a post-hoc contribution via WhatsApp to a house church discussion I missed:
Since the prompt last Saturday (“How do we do our part in cultivating the fruit God seeks?”) was mine but I wasn’t around to help discover answers, would you permit me nine sentences in reply?
Having been thoroughly convinced of God’s lovingkindness—well, as convinced as one can be about the thoughts of a typically invisible, inaudible spirit—I find myself frequently emphasizing the value of direct effort toward the exercise of emotional and relational virtues. In other words, I tend to see God’s good fruit as habits to practice rather than virtues to receive. Just as nothing succeeds at mastering a musical instrument more than practicing the musical instrument—not reading books about music, not talking to composers—nothing will succeed at developing love, joy, peace, patience, and the rest of them more than trying to think, speak, and act in love, joy, peace, patience, and the rest at every possible juncture.
Direct effort is better and more powerful than any other spiritual discipline toward the goal of bearing good fruit. And I mean this very situational, down-to-earth, “if this, then that,” habit-building sort of way.
At the same time, I know I’ll fail at this. The trick here is to keep trying—“a righteous person falls seven times and rises again” (Proverbs 24:16)—and not grow discouraged. Even just trying to think and act better is good, and as Bruce highlighted a couple of weeks ago, “Don’t become discouraged in doing good, for in due time we will reap, if we do not become weary“ (Galatians 6:9).
When I am tempted to beat myself up for such failure, I call upon this quotation from Brother Lawrence (without going so far as to completely absolve myself of responsibility):
“When an occasion arose which required some virtue, he said to God, ‘Lord, I cannot do this unless You allow me.’ […] When he had failed in his duty, he simply confessed his fault, saying to God, ‘I could not possibly do otherwise, if You leave me to myself. It is You who must correct my failing, and mend what is amiss.‘ And after this, he gave himself no further uneasiness about his mistake.”
Remember: Jon Levenson says that the controlling metaphor in the Hebrew Bible for the relationship between Israel and YHWH is that of a suzerain and vassal or a king and subject and that love from the Israel side is therefore primarily expressed as glad, grateful obedience. When we say we’re going to love the Lord our God with our all hearts, minds, souls, and strengths, what we’re saying is we’re going to gladly obey Him with all of ourselves.
A brief message I sent to our house church ahead of a meeting that I was going to miss about how one ought to relate to the Bible:
As for the questions [my friend] is posing tonight at church, my two cents (God help me and may it be of some value): The Bible is our touchstone. If you can’t square it with the Bible, you can’t square it with God. But importantly, there are two touchstones within the touchstone: the greatest commandment(s) and Jesus himself. All interpretation and application of Scripture must be subject to those.
Even here, people sometimes come to different conclusions on some matters. (In this, we mimic a milennia-or-two longer Jewish dialogue on the same subject.) While we argue these things out—because these matters are often not unimportant—we nevertheless grant these differences and love always.
The universe is singing! “Come Together,” indeed! (Éa and Sullivan will be sharing a two-instrument-and-vocal cover of it this week at school.) The word of last year was “with.” The word of this year is, “Finally, all of you be of the same mind, feeling with one another…” (1 Peter 3:8, my translation). Same mind, same feelings (sympathy). That latter part is what I’m working on with Dr. Wes Scala. If you want to understand behavior, you have to understand someone’s feelings, which in turn requires that you understand their thoughts, says Shawn Ishler of Bartell & Bartell at Leadership Flight School. Push toward understanding—and thinking and feeling!—the thoughts and feelings of Carla, of Sullivan, of Éa.
[after I had “warned” someone against saying “God is always speaking”]:
I hope you didn’t walk away tonight feeling discouraged or unheard in any way tonight. Would love to pickup on connecting with God when we’re together next. Love you.
me:
Good morning! Nope, so probably no need. If you came away from last night thinking, “Ooh, Scott is ticklish about hearing God’s voice because he thinks he doesn’t hear from God,” you came away with the wrong impression.
I am ticklish about something, but it’s not my connecting with God. It’s my hearing abiblical maxims about God making their way unchecked around the church, running the risk of spiritual harm. The potential spiritual harm of “God is always speaking” is at least twofold: First, it can facilitate people spouting things they think are from God but which are not, and second, it can lead other people to suspect they are spiritually deaf, as I said last night.
What to say to my friend about why I’m on edge about his emphasis on vulnerability? Basically, I think he worships at its altar. Not everybody has problems all the time. My friend is like a problem-seeker: Dig up a problem in a person, get them to talk about it, apply the salve of God’s love. Right? That’s great, right? But the problem is that being vulnerable with someone leads them to have some measure of power in your life.
This Brené Brown quote seems adjacent: “Trust isn’t a grand gesture—it’s a growing marble collection.”
Professing Christianity is what Renn calls a “status-enhancer” when and only when the Christianity one professes is in step with what your society already and without reference to Christian teaching describes as “being an upstanding citizen.”
Living unanxiously mindful of your own certain death is probably salutary. Living unanxiously mindful of the certain death of those you love might be even more so.
Love itself is the prime spiritual discipline. All others, including Bible study and prayer, are good only insofar as they serve to empower, amplify, or inform love.
Pianists don’t cultivate their skill and musicianship by reading books on the history of piano music or by talking with composers, as enriching and obliquely helpful as that might be. They improve by playing piano.
Similarly, the way you get better and more consistent at loving is by trying to love.
In reply to a piece of email correspondence in which Ethan indicated an eagerness to incorporate “communion” into our weekly church schedule:
I’m not sure I’m game for the “every week” part yet myself, so let’s slow down on that and make sure to subject it to consensus. Part of my concern is procedural—ensure consensus for all such decisions—but part of my concern might also be personal: I maintain a tenuous sense of what His body being given and His blood being poured out “for [me]” even means.
Or maybe it’s not tenuous but feels that way because it’s substantially different from what I think most of us learned growing up, and I haven’t had much chance to share (and thus practice knowing) it. Maybe I’ll make it part of what I share when I tell the story of my life and the life of God in and around me.
“Died for us” and “died for our sins” are obviously crucial Jesus’ whole shebang. But I don’t want to establish a ritual around those concepts if I don’t have a firm grasp on what they mean. I could see us spending a whole meeting teaching each other about this and discussing this…
Anyway, no immediate actions out of the above. Let’s yes set aside time to ritualistically break bread and drink sparkling grape juice this Friday (provided there’s no objection from anybody else at the time) and then take it from there. I bet doing it this once will make the topic of doing it more often come up naturally. But let’s not be pre-married to the idea of doing it every week yet. Please.
The important part for me in leisure is a deliberate decision to engage and stay engaged. “…do it with all your might…” Remember the lesson of the ceiling at the Upper Room.