Transformation: A Word on Suffering and Spiritual Practices

It must be said that unfortunately, participative knowledge often only comes through suffering.  It’s the only thing that can move us out of mere factual knowledge or mental belief and into experience.  When we are at the end of our selves, we finally become open to new realities and especially the reality of God. 

Think about your life right now: is there some trial or struggle that is bringing you to the end of your resource?  Suffering is basically anything we want to control but can’t control.  If you aren’t suffering now, you soon will be.  And life can either be made miserable by suffering, or life can become life in God because of suffering. 

When I went to college, I fell into a deep depression that lasted, in varying intensity, for six years.  During that time, all my factual beliefs about God had to be transformed into experiences on which I could hang my hat.  I believed that “God was good,” but that had to become, for me, a deeper reality.  A lot of our Christianity may in fact be theory until we are actually in the cave of suffering and need to experience the presence of Jesus with us there in the low place.[1]  Most of us, honestly and myself included, would rather just have the theory!  But real faith means moving from theory to experience, and this transition is often painful.  The crucifixion, of course, preceded the resurrection. 

The blessing of spiritual practices is that, rather than being blind-sided by suffering, we can actually begin to practice discipleship and “the fellowship of Jesus’ sufferings” on a daily basis.[2]  For there is actually a suffering in practicing the presence of God and learning to see Him as He is.  It is precisely the suffering of letting go of what-we-have-known-up-‘til-now.  It is also the suffering of responding to the Spirit when he challenges us to do something uncomfortable for us, like forgiving when we want to stay angry, turning away from temptation when we want to numb out, or practicing hospitality when our house or life is not altogether clean and sorted!  Spirituality, in this sense, is all about unlearning, which means letting go.

For this reason, we might resist spiritual practices.  The journey into God—and into transformation—is always de-stabilizing because transformation never happens without tension.  Remember that Abram, not to mention the entire nation of Israel, encountered God in the uncertain places where they did not have all the answers.  To encounter God, Abram—and all the heroes of faith—have had to face deep times of unlearning.  Remember, it was in the desert that the people of Israel were transformed into a people who could inhabit the Promised Land.  It wasn’t the miracles they saw in Egypt or at the Red Sea that transformed them, it was the suffering in their long journey!

Transformation in Jesus is always old things passing away, all things becoming new.  Spiritual practices pre-emptively de-stabilize us, interrupting our love of certainty and inertia as we come into contact with the God whose presence can’t help but change us.  They prepare us to receive “all things becoming new.”  This is a far better path than simply waiting for life to hand you suffering!  In a way, though I hesitate to say this, we get to control our suffering by submitting our own selves before suffering is fully upon us.  Perhaps Jesus even intimates this when he tells us to “pick up your cross and follow me.”[3]  We make the decision to pick up the cross and to enter into his suffering with him.[4]  And this ends up, by God’s grace, transforming our souls and freeing us from the fear of suffering and death.  

 Spiritual practices, then, can open us to know God and to participate in His life and love.  There will be pain in the process!  But there will also be resurrection.

[1] Jesus alludes to this reality and the possibility of abandoning a non-participative faith in the midst of suffering in the ‘Parable of the Sowers’ in Matthew 13:1-23.

[2] Philippians 3:10

[3] Matthew 16:24

[4] Again, see Philippians 3:10, and also Acts 9:3-5

Transformation: Practice as Participation

Indeed, spiritual practices transform us not because they have some magical power in and of themselves, but simply because they open us to God.  It’s not the practices, it’s God who transforms us.  As the scripture says, seeing God as He is transforms us.[1]  As Jesus makes clear, salvation itself is knowing God:  “And this is the way to have eternal life—to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one [He] sent to earth.”[2]

What does it mean to “know” God in the way Jesus means it?  Well, it’s quite different than knowing about him.  (Information never necessarily leads to transformation.)  It transcends knowing about and is more of a participative relationship in which we actually encounter and experience God.

This participative knowing is different, then, than theory or even doctrine.  Many Christians or churches love doctrine but have no real space for the God about whom the doctrine speaks!  Many churches worship the Trinity but actually substitute the Bible for the Holy Spirit and then make little space for Jesus or the Father either.  This is because “having all the answers” is comfortable (even if it’s hollow), while encountering God is generally de-stabilizing and quite uncomfortable.  (If you don’t believe me, just look up a hero of our faith and read their story of encountering God.)  The tradeoff, of course, is that only in encountering God is there true comfort and resurrection.

When Jesus talks about knowing, he’s talking about an experiential knowledge in which our whole being begins to participate, not just our minds.  Knowing in theory how to hit a baseball is very different than holding a bat and actually hitting the ball.  By participative knowledge, we’re talking about this experiential type of knowledge which transcends theory.  As important as our beliefs are, faith is never mere knowledge or mental assent.  I can tell you that my wife is an amazing singer and you can believe me, but when you actually experience her singing, the experience transcends the fact in your mind and becomes a living experience in your mind, soul, and body.  This is the move into participation.  It may sound strange to say, but I often experience my body physically trembling when I become aware of the Holy Spirit.  It is a physical and not just a mental experience.  And many people will tell you that they experience an intuitive sense of direction or peace/lack of peace from God “in their gut” long before their conscious minds make sense of what they’re experiencing. 

Relationships are always participative, and this is what Jesus means by “knowing.”  We are creatures who will often substitute certainty for relationship.  While we need a level of certainty, salvation is not about having all the answers to life’s endless questions, but rather about trusting The Answer even when there is ambiguity.  When we trust God in this way, we will come to know him, and this knowledge of Him—His beauty, goodness, mercy, kindness—in and of itself will transforms us.  We will naturally become the type of people who love God and love others.

My friend Bill Hull tells a simple story about how he found himself criticizing his wife, Jane, for having committed time to baby-sit, keeping her from coming home for a few hours.  After hanging up the phone, he started reflecting on the fact that he was doing to her something she had never done to him: he was making her feel bad for committing to love and serve other people, even though he was often away from her for that same purpose.  And he realized that it wasn’t just putting in more will-power that would transform him to be a better, kinder person and husband to Jane; he needed to humble himself, to come to the scripture, to spend time in prayer, that through God’s grace and an encounter with His goodness he might naturally become the kind of person who would be generous, kind, and gentle to his wife.

This is exactly the point of spiritual practices: we engage them that we might encounter Jesus and be transformed in the core of our being by him, so that we become whole by the grace of God and so that we are empowered to live for others.  They transform us by bringing us to see who God is.  Through them, we can take the initiative to become open to God and His work in us.  The water of God’s grace and mercy is a free-flowing water-fall which we have done nothing to merit or earn; but we do have to place ourselves under the waters. 

[1] See, for example, Isiah 40:5 and 1 John 3:2

[2] John 17:3

Transformation: Practicing Trust

Engaging any spiritual practice is a practice in trust.  Perhaps we don’t think of trust as something we practice, but it certainly is.  Indeed, following Jesus is essentially a lifelong practice of trust.  Oftentimes, trusting involves a great deal of discomfort and uncomfortable soul-stretching.  As I write today, I am aware that I have a difficult conversation scheduled tomorrow with someone who is angry with me.  Though I’ve learned to engage conflict, I hate it.  I’m aware of all that could be lost or gained in this conversation.  Meanwhile, I’ve been practicing surrendering to Jesus all the things I can’t control, such as someone’s opinion of me or their own personal history or emotional wounds which might make them angry with me no matter what I do!

This is all we can ever do facing things we can’t control: we practice trusting God even when things feel scary or painful.  We trust he is at work within us, to transform us.  We surrender what we can’t control.  For this specific conversation, it means I prepare to listen from a place of generosity rather than defensiveness.  But my soul would be lost in this preparation without spiritual practices like prayer and a slow reading of scripture.  By such practices I can tangibly enter into a posture of trust and cling to it.

This can take real energy.  Spiritual practices often “cut against the grain.”  It takes effort to surrender my anxiety in prayer—to “cast my cares” on God, as the scripture says.[1]  That’s why discipleship requires commitment.  We put our soul in a posture of trust, even when we don’t feel like it.  We give thanks for all things, even when it doesn’t feel natural.[2]  We practice generosity, giving our money for God’s purposes in the world, even when some part of us wants to hold onto all of it.  We forgive, even if it is at first a begrudging choice.  Only by such practices of trust do we discover a new posture for living.  And only by such effort, when faithfully engaged, will our hearts become open to God.  Ultimately, we can become a people who have no fear of death or anything else because we are so aware that God is with us and that nothing can separate us from His love.[3]  We are a people who practice continual death and resurrection on a spiritual, psychological, and emotional level, so that when physical death comes, we are well-prepared to trust the resurrection we have already long experienced.  Spiritual practices help us become open to God and the confidence that results can make even death seem a very minor thing.  This is the experience of eternal life on this side of eternity which Jesus clearly intends for us to enjoy. 

This openness to God through spiritual practice is exactly what we see in Jesus.  Luke tells us that “Jesus often withdrew to solitary places to pray.”[4]  Quite simply, Jesus got tired, his soul weighed down by life, and he needed to re-connect with God his Father.  So he practiced becoming and remaining open to God.  It was this practice of trust that Jesus engaged on the cross, focusing on the sinner in need at his side and on forgiving those that were crucifying him, rather than focusing on his own suffering.  How did Jesus do this?!  Quite simply, he had an ingrained habit of trusting God, no matter how difficult the circumstances.  Jesus had practiced trust such that his soul could trust even when facing brutal and terrifying execution. 

Will we be ready for death, as Jesus was?  We can be.  But it will require a disciplined set of practices that help us become open to God.  Because ultimately, it’s simply seeing and experiencing Who God really is—the God of All Love--which transforms us.

[1] I Peter 5:7

[2] I Thessalonians 5:18

[3] Romans 8:38-39

[4] Luke 5:16