Faith Venture

We like to shout about our freedoms. We can say whatever we want, do whatever we want, eat whatever we want.

We forget about responsibility. There are many things we say that are irresponsible. They spread lies, hatred, divisiveness. Doing whatever we want may cause harm to others or the environment we all live in. Many of us are packing more than a few extra pounds on our frames because we are not responsible about what we eat.

Priest and theologian Oscar Romero said, “How easy we find it to condemn structural injustice, institutional violence, and social sin! All that is quite real, but where are the sources of that social sin? They are in the heart of every person. Modern-day society is an anonymous society in which nobody accepts blame but everybody is responsible.”

Yes, years after he wrote these words, we are even worse about running around shouting condemnation of others without acknowledging our own responsibilities.

It always comes back to the status of our hearts.

We all need some rest. I can’t shut off my mind, but I can slow it down and enjoy the deer in the forest. An antidote for many ills.

The Willow Creek model for building a modern has influenced a generation of church leaders. Guys I listen to on a regular basis–John Ortberg, Gene Appel, Andy Stanley–have all based their ideas on the model.

For years I have wondered about this thought–why do none of them ever mention the founding father of the movement? They may refer to Willow Creek occasionally, but never to Bill Hybels.

I also wondered why when Hybels spoke one week about how they did an employee survey and discovered that people hated working there. And how they hired a consultant to fix things. But, Hybels as the leader, never took personal responsibility for creating that culture.

And the church has done fantastic good–both in the lives of people and in society at large.

And Hybels is a good teacher and public presenter. And just like other popular personalities–I am thinking of people like Mario Batalli for example–they covered a multitude of sins.

Pride, ego, lust. And in a flash, they are gone.

Except the fallout continues with Hybels. More accusations. At the beginning of public revelations, I wondered about what was going on. But the Board seemed to be on top of things–until they weren’t. There is another, even worse, accusation, this week reported in The New York Times.

Even now the Board seems reluctant to take initiative and act. So the lead teaching pastor resigned issuing public statements.

So I take these thoughts and bring them home. Are you on any type of Board? If so, do you take the time to do your duty? Are you like these boards–like Willow, or large corporations with celebrity CEOs–who ignore warning signs and then themselves now wrapped in pride refuse to see the obvious and fail to act?

Pride, Ego, Lust. Three demons we studied while reading John Climacus the past month. They destroy people.

Willow Creek has done so many good things, I hope a new Board of Elders (I’m not a member, but I’d certainly vote for a new one if I were) steps forward and does the right thing.

It’s easy to point to celebrities who get overcome with these on a big scale. Harder is to look in the mirror and detect these demons in ourselves and deal with them. Follow the Ladder of Divine Ascent. Take the first step, that of self awareness.

Spiritual Formation lies at the heart of my interests. Union with God as the goal of the contemplative life was where I started and what drew me to this essential book of monastic life for 1,500 years–The Ladder of Divine Ascent by St. John of the Ladder, aka John Climacus.

Spiritual Formation and the pursuit of the Spiritual Disciplines (aside from occasional rants) compose the foundation of this blog. But these can become too inward looking causing people to withdraw from the world. But reaching out to others is the opposite side of the same coin. It takes both sides to make the coin whole. (You could make an entire philosophical inquiry on that thought.)

However, let us sum up John’s thoughts in this outline. It’s worth putting in Evernote and scanning periodically.

The Break with the World

1. Renunciation

2. Detachment

3. Exile

The Practice of the Virtues (Active Life)

Fundamental Virtues

4. Obedience

5. Penitence

6. Remembrance of Death

7. Sorrow

The Struggle Against the Passions

Passions that are predominantly Non-physical

8. Anger

9. Malice

10. Slander

11. Talkativeness

12. Falsehood

13. Despondency

Physical and Material Passions

14. Gluttony

15. Lust

16-17. Avarice

Non-Physical Passions

18-20. Insensitivity

21. Fear

22. Vainglory

23. Pride

Higher Virtues of the Active Life

24. Simplicity

25. Humility

26. Discernment

Union with God (transition to Contemplative Life)

27. Stillness

28. Prayer

29. Dispassion

30. Love

And now remains faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13)

John–Love, by its very nature, is a resemblance to God, insofar as it is humanly possible. For God is love (1 John 4:16).

This is a saying worth pondering for some time:

Love is the banishment of every sort of contrariness, for love thinks no evil.

We spoke of dispassion yesterday–sort of a calm detachment. Not becoming buffeted by passions. John says dispassion and love are distinguished only by name.

And…

He who loves the Lord has first loved his brother, for the latter is proof of the former. Someone who loves his neighbor will never tolerate slanderers and will run from them as though from a fire. And a man who claims to love the Lord but is angry with his neighbor is like someone who dreams he is running.

Concluding the 30 steps:

Remaining now are faith, hope, and love, these three. But love is the greatest of them all (1 Corinthians 13:13).

The dispassionate man no longer lives himself, but it is Christ Who lives in him. –St. John of the Ladder

We have worked our way up the steps of the ladder to the penultimate one. We have recognized the passions and sources of passions that work us up emotionally and detract from our growth. We have looked at the virtues and worked on developing habits so that we can lead a virtuous life.

At the end of stillness and prayer we can find what John calls dispassion. Another word we could use is calm. We are no longer driven by passions like a rudderless ship on the ocean in a storm. We can make decisions on our own. We can discern the will of God in all situations.

John says we make the soul the master of all the senses keeping our souls continually in the presence of the Lord.

Our politics today are more passionate and divisive than almost any time I can remember–at least since the 50s. We have too many people in our churches working up such passions about determining whom to leave out of church rather than working to bring people in.

Someone said only recently that old refrain, “Society calls us hate-mongers when we speak up against sin. It doesn’t realize that we only hate the sin, not the sinner.” To which I say, it certainly doesn’t look or sound like it. If we are working on our spiritual formation, we are more worried about our own sins, which are many, rather than pointing out the speck in the other’s eye.

Jesus certainly never taught that we should go around like the Pharisees of his day constantly pointing out the faults and sins of others. That never sounds loving and inviting.

Blessed dispassion raises the poor mind from earth to heaven, raises the poor beggar from the dunghill of passion.

And the winner is…The 2017 most downloaded app in the Apple App Store (and I think the most dollars in sales) is the app Calm.

Suddenly psychologists and therapists have discovered how beneficial to physical and mental health is the practice of mindfulness or stillness.

Many of us have known that for years. Forty-some years of practice of stillness changes your life.

We now use phrases such as “monkey brain” to discuss how hard it is to settle down our thoughts. The very ancient tradition of stillness took pains to identify the components of the monkey brain. That is what John Climacus has been teaching us.

When we win the fight over the array of evil thoughts and desires, we can truly begin to sink into stillness.

Brave and determined thinking is a friend of stillness. It is always on watch at the doors of the heart, killing or driving off invading notions.

Stillness is also the gateway to true prayer. It begins with calming the body and mind. It adds perspective. It allows awareness of the whispers from God.

Begin and end the day in stillness and one day you will look back and be amazed at your growth.