Faith Venture

It’s Good Friday, a day meant for reflection if there ever was one. I’m still digesting all the wisdom in The Congruent Life by C. Michael Thompson, and this sentence hit me like the proverbial brick. “The spiritual life is more concerned with relationship than creed.”

We have a creed about Good Friday, (“suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried”). The church my wife was a member of growing up in suburban Detroit taught that you shouldn’t “say” the Lord’s Prayer. They also didn’t recite the Apostles’ Creed. They taught that prayers “should come from the heart.” But they also had creeds–“I believe in the Bible” for example. The reason I bring this up is not to make fun of Baptists, but to point out how hard it is to enter the spiritual life as a relationship with God, and a relationship with Jesus who shows us the way to God, without slipping into the complacency of repeating creeds–often called “empty” words.

When you pray this weekend, make an effort to put your mind and attitude into one of seeking a relationship with the Holy Spirit. Make It part of you, you part of It.  Don’t think of today as a set of words from the Apostles’ Creed, but seek a relationship with Jesus, who died for us. But come Sunday we also remember that he became alive again, also for us. That’s another relationship. Same person, different experiences. Jesus will go with us from the depths of our depressions to the heights of our spiritual lives. That’s a relationship worth nurturing.

Gary Mintchell

So back to The Congruent Life after a brief hiatus. Thompson’s view that you need to get all the areas of your life in order depends upon being aware of your spiritual life. Your actions in the business world and in the “church” world (and all your other “worlds”) need to be congruent–that is, go in the same direction. Don’t have a set of ethics for business and a different one for home. Ethics must come from your spiritual life.

So, what is your spiritual life? Thompson’s research and reflections on his own development, bring him to a definition that most people experience the Spirit as “a search or a stirring within.” Have you ever had that deep feeling that compelled you to do something? You just had to learn more about a topic? You just had to find a way to experience God more deeply? This is a stirring. I think that we neglect to teach people to be sensitive to this stirring in our haste to make sure that they repeat the correct words. The first thing you must do to cultivate the Spirit is to be quiet and listen. It’s OK if part of your prayer time is given over to asking God to help yourself and others. But it is crucial to your development that you take part of that time and just be quiet. If you get an unsettling feeling that something needs attention, stop and contemplate that feeling. See if the Spirit is leading you somewhere deeper. It will probably send you off to study for a while. The process may last for a day, or it may last for months. Mother Teresa experienced Jesus talking to her, then spent her entire life figuring out all the implications all the while doing the work that He suggested. This listening and study become the foundation for an ethical and congruent life.

Some people are worried about the form of listening. Is there a particular posture? Do you need background music or to chant something? If you are my age, you remember when the Beatles went to India and discovered the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Transcendental Meditation was suddenly everywhere with its chants and mantras. Maybe that’s a fond memory, but don’t let that corrupt your thinking. If you like meditative music, then by all means play it if it helps focus your mind. In fact, you don’t even need to sit. You can contemplate the Spirit while walking, or even running on the treadmill at the Y. I know of a man who wakes up at 2:30 in the morning and lays in bed on his back and contemplates for hours before he gets up. Which leads to a good point. Setting aside a particular time for God every day is a good habit. You’ll find that you’re ready to listen after a few days. Another thing, a smart person once gave the  teaching, “Try, easy.” You try by setting aside the time. But don’t force anything. You simply quiet your mind and listen. Let the Spirit lead you. You’ll know.

Gary Mintchell

I write three blogs, and none are political (I hope), but the news this week shows the hazards of placing belief and faith in a person other than Jesus. Just while I was writing about ethics in business, the message is interrupted by this announcement–Eliott Spitzer, governor of New York and former crusading prosecutor, has been implicated in a high-priced call girl scheme. According to news reports, there exists a call girl ring based in Washington, D.C. that rents girls for $1,000 to $5,500 per hour. Spitzer transferred “large amounts” of cash from two of his bank accounts to the leader of the ring. What makes this news is that he has made a career out of prosecuting all sorts of ethical problems including sex trade. People in New York overwhelmingly elected him governor based on his crusading past and promise to clean up corruption in Albany.

Sometimes the demons people fight within are reflected in the preoccupations that they have on the outside. He had a weakness (guess that makes him human), but he evidently couldn’t deal with it within himself.

God uses people to do his work, and Spitzer definitely did a lot of work that God would approve. But now, he has a lot of additional work to do to redeem himself. I hope he does. But for all of us, it’s a reminder to place our complete faith in the relationship with Jesus. People will do good, and people will fall short. Honor the good they do, but don’t place all your faith in humans. A lot of good came out of the fall of the powerful after Watergate in the early 70s (think Chuck Colson and his prison ministry, for example). Perhaps a powerful and influential person like Spitzer can face his demons and come out of this doing even more good work. Or maybe the demons win. It’s the same battle we all face.

I was writing a series on spirituality, ethics and the workplace from “The Congruent Life.” But I just heard this talk by Gary Haugen at the Menlo Park Presbyterian Church. John Ortberg is the senior pastor there. This talk is about Christians working for social justice around the world. It’s one of the finest examples of spirit at work I’ve heard. Worth a listen. Just click on the link and it should play on your computer or go here to the page with the MPPC sermon list. This sermon is about 30 minutes.

Gary