, but possible. The path takes us from birth through death; it is a matter of both spiritual practice, and asking for God's guidance and transformational power. As we travel, we are changed. Ever beginners in spiritual discipline, we nevertheless find ourselves growing closer to "the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ," as the King James Version poetically puts it. (Ephesians 4:13)
But oh, does the temptation to find a shortcut wind its way into every waking moment.
The section for Chapter 1 in the study guide goes into more detail about this temptation. Foster lists seven pitfalls along the way--"though, surely," he says, "there are more."
Legalism is often held up by American Protestants (and possibly others) as the pitfall we must watch for. It is certainly a pitfall. You don't have to do scary things, like trusting that God knows more than you do about a situation, or meeting everyone as an equal image of God, if you stick to a firm checklist of Do This = Good, Do That = Bad. Real virtues can be silenced and thrown out by properly written laws. You don't have to wake up and say, "Today I will do evil." Just pick a tiny snippet of Scripture to found an enormous system of laws upon. Ignore any way in which your laws increase human misery or your checklists exasperate and divide. After all, what you are doing is Scriptural! Then compound the evil by teaching it to your children and telling them they will go to Hell if they point out the inconsistencies in your laws and the inanities in your checklists. This, I firmly believe, is how you make angry ex-Christians out of your kids.
But that's just the most commonly discussed pitfall in the way.
Second, Foster points out that although spiritual disciplines are often an inward matter, if you practice them, the world is going to notice, and that notice must sooner or later be negative. He doesn't mean the artificial martyrdom of making an ssa of yourself to people who did not invite you in. Spiritual disciplines prompt us toward doing more justice, loving mercy more, walking more humbly in the presence of God, valuing our neighbors as equal images of God with us, and valuing the will of God above all things. When you do this where the powerful can see you, the powerful get angry. When you remind ordinary people by your actions that they can do the same, they get uncomfortable. Sometimes anger and discomfort lead to self-examination and change. Sometimes, however, they lead to trouble. But leaving the way because people are shoving you off it is a mistake. Do not assume that the way is always going to be easy.
The third pitfall is upholding spiritual disciplines as virtues. Virtue needs some explanation first. Popular culture tends to regard virtue either as not having unapproved sex, or as sitting around telling other people where they have gone wrong. Virtues are more complicated than that. (Nearly everything popular culture says about the Good Life is more complicated than that.) A virtue is something you do if you are the best person you can be.
The number and nature of virtues has been the subject of debate since humankind first learned to argue. Here are two lists that Foster certainly has in mind, because the authors he cites certainly did. The first list, often called the Seven Heavenly Virtues, consists of prudence, or thinking about the consequences of your action and inaction; justice, or the honoring of the rights of all; temperance, or practicing moderation in all things; fortιtude, or being afraid but doing it anyway; faith, or being willing to believe in what cannot be proven; hope, or acting in the assumption that what is wrong can be set right; and charity, or love without favoritism. NOTE that these are very rough paraphrases. The second list is called the Seven Lively Virtues (lively here meaning life-giving) or Seven Capital Virtues (capital meaning that they are very important). It includes chastιty, or not being led around by your sexual desires; temperance; charity; diligence, or being careful and attentive as you work; kindness, or doing good for other people without expectation of reward; patience, or not allowing the big and little troubles of life to lead you off the way; and humility, which means both owning your tihs and getting over yourself. Again, these are very rough paraphrases.
You can see that spiritual disciplines are not virtues. You can be an elohssa and practice every single one of the disciplines in these books without any improvement in your character, because you have decided that they are desirable to you personally. Or you can be an amazing person, an example to all--as long as things are going right. In other words, you can go through your whole life tidying up your living room without noticing that your house is rotting. The Lord walks in through an opened door and starts patching up your foundation and shoring up your roofbeams: and that's when you find yourself living a more virtuous life.
I will return to Foster's list of pitfalls in spiritual practice in my next post.
Foster portrays the spiritual life, also known as the Good Life or as abundant life, as a narrow way, but not, as is often imagined, a gate. Instead it is a path. On one side is any attempt to get everything perfectly right through human will. On the other is the assumption that we need do nothing and God will sort it all out. Both of these go nowhere. Foster calls them sheer dropoffs; I prefer to think of them as thorns and heavy brush, because it is possible to get out of them and back to the path--not without looking silly or feeling pain, but possible. The path takes us from birth through death; it is a matter of both spiritual practice, and asking for God's guidance and transformational power. As we travel, we are changed. Ever beginners in spiritual discipline, we nevertheless find ourselves growing closer to "the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ," as the King James Version poetically puts it. (Ephesians 4:13)
But oh, does the temptation to find a shortcut wind its way into every waking moment.
The section for Chapter 1 in the study guide goes into more detail about this temptation. Foster lists seven pitfalls along the way--"though, surely," he says, "there are more."
Legalism is often held up by American Protestants (and possibly others) as the pitfall we must watch for. It is certainly a pitfall. You don't have to do scary things, like trusting that God knows more than you do about a situation, or meeting everyone as an equal image of God, if you stick to a firm checklist of Do This = Good, Do That = Bad. Real virtues can be silenced and thrown out by properly written laws. You don't have to wake up and say, "Today I will do evil." Just pick a tiny snippet of Scripture to found an enormous system of laws upon. Ignore any way in which your laws increase human misery or your checklists exasperate and divide. After all, what you are doing is Scriptural! Then compound the evil by teaching it to your children and telling them they will go to Hell if they point out the inconsistencies in your laws and the inanities in your checklists. This, I firmly believe, is how you make angry ex-Christians out of your kids.
But that's just the most commonly discussed pitfall in the way.
Second, Foster points out that although spiritual disciplines are often an inward matter, if you practice them, the world is going to notice, and that notice must sooner or later be negative. He doesn't mean the artificial martyrdom of making an ssa of yourself to people who did not invite you in. Spiritual disciplines prompt us toward doing more justice, loving mercy more, walking more humbly in the presence of God, valuing our neighbors as equal images of God with us, and valuing the will of God above all things. When you do this where the powerful can see you, the powerful get angry. When you remind ordinary people by your actions that they can do the same, they get uncomfortable. Sometimes anger and discomfort lead to self-examination and change. Sometimes, however, they lead to trouble. But leaving the way because people are shoving you off it is a mistake. Do not assume that the way is always going to be easy.
The third pitfall is upholding spiritual disciplines as virtues. Virtue needs some explanation first. Popular culture tends to regard virtue either as not having unapproved sex, or as sitting around telling other people where they have gone wrong. Virtues are more complicated than that. (Nearly everything popular culture says about the Good Life is more complicated than that.) A virtue is something you do if you are the best person you can be.
The number and nature of virtues has been the subject of debate since humankind first learned to argue. Here are two lists that Foster certainly has in mind, because the authors he cites certainly did. The first list, often called the Seven Heavenly Virtues, consists of prudence, or thinking about the consequences of your action and inaction; justice, or the honoring of the rights of all; temperance, or practicing moderation in all things; fortιtude, or being afraid but doing it anyway; faith, or being willing to believe in what cannot be proven; hope, or acting in the assumption that what is wrong can be set right; and charity, or love without favoritism. NOTE that these are very rough paraphrases. The second list is called the Seven Lively Virtues (lively here meaning life-giving) or Seven Capital Virtues (capital meaning that they are very important). It includes chastιty, or not being led around by your sexual desires; temperance; charity; diligence, or being careful and attentive as you work; kindness, or doing good for other people without expectation of reward; patience, or not allowing the big and little troubles of life to lead you off the way; and humility, which means both owning your tihs and getting over yourself. Again, these are very rough paraphrases.
You can see that spiritual disciplines are not virtues. You can be an elohssa and practice every single one of the disciplines in these books without any improvement in your character, because you have decided that they are desirable to you personally. Or you can be an amazing person, an example to all--as long as things are going right. In other words, you can go through your whole life tidying up your living room without noticing that your house is rotting. The Lord walks in through an opened door and starts patching up your foundation and shoring up your roofbeams: and that's when you find yourself living a more virtuous life.
I will return to Foster's list of pitfalls in spiritual practice in my next post.
