Tag: Celebration of Discipline

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through an anno­tat­ed trans­la­tion of Pascal’s Pensees called Chris­tian­i­ty For Mod­ern Pagans, I’ll post the thoughts I’m email­ing the stu­dents here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2020. The read­ing sched­ule is online.

Our adven­ture through Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline the book is over. Now it’s time for Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline the real­i­ty TV show. We’ve got to live it or we wast­ed many hours this sum­mer. 🙂

Fos­ter cov­ered twelve dis­ci­plines which are all help­ful, but remem­ber that three dis­ci­plines are core:

• pray­ing to God
• med­i­tat­ing upon Scrip­ture
• par­tic­i­pat­ing in a wor­ship­ing com­mu­ni­ty

Oth­er dis­ci­plines are good, but these are leg day. It’s tempt­ing to skip them, but over time it will be obvi­ous that you did.

These three are the gen­er­a­tive dis­ci­plines, and there­fore the core dis­ci­plines. They beget the oth­ers. When we pray, the Spir­it may speak to us to begin a fast. When we read the Word, a verse might cause us to begin serv­ing some­one. When we gath­er with God’s peo­ple to wor­ship and hear a ser­mon, we might feel com­pelled to con­fess a sin. If you prac­tice these three reg­u­lar­ly the oth­ers will come over time, but you can prac­tice soli­tude and sim­plic­i­ty for a life­time and nev­er move beyond that.

So keep those front and cen­ter as you explore oth­er spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­plines. And remem­ber why you are doing them. It’s not because they feel good (although some­times they will). You do the dis­ci­plines because you want the out­come: god­li­ness. In 1 Tim­o­thy 4:7b Paul says, “train your­self to be god­ly.” Peter like­wise teach­es that we should there­fore “make every effort” in our pur­suit of a god­ly life (2 Peter 1:3–8). We make every effort — we train our­selves — by means of the dis­ci­plines.

Final­ly, remem­ber this phrase: “try­ing with­out train­ing leads to frus­tra­tion.” May these next few months be fruit­ful as you train for god­li­ness!

P.S. Here are the results of my sur­vey about which chap­ter peo­ple found most help­ful: tied for first place were the chap­ters on prayer and fast­ing, hon­or­able men­tion goes to the chap­ter on soli­tude which was only one vote shy. Oth­er chap­ters received some love as well, but those three were far ahead. So if you’re behind on the read­ing, maybe jump straight to those chap­ters for max­i­mum ben­e­fit. And don’t for­get that I’ve post­ed my com­men­tary on each chap­ter at https://xastanford.org/summer-reading

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through an anno­tat­ed trans­la­tion of Pascal’s Pensees called Chris­tian­i­ty For Mod­ern Pagans, I’ll post the thoughts I’m email­ing the stu­dents here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2020. The read­ing sched­ule is online.

I hope this sum­mer has been a bless­ing to you! Today we come to the final dis­ci­pline — the dis­ci­pline of cel­e­bra­tion (which is an inver­sion of the book’s title, and this does not seem to be acci­den­tal).

Cel­e­bra­tion as Fos­ter describes it is a joy-filled approach to dai­ly liv­ing that we share with oth­ers. He is not pri­mar­i­ly refer­ring to events like wor­ship ser­vices or par­ties. He has in mind things like laugh­ing with your friends in the cafe­te­ria or turn­ing chores into games. When we con­sis­tent­ly and authen­ti­cal­ly live with joy, every­thing (includ­ing wor­ship ser­vices and par­ties) get bet­ter. But when we do not live this way, even the spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­plines we have been study­ing can become hor­ri­ble things:

Cel­e­bra­tion is cen­tral to all the Spir­i­tu­al Dis­ci­plines. With­out a joy­ful spir­it of fes­tiv­i­ty the Dis­ci­plines become dull, death-breath­ing tools in the hands of mod­ern Phar­isees. Every Dis­ci­pline should be char­ac­ter­ized by care­free gai­ety and a sense of thanks­giv­ing.

Richard Fos­ter, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, page 191

This is, no doubt, why Fos­ter enti­tled his book Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline. The spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­plines must them­selves be both sources of joy and expres­sions of joy. This does not mean turn from fast­ing to feast­ing the moment we get hun­gry, or that when gen­eros­i­ty is a chal­lenge that we instead turn to greed. Of course the dis­ci­plines will be hard at times — that is why we call them dis­ci­plines!

But if our prac­tice of the spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­plines is noth­ing but duty with­out delight, we have bad­ly missed the mark. In this regard the spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­plines are no dif­fer­ent than the phys­i­cal dis­ci­plines — exer­cis­ing is hard at times but peo­ple endure it because they enjoy what comes on the oth­er side of the pain (and exer­cise itself is some­times fun). And so our spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­plines must be a cel­e­bra­tion. But since the spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­plines are woven into our every­day lives, they can only be marked by cel­e­bra­tion if our every­day lives are marked by cel­e­bra­tion.

Some peo­ple strug­gle to believe that God wants them to live this way. They have a hard time expe­ri­enc­ing joy with­out guilt. Some plea­sures, of course, are sin­ful. But there are peo­ple who are sus­pi­cious of even whole­some plea­sures. If that’s you, I urge you to remem­ber that enjoy­ing life is not only pleas­ant but wise. Eccle­si­astes makes this point repeat­ed­ly: “a per­son can do noth­ing bet­ter than to eat and drink and find sat­is­fac­tion in their own toil” (Ecc 2:24–25), “there is noth­ing bet­ter for peo­ple than to be hap­py and to do good while they live” (Ecc 3:12–13), “there is noth­ing bet­ter for a per­son than to enjoy their work” (Ecc 3:22), “when God gives some­one wealth and pos­ses­sions, and the abil­i­ty to enjoy them, to accept their lot and be hap­py in their toil — this is a gift of God” (Ecc 5:18–20), “go, eat your food with glad­ness, and drink your wine with a joy­ful heart, for God has already approved of what you do” (Ecc 9:7–10), “you who are young be hap­py while you are young, and let your heart give you joy in the days of your youth… ban­ish anx­i­ety from your heart” (Ecc 11:9–10).

Per­haps, on the oth­er hand, you do believe this but have a hard time putting it into prac­tice. Maybe you even feel guilty that you don’t enjoy life more. Fos­ter has good advice:

God has estab­lished a cre­at­ed order full of excel­lent and good things, and it fol­lows nat­u­ral­ly that as we give our atten­tion to those things we will be hap­py. That is God’s appoint­ed way to joy. If we think we will have joy only by pray­ing and singing psalms, we will be dis­il­lu­sioned. But if we fill our lives with sim­ple good things and con­stant­ly thank God for them, we will be joy­ful, that is, full of joy. And what about our prob­lems? When we deter­mine to dwell on the good and excel­lent things in life, we will be so full of those things that they will tend to swal­low our prob­lems. The deci­sion to set the mind on the high­er things of life an act of the will. That is why cel­e­bra­tion is a Dis­ci­pline. It is not some­thing that falls on our heads. It is the result of a con­scious­ly cho­sen way of think­ing and liv­ing.

Richard Fos­ter, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, page 195

If you strug­gle to live with joy, choose to fill your life with “sim­ple good things” and thank God for them. Are you broke? Take walks in beau­ti­ful places. Watch fun­ny videos online. Invite friends to come hang out at your place. Do you have some spare cash? Buy foods that you real­ly enjoy eat­ing. Buy the pre­mi­um ver­sion of an app that you already like using. Pur­chase tick­ets to an event.

And always remem­ber that the goal is to cul­ti­vate a tru­ly joy­ful spir­it. We’re not try­ing to live by hype; joy that lasts has a foun­da­tion. I appre­ci­at­ed Fos­ter’s warn­ing in this regard:

Often we try to pump up peo­ple with joy when in real­i­ty noth­ing has hap­pened in their lives. God has not bro­ken into the rou­tine expe­ri­ences of their dai­ly exis­tence. Cel­e­bra­tion comes with the com­mon ven­tures of life are redeemed. It is impor­tant to avoid the kind of cel­e­bra­tions that real­ly cel­e­brate noth­ing. Worse yet is to pre­tend to cel­e­brate when the spir­it of cel­e­bra­tion is not in us.

Richard Fos­ter, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, page 193

And with that, I close. We’re offi­cial­ly done with the book, but I’ll send one more sum­ma­ry email next week. Thanks for read­ing along!

In the mean­while, I have a ques­tion for you: which chap­ter did you find most help­ful? Reply and let me know — I’ll share the results anony­mous­ly with every­one!

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through an anno­tat­ed trans­la­tion of Pascal’s Pensees called Chris­tian­i­ty For Mod­ern Pagans, I’ll post the thoughts I’m email­ing the stu­dents here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2020. The read­ing sched­ule is online.

This chap­ter has three emphases: Fos­ter talks about com­mu­ni­ties of believ­ers seek­ing the will of God togeth­er (should our con­gre­ga­tion buy this build­ing or not?), he talks about indi­vid­u­als turn­ing to the gath­ered body for advice (like that cou­ple who asked the con­gre­ga­tion to assess their readi­ness for mar­riage), and he talks about indi­vid­u­als turn­ing to oth­er indi­vid­u­als for spir­i­tu­al coun­sel (see­ing a spir­i­tu­al direc­tor).

I’m just going to talk about the first one — when an entire group (such as a life group or a wor­ship team) seeks the will of God togeth­er. When a group like that needs to make a deci­sion we almost always do one of two things: we vote or we just leave every­thing up to the leader. There are times when each of those is appro­pri­ate (for exam­ple, when it is a rou­tine deci­sion), but there are also times when this is an infe­ri­or solu­tion (for exam­ple, when pas­sions are high and a wrong deci­sion can destroy the entire com­mu­ni­ty).

Fos­ter describes an alter­na­tive:

“As a peo­ple they had decid­ed to live under the direct ruler­ship of the Spir­it. They had reject­ed both human total­i­tar­i­an­ism and anar­chy. They had even reject­ed democ­ra­cy, that is, major­i­ty rule. They had dared to live on the basis of Spir­it-rule; no fifty-one per­cent vote, no com­pro­mis­es, but Spir­it-direct­ed uni­ty.”

Richard Fos­ter, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­ple, pages 178–179

And then a lit­tle lat­er:

“[these groups] all oper­ate on the basis on Spir­it-direct­ed uni­ty. Issues are approached with an assur­ance that the mind of the Spir­it can be known. They gath­er in Christ’s name, believ­ing that his will will be fleshed out in their midst. They do not seek com­pro­mise, but God-giv­en con­sen­sus.”

Richard Fos­ter, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, page 184

In oth­er words, there are times when we real­ize that our com­mu­ni­ty needs wis­dom beyond human wis­dom and that the issue is so impor­tant that we can­not leave it to one leader to seek the face of God for it. We must all do it togeth­er.

When we do that, Fos­ter sug­gests, we must expect uni­ty. I know sev­er­al church lead­er­ship teams that fol­low this prac­tice: if there is no uni­ty then the team does not pro­ceed. This means that even one voice can derail a plan that every­one else is in favor of. When­ev­er I’ve spo­ken to peo­ple about this prac­tice, they can point to spe­cif­ic times one per­son vetoed a deci­sion that enjoyed over­whelm­ing sup­port. At the time the rest of the team had been mild­ly to intense­ly annoyed, but it lat­er became appar­ent that their friend’s refusal to express false con­sen­sus had saved the team much grief. In ret­ro­spect the entire team saw that God had pro­tect­ed them through the integri­ty of their friend and the integri­ty of their process.

Again, this should not be the way we usu­al­ly make col­lec­tive deci­sions. If a large com­mu­ni­ty always does this they will inevitably find them­selves held hostage by unsta­ble peo­ple. Or if a church rou­tine­ly does this they will find them­selves in thrall to a hand­ful of unbe­liev­ers who attend the church. And so for sim­ple mat­ters touch­ing on every­one, take a quick vote. For deci­sions requir­ing an aware­ness of back­ground knowl­edge or per­haps some spe­cial exper­tise, defer to the lead­ers.

But if doing this for every deci­sion would be unwise, I would like to sug­gest that nev­er doing it would be even less wise.

The next time you are part of a Chris­t­ian group fac­ing a sig­nif­i­cant deci­sion, con­sid­er propos­ing this idea — “Let’s pray until we have uni­ty on this issue and then do what­ev­er God tells us.”

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through an anno­tat­ed trans­la­tion of Pascal’s Pensees called Chris­tian­i­ty For Mod­ern Pagans, I’ll post the thoughts I’m email­ing the stu­dents here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2020. The read­ing sched­ule is online.

This week we’re talk­ing about con­fess­ing our sins to oth­er peo­ple. Bib­li­cal­ly, we always con­fess our sins to the Lord in prayer and then we usu­al­ly also con­fess direct­ly to those we have wronged. Some­times in addi­tion we con­fess our sins to oth­er believ­ers for the sake of their or our spir­i­tu­al health. As an exam­ple of con­fess­ing for the sake of some­one else’s spir­i­tu­al health, I might con­fess a sin while preach­ing about how growth comes in a cer­tain area. As an exam­ple of con­fess­ing for my own spir­i­tu­al health, I might con­fess a sin to a friend while request­ing their coun­sel.

“Con­fes­sion is a dif­fi­cult Dis­ci­pline for us because we all too often view the believ­ing com­mu­ni­ty as a fel­low­ship of saints before we see it as a fel­low­ship of sin­ners. We feel that every­one else has advanced so far into holi­ness that we are iso­lat­ed and alone in our sin. We can­not bear to reveal our fail­ures and short­com­ings to oth­ers. We imag­ine that we are the only ones who have not stepped onto the high road to heav­en. There­fore, we hide our­selves from one anoth­er in live in veiled lies and hypocrisy.”

Richard Fos­ter, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, p 145 9

A few thoughts about con­fes­sion:

• Fos­ter’s advice is spot-on when he says, “…we must be pre­pared to deal with def­i­nite sins. A gen­er­al­ized con­fes­sion may save us from humil­i­a­tion and shame, but it will not ignite inner heal­ing” (page 151). This relat­ed quote has often run through my mind, “We con­fess our lit­tle faults to per­suade peo­ple that we have no large ones” (Rochefou­cauld). If we con­fess in a way that makes us look good, there’s some­thing amiss. When you con­fess, don’t mere­ly con­fess that you are not per­fect. Draw atten­tion to one or more of your par­tic­u­lar imper­fec­tions. Not sim­ply “I can be greedy some­times”; rather, “I have been so con­sumed with desir­ing that new iPhone that I almost stole mon­ey from my mom’s purse. I was shocked at my lev­el of greed.”
• I said we usu­al­ly con­fess to the per­son we have wronged. That is not always the case, how­ev­er. For exam­ple, if you’ve been star­ing lust­ful­ly at some­one, it’s gen­er­al­ly unwise to tell that to the per­son you’ve been lust­ing after. You are reliev­ing your emo­tions by bur­den­ing theirs. It’s self­ish.
• To whom do you con­fess when you are not con­fess­ing direct­ly to some­one you have wronged? Fos­ter’s coun­sel is wise: “The key qual­i­fi­ca­tions are spir­i­tu­al matu­ri­ty, wis­dom, com­pas­sion, good com­mon sense, the abil­i­ty to keep a con­fi­dence, and a whole­some sense of humor” (page 153).
• In uni­ver­si­ty min­istry I some­times observe two extremes: a com­mu­ni­ty where no one con­fess­es any­thing to any­one else (usu­al­ly because of fear) or a com­mu­ni­ty whose wor­ship ser­vices some­times become pub­lic con­fes­sion cer­e­monies. I have thoughts about both:
  • A com­mu­ni­ty where no one con­fess­es any­thing to any­one else is held in bondage to sin. Peo­ple con­vince them­selves they strug­gle alone, and as result half of Satan’s work is done for him. He desires to iso­late Chris­tians as a pre­lude to destroy­ing us, and yet we fool­ish­ly iso­late our­selves.
  • A com­mu­ni­ty where peo­ple reg­u­lar­ly con­fess their sins in a pub­lic forum runs the risk of indi­rect­ly ele­vat­ing sin. If you’ve nev­er seen this done it is hard to describe, but I have seen it sev­er­al times. Some­one heads to the micro­phone and asks if they can share some­thing that they feel like they have to get off their chest. And then they con­fess a sin. And then some­one else wrestling with that same sin or a relat­ed sin makes a bee­line for the micro­phone after this. And then the dam breaks and it takes over the entire ser­vice. This is some­times a gen­uine response to the guid­ing of the Holy Spir­it (we see an exam­ple of this in Acts 19:18–19), but some­times it is an indi­ca­tor that healthy inter­per­son­al con­fes­sion is not hap­pen­ing and so this sub­sti­tute is emerg­ing as a replace­ment. The dan­gers are (a) it can make sin seem more per­va­sive than it is (5% of the peo­ple spend­ing 95% of the time talk­ing about their biggest mis­takes cre­ates a dis­tort­ed impres­sion of the com­mu­ni­ty), and (b) with­out wise pas­toral lead­er­ship the nor­mal emo­tions that accom­pa­ny pub­lic con­fes­sion can be mis­tak­en for the work­ing of the Holy Spir­it.
  • That’s in a wor­ship ser­vice. It’s usu­al­ly a healthy thing when this hap­pens in a small group (although here, too, it can some­times nor­mal­ize sin and min­i­mize the trans­form­ing pow­er of grace).

Here is my sug­ges­tion to you: today or tomor­row exam­ine your con­science and iden­ti­fy a spe­cif­ic sin to con­fess. Med­i­tate upon the sin until you clear­ly see its wrong­ness. Then this week find a fel­low believ­er (per­haps in Chi Alpha, per­haps in your church) and con­fess the sin to them. Then ask them to pray for you that God will lib­er­ate you from the pow­er of that sin. See what hap­pens and iter­ate mov­ing for­ward.

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline by Richard Fos­ter, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged summer‐reading‐project‐2019. The sched­ule is online.

This week we come to the dis­ci­pline of ser­vice — the habit of “qui­et­ly and unpre­ten­tious­ly… car­ing for the needs of oth­ers.” (page 130).

This is a sol­id chap­ter and full of insights.

“Of all the clas­si­cal Spir­i­tu­al Dis­ci­plines, ser­vice is the most con­ducive to the growth of humil­i­ty. When we set out on a con­scious­ly cho­sen course of action that accents the good of oth­ers and is, for the most part, a hid­den work, a deep change occurs in our spir­its.”

Richard Fos­ter, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, page 130

As I some­times remark, “God’s plan A for your life is humil­i­ty. Plan B is humil­i­a­tion. Choose wise­ly.” Pur­su­ing humil­i­ty through ser­vice is coun­ter­cul­tur­al at an ambi­tious place like Stan­ford, and so we need to con­stant­ly remind our­selves of the mod­el of our Lord. Jesus showed us that lead­ers are exam­ples and not excep­tions. A posi­tion of lead­er­ship does not exempt us from ser­vice — it gives us an oppor­tu­ni­ty to serve more peo­ple.

How can we tell if we are using a posi­tion as a plat­form for ser­vice? Robert Green­leaf, who was an exec­u­tive at AT&T, wrote

“The best test [of your ser­vant lead­er­ship], and dif­fi­cult to admin­is­ter, is: Do those served grow as per­sons? Do they, while being served, become health­i­er, wis­er, freer, more autonomous, more like­ly them­selves to become ser­vants? And, what is the effect on the least priv­i­leged in soci­ety? Will they ben­e­fit or at least not be fur­ther deprived?”

Robert Green­leaf, The Ser­vant as Leader

The pas­sage I found most help­ful, though, is Fos­ter’s insight on the dif­fer­ence between serv­ing and being a ser­vant:

“When we choose to serve, we are still in charge. We decide whom we will serve and when we will serve. And if we are in charge, we will wor­ry a great deal about any­one step­ping on us, that is, tak­ing charge over us. But when we choose to be a ser­vant, we give up the right to be in charge. There is great free­dom in this. If we vol­un­tar­i­ly choose to be tak­en advan­tage of, then we can­not be manip­u­lat­ed. When we choose to be a ser­vant, we sur­ren­der the right to decide who and when we will serve. We become avail­able and vul­ner­a­ble.”

Richard Fos­ter, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, page 132

Years ago some­one told me that one of the truest tests of your ser­vant­hood is how you react when you are treat­ed like a ser­vant. It stuck with me, prob­a­bly because I had recent­ly felt the sting of being tak­en for grant­ed. I had been treat­ed like a ser­vant and it both­ered me, which meant that I did not yet see myself as a ser­vant. In Philip­pi­ans 2:7 we are taught that Jesus took “the very nature of a ser­vant” (NIV). I came to see that if my goal was to have the very nature of a ser­vant, then being treat­ed like a ser­vant was actu­al­ly a mark­er of suc­cess.

What pre­vents this from becom­ing destruc­tive is rec­og­niz­ing that although we are ser­vants we are not serv­ing the whims of peo­ple. Colos­sians 3:23–24 says, “What­ev­er you do, work at it with all your heart, as work­ing for the Lord, not for human mas­ters, since you know that you will receive an inher­i­tance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serv­ing.” He gets at the same idea in 2 Corinthi­ans 4:5, “For what we preach is not our­selves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and our­selves as your ser­vants for Jesus’ sake. ”

In oth­er words, our ulti­mate ser­vice is to the Lord. This lim­its the way we serve any spe­cif­ic per­son. I must not serve oth­ers in a way that under­mines my abil­i­ty to ful­fill God’s pur­pos­es in my life.

• I will help you move but not on my son’s birth­day. I owe ser­vice to you but I also owe ser­vice to my son, and I owe him greater pri­or­i­ty in ser­vice than I do to you. God has made me my son’s father and so my oblig­a­tions in that regard will some­times trump my oblig­a­tions to serve you.
• You don’t need to give your friend a ride to the air­port when you are sup­posed to be tak­ing an exam. Christ brought you to Stan­ford and you need to hon­or that part of His call upon your life.
• And see­ing your­self as ser­vant does­n’t imply that you should only apply for min­i­mum wage ser­vice jobs. If God is call­ing you to become a pro­fes­sor or an entre­pre­neur or a doc­tor or what­ev­er, pur­sue that whole­heart­ed­ly and do what you need to do to pre­pare for that — and serve peo­ple at every step along the way.

Apply­ing this prin­ci­ple requires wis­dom, because if you are suf­fi­cient­ly clever you can jus­ti­fy for­go­ing almost any act of ser­vice or expres­sion of humil­i­ty. That’s real­ly the clue, though. If you’re con­stant­ly seek­ing a way to avoid serv­ing then you don’t have the heart of a ser­vant, so stop ratio­nal­iz­ing and start serv­ing. If your heart, how­ev­er, does not first say “must I?” but “can I?” when you see an oppor­tu­ni­ty to serve, then you are in lit­tle dan­ger of using this prin­ci­ple to indulge your self­ish­ness.

Next week we come to the cor­po­rate dis­ci­plines — the way that we live life togeth­er in the King­dom.

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline by Richard Fos­ter, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged summer‐reading‐project‐2019. The sched­ule is online.

I’m dou­bling up this week because I missed last week’s sum­ma­ry due to my trav­els. With this update we should be back on track.

This week, we exam­ine the dis­ci­pline of sub­mis­sion, which entails the rejec­tion of the lust for pow­er and even the pre­sump­tion of auton­o­my.

“Sub­mis­sion is an eth­i­cal theme that runs the gamut of the New Tes­ta­ment. It is a pos­ture oblig­a­tory upon all Chris­tians: men as well as women, fathers as well as chil­dren, mas­ters as well as slaves. We are com­mand­ed to live a life of sub­mis­sion because Jesus lived a life of sub­mis­sion, not because we are in a par­tic­u­lar place or sta­tion in life. Self-denial is a pos­ture fit­ting for all those who fol­low the cru­ci­fied Lord…. the one and only com­pelling rea­son for sub­mis­sion is the exam­ple of Jesus.”

Richard Fos­ter, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline page 117

Our cul­ture cel­e­brates the autonomous indi­vid­ual, and con­cepts such as “self-actu­al­iza­tion” and “self-ful­fill­ment” are per­va­sive. Our soci­ety’s main atti­tude toward the self is to indulge it, but Scrip­ture’s main atti­tude toward the self is to deny it. The habit of sub­mis­sion denies self in a pow­er­ful way, and so two of the main oppor­tu­ni­ties we have to deny self are to sub­mit to God and to sub­mit to legit­i­mate human author­i­ties.

Sub­mit­ting our­selves to God means obey­ing His Word, espe­cial­ly when we are puz­zled by His com­mands. There is a very real sense in which we are not sub­mit­ting until we dis­agree (or at least don’t under­stand). When we do what God says because it makes sense to us, it is not God we are obey­ing but our­selves. Med­i­tat­ing on Romans 12 might prove help­ful as you think about this.

Sub­mit­ting our­selves to legit­i­mate human author­i­ties means that we hon­or gov­ern­men­tal lead­ers even when we dis­agree with them. Dis­agree­ing with our polit­i­cal lead­ers is not uncom­mon; in fact, I can­not imag­ine a Cal­i­for­nia vot­er who is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly thrilled with both gov­er­nor Gavin New­some and pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump. Nonethe­less, we hon­or and pray for both. Not only do we hon­or and pray for them, we also obey them when they are act­ing with­in their sphere of author­i­ty. Like­wise, we hon­or spir­i­tu­al author­i­ties such as pas­tors and obey them when they are act­ing with­in their sphere of author­i­ty. We also hon­or our par­ents and obey them when they are act­ing with­in their sphere of author­i­ty.

I keep repeat­ing “when they are act­ing with­in their sphere of author­i­ty” because keep­ing that in mind is what pro­tects us from abu­sive and tox­ic sit­u­a­tions. Every human author­i­ty has lim­its placed upon them, and when they step out­side of their realm they should not be obeyed. Tyran­ni­cal gov­ern­ments, cultish reli­gions, con­trol­ling work­places, tox­ic fam­i­ly sys­tems — wise Chris­tians flee from or stand against these things.

Spend time think­ing Bib­li­cal­ly about the prop­er spheres of human author­i­ty — it will bear great fruit in your life. Some­times, like in Acts 5:27–29, the point is made very clear — the gov­ern­ment has no right to for­bid you to obey God (I’m look­ing at you, Chi­na). But oth­er times the les­son is an impli­ca­tion of the text rather than its main point. For exam­ple, Acts 5:3–4 pre­sup­pos­es that Peter would have had no right to com­mand Ananais to sell his prop­er­ty or to give all of the pro­ceeds to the church. That illus­trates an impor­tant lim­it on spir­i­tu­al author­i­ty. These are just two exam­ples from one chap­ter of Scrip­ture — I encour­age you to keep the con­cept of spheres of author­i­ty in the back of your mind as you read Scrip­ture. You’ll find insights in unex­pect­ed places.

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline by Richard Fos­ter, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged summer‐reading‐project‐2019. The sched­ule is online.

In this chap­ter, Fos­ter invites us to the spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­pline of soli­tude: peri­ods of phys­i­cal iso­la­tion which make us into peo­ple who are con­tent regard­less of the judg­ments of oth­ers. It is close­ly relat­ed to remain­ing silent.

“One rea­son we can hard­ly bear to remain silent is that it makes us feel so help­less. We are so accus­tomed to rely­ing upon words to man­age and con­trol oth­ers. If we are silent, who will take con­trol? God will take con­trol, but we will nev­er let him take con­trol until we trust him. Silence is inti­mate­ly relat­ed to trust. The tongue is our most pow­er­ful weapon of manip­u­la­tion. A fran­tic stream of words flows from us because we are in a con­stant process of adjust­ing our pub­lic image. We fear so deeply what we think oth­er peo­ple see in us that we talk in order to straight­en out their under­stand­ing.”

Richard Fos­ter, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, pages 100–101

There are relat­ed com­ments in the chap­ter on study:

“If we will observe the rela­tion­ships that go on between human beings, we will receive a grad­u­ate-lev­el edu­ca­tion. Watch, for exam­ple, how much of our speech is aimed at jus­ti­fy­ing our actions. We find it almost impos­si­ble to act and allow the act to speak for itself. No, we must explain it, jus­ti­fy it, demon­strate the right­ness of it. Why do we feel this com­pul­sion to set the record straight? Because of pride and fear, because our rep­u­ta­tions are at stake!”

Richard Fos­ter, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, page 74

When I was in col­lege some­one asked what per­cent­age of my words were devot­ed to influ­enc­ing how oth­ers thought about me. The ques­tion gripped me, and so I tried to keep track for a few days. Every time I said some­thing I asked myself whether or not I had said it most­ly to make oth­er peo­ple think bet­ter of me. The results were shock­ing — it was a HUGE per­cent­age of my con­ver­sa­tions. I resolved to strike any­thing from my speech whose pri­ma­ry pur­pose was either to impress oth­ers or to cor­rect a pos­si­ble mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of my motives.

In ret­ro­spect, I often went too far and made things awk­ward for every­one else. Pur­su­ing soli­tude and silence is not an excuse for being rude. We are com­mand­ed to love God and peo­ple, so if your spir­i­tu­al prac­tices make you act in less lov­ing ways then you’re doing them wrong. You will like­ly make mis­takes as you exper­i­ment in this area. Don’t beat your­self up over them, just apol­o­gize and recal­i­brate as nec­es­sary. If you resolve not to speak for a day and some­one asks you for direc­tions, give them any­way. If you decide to spend the next Sat­ur­day in soli­tude and an elder­ly neigh­bor asks you to help them move some stuff, resched­ule your soli­tude. If you want to avoid jus­ti­fy­ing your­self but some­one asks you a point-blank ques­tion about your motives, answer hon­est­ly and sim­ply.

Also, don’t make your plans in this area vows to the Lord. Vows to God are potent things and should be made rarely, yet I often speak with stu­dents who have made a promise to God to do (or not do) some­thing. In almost all cas­es the vow was an unnec­es­sary add-on meant to give their plan more oomph, and now they are in dan­ger of break­ing a vow to God. If you are con­sid­er­ing mak­ing a vow, first med­i­tate on Eccle­si­astes 5:4–6, Deuteron­o­my 23:21–23, Matthew 5:33–37, and James 5:12.

My per­son­al prac­tice of soli­tude cur­rent­ly looks like this. When I wake in the morn­ing I come down­stairs and put my phone where I can­not eas­i­ly get to it. I pre­pare my break­fast and begin read­ing a spir­i­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial book. After a bit (usu­al­ly a few chap­ters), I boot up my lap­top, open a word proces­sor, and write some­thing that will be help­ful to oth­ers. I don’t check my email or any social media while I’m doing this. Once I’ve writ­ten enough, I retrieve my phone to check for any text mes­sages that may have come in overnight and also open my brows­er to check my email.

My habit is sim­i­lar to the thir­ty-minute absten­tion from tech­nol­o­gy Fos­ter describes in the pref­ace. His pre­scrip­tion reminds me of an old-school say­ing: “No Bible, no break­fast.” In oth­er words, we must remem­ber to nour­ish our spir­i­tu­al life before we nour­ish our phys­i­cal life. Per­haps a mod­ern par­al­lel is “No Spir­it, no screens.” Don’t check your email until you’ve checked in with God. Leave your text mes­sages unread until you’ve read the Word. This is not an absolute rule, for there are sea­sons of life when it might be unwise or even wicked to cut your­self off from com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Are you a sur­geon on call? Turn your ringer up to max vol­ume!

If you do engage in a dai­ly prac­tice of soli­tude you will even­tu­al­ly find your­self want­i­ng some­thing more. Remem­ber that you can always dri­ve over to Fast­ing Prayer Moun­tain of the World for a per­son­al day-long (or even overnight) retreat. More info at https://www.fpmw-sv.com/about-us