What is the training of a Christian?

When I was younger I played soccer. I was above average, but no Messi. Becoming a soccer player required training: first I had to learn to dribble, then pass, then trap the ball, then pass with accuracy, then shoot, then learn to play with others, read the field, see the space, formations, timing, etc. This training took years to get decent at. Countless hours a week with coaches and others in practice and games.

And that was just something as simple as soccer.

Becoming a Christian requires more training than we are want to believe. (We forget that the disciple were with Jesus all the time for three years and they still did not get it.)

What is the training of a Christian?

John Cassian suggests that there is a training process that one engages to develop into a Christian. In the the fourth book of The Institutes he describes this process:

First it begins with the fear of the Lord that is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10).  What this means is that one must come first to see they are in need. To put it another way, the fear of the Lord means that we admit that the current models of our lives are leading us poorly and we need a new model to guide our lives.

We cannot adopt a new model while holding onto our original model. We cannot worship two gods (Matthew 6:24). This is why we must renounce our first models/gods. We must repent. This repentance is total. It is a repentance of all the objects, values, teachings and ways of the original model. It is impossible to learn a new life while holding onto the “way we used to do it”. It would be like learning to play basketball while still using a soccer players mindset, skills, tools and techniques. It does not work that way.

When we renounce our previous ways/models we are like a beginner. And there is nothing more humbling than being a beginner at anything. Which may be why we do not repent or renounce totally. We hold on to some things so we are not tossed into beginner status. However, when we are able to renounce/repent our previous life, dreams and desires fall away and die.

As Jesus said that a seed must fall to the ground and die in order to grow (John 12:24). When our old ways and models have died, then we are able to receive what the new model has for us. This new model, Christ, trains us in virtues that produce the fruits of the spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

The person who produces such fruits of the spirit has an altogether new heart, what we might call the purity of heart. It is, as Jesus says, the pure in heart that see God (Matthew 5:8).

This training takes a lifetime and it is not easy. It breaks us down into being a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). In this training, you may see that this does not begin by training people to just be better humans. It does not start with behavior modification to be more loving or kind or forgiving. It understands that we are unable to be loving, kind and forgiving as long as we living out of a sense of self and without seeing that we are in need. Without seeing that we are in fact in need we will reserve our love, mercy and forgiveness for only those who “deserve” or “earn” or who are “worthy”. Until we repent and renounce this way of living, we will not see God.

We will just see ourselves as god.

Communion is Disgusting on Purpose

I no longer see a barber or hairstylist. I don’t think that I am too good to see a professional, but even a professional pianist cannot do much with piano that only has ten keys.

However, when I used to have a full keyboard, one of my favorite questions to ask the barber was, “If you see hair in your meal at a restaurant, would you send it back?” I have not done a scientific study of the number of people I asked and their responses, but the majority of barbers I asked said they would not send their food back. The reason? They shared that it is was more likely that they were the ones who had loose hair on them that fell into the meal. The vast majority of barbers said they would just pull the hair out and keep on with their meal.

Like it is no big deal.

Doctors talk about blood stuff with family members over dinner while everyone else gets queasy. Vets talk about lancing wounds on an animal, ranchers speak of pulling calves as they are birthed, and plumbers talk about the stopped up pipes they had to endure.

Like it is no big deal.

For so many of us, these topics trigger a sense of disgust, but these folk have crossed some disgust bridge. These topics are no longer disgusting. They are not a big deal.

Disgust is an “expulsive” response. It is that feeling of pushing things away or expelling them from your body. Humans are disgusted by so many things and sometimes, unfortunately, we feel disgust toward our fellow sisters and brothers. We push away the smelly, dirty, and unkept. We expel those who we think are unclean in some way. It can manifest in ways like pushing those who are sick away from us so we don’t get sick to pushing those who have a different culture away from us out of fear they will freeload. Disgust is a powerful influencer of our behavior and left unchecked it harms.

Christians have a sacrament called communion or the eucharist or the Lord’s supper. In a sacrament in which we say that the bread is the body of Christ and the juice/wine is the blood of Christ. Taken at face value, it makes sense why early Christians were accused of being cannibals.

This sacrament is mysterious and has a lot going on, but at a fundamental level communion addresses our disgust. We are associating bread with flesh and wine with blood. We make food associations all of the time. Many foods we don’t eat, not because they do not taste good but because of the texture (I struggle with eating the delicious lychee fruit).

The associations made at communion are intentional to aid and push us to encounter our disgust. If we can overcome the disgust of eating and drinking while thinking of flesh and blood then, surely we can overcome the disgust we feel toward our neighbor. Christians take communion as much as possible, in part, to practice confronting our own disgust toward each other. The more we confront the disgust we feel the more comfortable we are with these matters and the less expulsion we feel we need to do.

In this way, Christians are like the barber who is no longer disgusted with unknown hair in their food. There is no longer a need to push the food (or people) away, but rather bring it in close. Communion helps us invert our disgust and see that Christ does not call us to expel one another. That purity is an abstraction. That holding to what is clean only creates division among the body.

All of which to say that when a church leaders push for a “better” or “more faithful” or "traditional” or “prophetic” expression of the church, this is a nicer way of speaking about disgust. Disgust is always an expulsive response. We can expel others or we can expel ourselves. We can spit the food out (expel others) or we can avoid the restaurant entirely (expel ourselves). We can kick people out of the church who are unfaithful or we can remove ourselves from a church we “know” is unfaithful. Until we address the disgust we Christians have yet to overcome we will find that the denominational splitting will never end. Until we have a church of one.

Communion is disgusting on purpose.

Starting the Spiritual Life

The more that I engage with the sayings of the desert wisdom the more I come to see how little I really know about the Christian spiritual life. For instance, I struggle with anger and I try really hard to say the right things. I do not want to offend my neighbor and I do not want to say things that do harm. Of course I fail at this, but I still feel that the “ideal Christian” would never say anything hurtful. And then I read this:

They said of Abbot Pambo that in the very hour when he departed this life he said to the holy men who stood by him: From the time I came to this place in the desert, and built me a cell, and dwelt here, I do not remember eating bread that was not earned by the work of my own hands, nor do I remember saying anything for which I was sorry even until this hour. And thus I go to the Lord as one who has not even made a beginning in the service of God. - The Wisdom of the Desert by Thomas Merton

Pambo thought, right up to the point of his death, that self-sufficiency and not being a drain on anyone (by avoiding bread he did not make) was virtuous. He thought that never saying anything he was sorry for was a saintly. And then, right at the point of his death, he saw that this “ideal” way of living was in fact not the way of God at all. Receiving hospitality and seeking reconciliation are the very beginning steps of one in the service of God.

It is faithful to seek reconciliation. It is not faithful to keep so quite as to never offend or to think all that you say is without flaw. It is faithful to receive the work of others. The deficient one is someone who has never asked for help.

I am reminded once again that American values are not Christian values. The pious self-sufficient individual might think they are at the pinnacle of heaven, but Pambo says they have not even begun to walk the mountain.

Maybe Don't Pray for People So Much

Praying for someone or for a situation is a common Christian practice. Prayer brings us into solidarity with one another, but it also is a confessional posture. Praying for someone often suggests a powerlessness to a situation and that we pray that God may intervene. Prayer is a powerful practice that bathes the Christian life and it is good a right thing to pray for people.

Sympathy vs. Empathy - Brown and RSA

My co-pastor and wife showed the Brene Brown clip making the distinction between sympathy and empathy. Brown points out that sympathy is a noble thing, but sympathy is something that one feels at a distance from another. When a tragedy strikes we send our sympathies. These are well intentions, but sympathy can only get one so far. Which is why Brown points out the need for empathy.

Empathy is that posture of being with someone who is in the pit or dark night. Empathy requires that we sit with another. That we move toward them and be with them. Empathy is with another while sympathy is for another.

Christians are called to pray for people to be sure, however Christians have the greater call to pray with people. In order to pray with people we have to move to where the people are. We have to go out into the world and not just pray at our dinner tables for the world. We are to pray with the dying not just for those on hospice. We are to pray with the prisoner not just for the incarcerated.

I am comfortable praying for people but praying with people has changed my life.