Another difference in self-help and spiritual formation

The self help industry is a huge monster of a thing that is a weird mix of accurate and pseudo versions of different disciplines. One of those disciplines that is in the mixture of self help is the discipline of spirituality. 

I would like to point out Christian spiritual formation is different from many expressions of self help. This is not to say that the self help world is wrong or inaccurate in the many claims made. Rather, it is more of a philosophical difference that I would like to bring to the surface. For instance, the difference Christianity and self help has with cracks and imperfections. Still others have written on how each Christianity and self help understand happiness differently.

Another difference that in Christianity and self help is how each of these philosophies understand vision.

The self help world understands vision like much of the academic world I encountered, which says something like this: Everyone sees the world through a set of lenses. You were born with a set of lenses that you see the world through and as we grew our lenses changed some but we still had these lenses on our eyes that colored the world as we experienced it. Thus the goal of education and self help is to teach us to examine these lenses so that we might see how it is our vision is different from others who see the exact same world.

Now this is not an inaccurate metaphor for how we see the world. However, what makes Christian spirituality different is that we do not think that we have lenses, but in fact that we are blind and cannot see. This is why the spiritual life is one that embraces humility, because we cannot see. Paul said that we see through dark glass, but he only said this after he was literally blinded. It is only when we come to the reality that we cannot see that we then can take the steps to admit that all the lenses we wear are dark at best. 

Yes we have lenses we see the world through and it is important to examine those lenses. However, the first step in Christian formation is to have our eyes opened, then we can clean the lenses.

The Dress is Not Blue/Black or Gold/White

If the U.S. is not captivated by llamas running loose we are busy arguing about the color of this dress. 

My wife and I are a house divided. I am on team Blue/Black, she is on team Gold/White. Apparently to some people this dress looks totally different to others. Tempers were flaming all over the internet. People making arguments about what color this dress is and in the end, we all are wrong. This dress is not blue and black or gold and white. 

This dress is blue and black and gold and white. 

In fact this whole social explosion is a wonderful illustration of how our minds in the U.S. "work". We divide things into categories and once they are in those categories it is very difficult to break out of those categories. For instance try telling some people that God is She or that God really does love our enemies or that we all participate in evil. Or that this dress is blue and black. 

The spiritual life is a lot of things but at its core it is about unlearning how to break things into categories and see the unifying whole in the world. Every book written by Father Richard Rohr hits this point home - The spiritual life is about leaving dual thinking behind and embracing "non-dual" thinking. 

If we can see that some people experience this picture as a blue/black dress and others see this picture as a white/gold dress and can validate both experiences as true, if we can see the the other as our neighbor, see we have a part in all forms of evil, see we are all threads in a single garment of destiny then we are taking steps toward non-dual thinking. 

However, if we spend energy trying to prove what color the dress really is in order to make ourselves feel like we are "more right" than another, if we only see ourselves as sinner or saint, if we only see our neighbor as friend or foe, if we only see that God loves us and not our enemy, if we persist to live as dualistic thinkers we might as well put the dress over our eyes. 

At least then everyone else will see that we are blinded.

Reaching for a parable

She woke up, washed her face, put on her glasses and ate breakfast. Looking at her bookshelf she thought, "this place is a dusty mess." 

As she walked to work she looked up into the sky and thought, "another grey day."

She got into work mumbled about how her computer screen needs to be replaced because it is going out. 

When she went to lunch with a friend and complained about the low lighting in the restaurant. To which her friend asked, "why are your glasses do dirty?"

After rubbing her glasses with a nearby napkin and putting them back on, she realized the restaurant was not as dark as she thought.

“And the moral of the story is that it all looks terrible,
depending on what you look through, what you look through.”

— The Story of the Grandson of Jesus - Cloud Cult