Disciplines: The Scriptural Basis

Note: This is part of my series on Discipleship and Disciplines. You might want to read from the beginning if you haven't already.

I'm convinced that spiritual disciplines are not only a good idea; they are the best way for a believer in Christ to get better at following Him.

Here are a couple of passages from the New Testament that discuss this topic. There are others, but these two stood out to me because they make some really important points.

Hebrews 12:11-13 (NASB): 

All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.

The author of Hebrews is actually referring to discipline imposed by God "for our good, so that we may share His holiness" (v. 10). This discipline (the call to resist sin and endure persecution) is to bring God's children in line with His intent for their lives.

Verse 11 reminds us that discipline is momentarily painful and costly, but we can have faith that it will bear fruit and bring joy.

In verses 12-13, the writer urges his readers to respond appropriately to God's discipline: Strengthen your weak hands and knees, walk in straight paths, and your (spiritually) infirm body will heal. In other words, respond to God's discipline with self-discipline. Get in line with what He wants for you, and you will be healthier and stronger than ever before.

I Timothy 4:7-8 (NASB): 

But have nothing to do with worldly fables fit only for old women. On the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness; for bodily discipline is only of little profit, but godliness is profitable for all things, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.

In this passage, Paul is talking to Timothy about some people who teach abstinence from marriage and certain foods. Paul rejects their teachings because "everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude" (v. 4).

He goes on to call these legalistic rules (or "bodily discipline") "worldly fables fit only for old women." In other words, these superficial practices are not for mature followers of Christ. Instead, Paul instructs Timothy to pursue disciplines that lead to godliness.

We receive an important warning here. In pursuing spiritual disciplines, we are not simply trying to build good habits. By themselves, habits don't have much value. However, when a spiritual discipline makes us more like our Lord and Savior, it brings us value, both in this present world and for the rest of eternity.


In my next post, I'll discuss more of what it looks like to be a disciple of Christ (i.e., the practice of keeping His word). I'll also address some specific examples (from Ephesians 4-6) of how spiritual disciplines can fuel a life of discipleship.

Wages

The earth groans with inexorable pain:
Rape and murder, robbery and warfare,
Typhoons, tornadoes, and earthquakes,
Abandoned children and miscarried ones.

Our hunger remains despite our gluttony:
Hunger for justice and peace,
For joy and comfort
In a senseless, brutal world.

How long will this continue under the sun?
How long until our tears are dried,
And the clouds are rolled back as a scroll,
And Adam's old paycheck runs out at last?

Adventures in Hagiography

Hagiographers build the saint's life
Even as they kill the man behind it
Deader than a sinless doornail.

They lose his doubt and fear and foibles,
His bad temper and worse choices,
His lonely nights of dark despair.

They know their audience, to be sure:
Masses eager for a blameless hero,
But one less offensive than Jesus Himself.

In the baby lisping Ave Maria and Pater Noster,
We see Christ as we would like Him to be,
Rather than the bruised, bloody bondslave He was.

Thanksgiving Eve Communion Meditation

Take a moment to consider what you are thankful for tonight. Is it family? Friends? Food to eat, clothes to wear? A warm place to stay?

You probably didn't say, "The gruesome execution of an innocent man." In fact, though, that is precisely what we are here to remember, to celebrate, and to give thanks for.

Tonight, we remember our abject failure, both individually and collectively, to do things God's way. We remember our willful treachery toward a loving Father. (And let us not deceive ourselves: ours was a betrayal every bit as vile – and every bit as permanent – as Judas Iscariot's.) We remember the dark, despairing night of our sojourn among the hopeless dead.

We remember, too, a blameless man who loved, healed, and forgave as freely as He breathed. He was the obedient son, a perfect foil for Adam’s rebellious race. He gave of himself with an intensity greater even than our self-seeking greed. Everything he did was perfect, since he followed in his heavenly father’s perfect steps.

And this faultless one, this perfect son, was the man who stood in our rightful place under the wrath of a just judge. He bore our iniquities and the punishment for our sins without a word of complaint. He drank the cup of God’s wrath down to the last bitter dregs.

Isaiah wrote this about the suffering servant:

1 Who has believed our message?

And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

2 For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot,

And like a root out of parched ground;

He has no stately form or majesty

That we should look upon Him,

Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.

3 He was despised and forsaken of men,

A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;

And like one from whom men hide their face

He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

4 Surely our griefs He Himself bore,

And our sorrows He carried;

Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,

Smitten of God, and afflicted.

5 But He was pierced through for our transgressions,

He was crushed for our iniquities;

The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,

And by His scourging we are healed.

6 All of us like sheep have gone astray,

Each of us has turned to his own way;

But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all

To fall on Him.

7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted,

Yet He did not open His mouth;

Like a lamb that is led to slaughter,

And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers,

So He did not open His mouth.

8 By oppression and judgment He was taken away;

And as for His generation, who considered

That He was cut off out of the land of the [k]living

For the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due?

9 His grave was assigned with wicked men,

Yet He was with a rich man in His death,

Because He had done no violence,

Nor was there any deceit in His mouth.

10 But the Lord was pleased

To crush Him, putting Him to grief;

If He would render Himself as a guilt offering,

He will see His offspring,

He will prolong His days,

And the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand.

11 As a result of the [p]anguish of His soul,

He will see it and be satisfied;

By His knowledge the Righteous One,

My Servant, will justify the many,

As He will bear their iniquities.

12 Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great,

And He will divide the booty with the strong;

Because He poured out Himself to death,

And was numbered with the transgressors;

Yet He Himself bore the sin of many,

And interceded for the transgressors.

So, tonight, we remember this prince who died the ignoble death of a slave on our behalf. We remember the one who willingly braved a dark, deadly path to redeem the lost souls of his straying people. And we are thankful, more than words could express, that he was willing to be utterly broken so we might be made whole again. Only God’s matchless mercy could have achieved this. Let’s thank Him for the provision of such a marvelous savior.

Love, Weakness, and Repentance

Note From the Blogger: I found this in my Drafts folder. I started it in April 2009, and just got around to finishing it today. Sorry and you're welcome.

I've always been uneasy about observing church festivals. This is probably because I am not from a very conservative liturgical tradition.  In the churches of my youth, we were "Bible-believing Evangelicals" who followed the doctrine of sola scriptura to the point of iconoclasm (and sometimes anticlericism).

To my ilk, Ash Wednesday had a dangerously Roman feel. We had read Jack Chick's tracts; we knew Catholicism was a slippery slope. One day you're smearing ashes on your forehead, and the next you're sprinkling water on babies and buying  papal indulgences. Who knows how far you'll go once you take that first step toward idolatry?

So I suppose it's strange that I have been practicing intentional self-deprivation since Ash Wednesday. And that I intend to do so until Easter Sunday. Almost sounds like... Lent.

How did I get here from there? What changed my iconoclastic mind about the spiritual value of ancient liturgical traditions? I attribute it to two main elements.

Firstly, as a history major in college, I became enchanted with monks. I loved the idea of a life devoted to purity, piety, and praise. At one point, I briefly considered trying to live my life by the Rule of St. Benedict. While I didn't take the leap, I am still fascinated with the idea that pious practices can help to mold my mind, heart, and life to be more like Christ.

Secondly, in recent years, I have come to believe that it would be a grave error to ignore two millennia of church tradition. I don't believe that tradition has the same weight as scripture. However, that doesn't mean tradition is worthless. To observe the seasons of the liturgical calendar is to join with billions of other saints, both present and departed, in their faith walk.

In my mind, Lent is one of the most beautiful and valuable observances in the church year. Traditionally, Roman Catholics give up meat during Lent.¹ However, common practice today (especially for vegetarians or those who don't eat much meat anyway) is to simply give up something that matters to you. (In case you want to read more, here is an excellent post about Lent, written by a friend of mine who is an Episcopalian priest.)

So, what do I hope to gain from this commitment to self-denial? Here are a couple of lists I made to clarify for myself why I was (and wasn't!) observing Lent:

Observing Lent Will Not:

• Increase God's love for me. Since before the foundation of the world, He has loved me with an immeasurable love. The person of Jesus Christ is the inarguable earnest of that love.²
• Enhance my worthiness. By myself, I am an unholy, rebellious, sinful person who deserves no more chances. Out of His great love, God chose to call me from death into life. He didn't do this because of anything I have done or could do; He did it because He was pleased to do it.³
• Make me more righteous. My righteousness comes from Jesus Christ's substitutionary atonement for my sins on the cross.⁴

I Pray That Observing Lent Will:

• Increase my love for God. As I focus on Him and what He has done for me, may my gratitude and love overflow in response. 
• Remind me of my weakness. When I fail to keep my commitment, either in letter or in spirit (as I have many times during this season), I am reminded of my frailty and need for a savior. With the crowds in Jerusalem, I cry out to Jesus, "Hosanna - Save me now!" How desperately I need His power to pull me out the terrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock. 
• Make me more repentant. I am surrounded by sin. So often, my concept of Christianity is to avoid sin, rather than actively turning away from it and going the other direction. I have not been called from darkness into nothing; I have been called into the glorious light of God's son. I pray that this Lenten season will help me to wholeheartedly reject my sin and fiercely pursue an active, positive righteousness.

So what about you, dear reader? Are you Lenten, or Un-Lenten? Any thoughts to add to mine? I'd love to hear about liturgy's role in your faith walk.


Notes:

¹Why meat? And why is fish OK? If you're going to make people give up things they don't want to give up, why not make them give up alcohol, for instance? I'm glad you asked. As he so often does, St. Thomas Aquinas has an appropriately hilarious answer for you:

[F]asting was instituted by the Church in order to bridle the concupiscences of the flesh, which regard pleasures of touch in connection with food and sex. Wherefore the Church forbade those who fast to partake of those foods which both afford most pleasure to the palate, and besides are a very great incentive to lust. Such are the flesh of animals that take their rest on the earth, and of those that breathe the air and their products, such as milk from those that walk on the earth, and eggs from birds. For, since such like animals are more like man in body, they afford greater pleasure as food, and greater nourishment to the human body, so that from their consumption there results a greater surplus available for seminal matter, which when abundant becomes a great incentive to lust. Hence the Church has bidden those who fast to abstain especially from these foods ...

Three things concur in the act of procreation, namely, heat, vitalspirit, and humor. Wine and other things that heat the body conduce especially to heat: flatulent foods seemingly cooperate in the production of the vitalspirit: but it is chiefly the use of flesh meat which is most productive of nourishment, that conduces to the production of humor. Now the alteration occasioned by heat, and the increase in vitalspirits are of short duration, whereas the substance of the humor remains a long time. Hence those who fast are forbidden the use of flesh meat rather than of wine or vegetables which are flatulent foods.

² See Rom. 5:6-8.

³ See Rom. 3:10-12.

⁴ See II Cor. 5:21.

God's Polity

The other day, I posted a link to Sara's thoughts about election night.  Here are some more ideas that I respect regarding our election outcome. I guess what they have in common is that each one exemplifies a genuinely Christian way of thinking about power and politics.  

• One unabashed theocrat on U.S. Election Day 2012 and the Crown Rights of King Jesus « Morning at the Brown Brink
• The Election is Over: Long Live the King! « The Colossian Forum
• On This Dying Land « The Little Boots Liturgies

I can't add much to these thoughts, except for a few basic points that I'm sure you've heard before:

• No matter who is in charge, God wants me to:
• Submit to them (Rom. 13:1-5)
• Respect them (Ibid.)
• Pray for them (I Tim. 2: 1-4)
• Pay my taxes (Rom. 13:6-7, Mk. 12:13-17)
• Obey human law, as long as it isn't in direct conflict with God's (Rom. 13:1-5, Acts 5:27-29)
• Live quietly, work hard, and mind my own business (I Thes. 4:10-12)
• God's kingdom is not of this world (Jn. 6:14-15, 18:36)
• For believers in Christ, He is the only ruler we need (Php. 2:5-11, Rev. 19:16)

I vote not because I think legislation will change the sinful hearts of Americans, but because doing so is part of giving Caesar the things that are Caesar's. As Sara said the other day, "our salvation does not reside on Capitol Hill." Praise God for that! Can you imagine entrusting all your hope to the inefficient bureaucratic morass that is the United States Federal Government?

Our hope and our citizenship reside in the person of Christ, who is enthroned at the right hand of God. Because of this, we put aside the dark deeds of the flesh and follow the light that emanates from our great leader. We do not (and cannot!) legislate righteousness; it comes only from utter dependence on Christ. (See Col. 3 for more on this.)

One more quote before I stop rambling. This one is from Brave Saint Saturn (one of my favorite bands of all time): 

Real change doesn’t come from a mandate

Real love you cannot legislate

Amen, amen, and pass the IRS Form 1040.

Honey Boo Boo and Flannery O'Connor

Here's a great post from Jonathan Rogers on Why Honey Boo Boo Is Like A Flannery O'Connor Character. He draws some insightful comparisons between O'Connor's writing and TLC's "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo." My favorite:

In a detail prescient of Honey Boo Boo's go-go juice and Pixie Stix, the mother [of a white-trash family] remarks that her grubby children subsist on "Co' Cola and candy." Mrs. Turpin [the hypocritical protagonist of O'Connor's "Revelation"] knows exactly what to think of them.

 Rogers is spot-on, too, in his analysis of O'Connor's ultimate purpose: to show her readers that we all are the freaks, the misfits, the monstrous pariahs. "Revelation" is a perfect counter-point to our culture's righteous indignation (commingled, of course, with voyeuristic obsession) over people like Honey Boo Boo's family, whose problems are so much more visible than ours.

O'Connor's warning to us is just as relevant as it was to her original readers: In the Kingdom of Heaven, the respectable-looking people will be upstaged by the lowly. More than that, when the day of judgement comes, even their virtues will be burned away, leaving nothing but their reliance on the King.

I reckon this will make me think twice next time I am tempted to have a derisive laugh at the expense of Honey Boo Boo and her family.