Into God’s Heart, Into the World
Written by Michael Jordan
After seventeen years of professional ministry, I’m tired. I’m tired of a Christianity that seems to be all about attracting an audience, building a brand, and connecting with customers. As a local pastor, it was dispiriting to see how much church “growth” in my area was simply disgruntled church members looking for other churches. But of course, there are many churches all too ready to play this game and give the world the entertaining, inoffensive, and apolitical worship experience the disgruntled Christian is looking for. The pressure to compete with these churches—and, if you’ve got the gifts, the pressure to BE one of these churches—is overwhelming.
I know I’m not the only tired one. Some of us have trickled out of ministry, and some out of Christianity altogether. Some of us remain but have had to find different ways to do ministry and be human. It seems to me that as we face this reality, we end up drawn toward two poles: the contemplative life and the activist life. I have seen colleagues and friends gravitate toward one or the other, and to be honest, sometimes I felt pulled in both directions. At times I was drawn to the quiet life of prayer and dreamed up an alternate personal history wherein I became a monk. At other times I was attracted to the life of an activist, fearlessly addressing injustice and moving society toward making a change. Whenever I felt too drawn in one direction or the other, though, I would begin to feel guilty. Monastic life intrigued me, but how could I sleep at night knowing I had a privileged life of prayer while people around the world were suffering? And the life of an activist held its charms, but how could I keep from becoming a flaming ball of rage, ready to burn out and maybe take others with me?
It took me a while to learn that contemplation and action are not opposites or mutually exclusive. Partly, this was hard because contemplatives and activists often build their identity in opposition to each other. But ideally, they form the basis of a virtuous cycle: contemplation leading to healthy activity which itself leads back to a realization and acceptance of our own limitations, driving us back to contemplation and awe. For me personally, it was important to see how the contemplative life made it more possible to follow Jesus into a life of truth-telling and action.
One way the contemplative life facilitates a life of justice is through greater understanding of our calling. In his book Discovering Your Personal Vocation, Herbert Alphonso writes about the Ignatian Exercises, an intensive contemplative prayer practice that takes four full-time weeks of retreat, either done consecutively or spread out throughout the year. Traditionally, the goal of such exercises is to emerge with a clear set of resolutions to follow in the future. Alphonso says that such a goal is far too small: “Frankly, the whole thing is entirely out of proportion….Isn’t it true that a half day or a day of….prayer, reflection, and maybe some consultation, would suffice for the taking of these resolutions?” Instead, he argues that the purpose of the Exercises is actually discernment of our vocation, or “name”: our “unrepeatable uniqueness” in the world that holds the key for us to understand how we should spend our precious life and energy on behalf of God and others. Contemplation cannot only be aimed at greater peace or piety; instead contemplation must have action in mind. Contemplation leads us deeper into the heart of God and helps us to discover the unique and unrepeatable way that God loves us, and once we know this, it becomes the chief criterion in saying yes and no to different tasks.
The contemplative life also develops empathy and honesty. How often we functionally deny the suffering of another because that suffering inconveniences us! We’re very acquainted with this on the macro level: something in us cannot fully open our eyes to the magnitude of human suffering around the world caused by poverty and repressive regimes. But we sometimes miss the crucial reality that this is also true at the interpersonal level in our lives. We resent the way a family member narrates their pain, or the way a friend or spouse feels sad when we think they should feel happy. The spiritual life takes us on a quest deep into ourselves and into God to discover where that resentment and anger comes from, and teaches us to live a life of true solidarity with others that doesn’t need to deny their pain for us to live. It is true that a contemplative cannot address all of the problems of the world; crucially, though, neither can an activist. But a contemplative pursues a life of genuine empathy and solidarity that sees the pain of the world with open eyes, and is ready to move to address that pain when God calls.
Finally, contemplation leads to action through developing a truly personal relationship with God. Growing up, I was attracted to the idea of having a relationship with God, but it also confused me. This “relationship with God” was billed as the opposite of a “religion.” In a religion, we followed rules in order to connect with God, but this relationship approach was supposed to be free and easy, God with me and available to me anytime. Yet how was this actually, you know, relational? Every single meaningful human relationship that we have is governed by rules of engagement. My relationship with my wife Jill is governed by particular rules, some of which we made plain in our wedding vows, others of which are unspoken but tacit. My relationships with my parents and my children are also defined for me in some ways, and there are obvious ways of stepping outside of this definition and harming or destroying my relationship with them. In my work at Houghton, the professor-student relationship also is governed by particular rules. Well-meaning Christians told me that a relationship with God would set me free from rules, but I wondered then (and still wonder now) how exactly to navigate a relationship that is usually defined by its lack of rules and structure. As a fortysomething man, I’m well-acquainted with the temptation toward a midlife crisis, the desire to throw off the rules and structures that I have willingly taken on through relationships in order to create new relationships that are about my own self-actualization. It pains me that most American evangelicals perceive their relationship with God in much the same way: a relationship that is more about my freedom from structure almost always becomes about me in an unhealthy way. These sorts of relationships, which center our own feelings and experiences, almost inevitably end up self-serving rather than fruitfully focused on others. Contemplation reins in our desire to put ourselves front and center and creates a genuinely mutual relationship which makes fruitful activity possible.
Activism without contemplation misses a crucial component which can prepare Christians for a lifetime of service to God, and sets us up for self-righteousness and burnout. But the contemplative life enables fruitful service to God and the world.
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Michael Jordan is Dean of the Chapel at Houghton College, where his work is to help guide conversations and pastor students during formative, challenging years. He and his wife Jill, a math professor at Houghton, are raising three girls and two boys in the beautiful western NY countryside. They are members of Houghton Wesleyan Church, where Jill serves as an elder.