Practices of Love

Spiritual Disciplines for the Life of the World

Bennett, Kyle David

• Publisher: Brazos Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781493409587
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Spiritual disciplines are often viewed primarily as a means to draw us closer to God. While these practices do deepen and enrich our "vertical" relationship with God, Kyle David Bennett argues that they were originally designed to positively impact our "horizontal" relationships--with neighbors, strangers, enemies, friends, family, animals, and even the earth. Bennett explains that this "horizontal" dimension has often been overlooked or forgotten in contemporary discussions of the spiritual disciplines. This book offers an alternative way of understanding the classic spiritual disciplines that makes them relevant, doable, and meaningful for everyday Christians. Bennett shows how the disciplines are remedial practices that correct the malformed ways we do everyday things, such as think, eat, talk, own, work, and rest. Through personal anecdotes, engagement with Scripture, and vivid cultural references, he invites us to practice the spiritual disciplines wholesale and shows how changing the way we do basic human activities can bring healing, renewal, and transformation to our day-to-day lives and the world around us.

One
Spiritual Disciplines and the Way of Love

A long time ago in a land far, far away, a Christian monk wrote a book and dedicated it to a bishop.1 The monk’s name was John Cassian, and in this book were the notes he took from observing several Egyptian monasteries that he had visited. In his book, Cassian described to the bishop the daily life he encountered in these monasteries and explained why the monks did what they did. He organized his observations of their daily life around eight principal vices that prevent the monks from living the way that they ought to live, and he offers disciplines for them to practice to counter these vices. He made clear that the monks do what they do on a daily basis to fix or prevent these vices from growing in their lives.

We may not be all that familiar with this word “vice,” but it’s an important word in the Christian tradition. It comes from the Latin word vitium, which can have various meanings: fault, defect, blemish, imperfection, corruption, or wickedness. Our English word “way” comes from vita, which is in the same family as this word vitium. A vice (vitium) is a defective or imperfect way (vita) of doing something. It’s the wrong way to engage in some sort of activity or the wrong way to behave. Another word that captures this idea is “malformed.” A vice is a malformed way of doing something, a bad or evil (mal) way of doing something. Throughout this book I use the word “malformed”—not “vice”—to communicate the idea that, like these monks, we do some very basic activities the wrong way. We do them badly, and sometimes even evilly.

The eight principal vices that Cassian discusses at length are gluttony, fornication, avarice, anger, sadness, acedia, vainglory, and pride. The monks gorge in their eating. They are greedy in their owning. They are prideful in their thinking. They are lazy in their work. This is not how they should live. It is clear from Cassian’s treatment of them that these eight principal vices (which give rise to other “offshoot vices”) comprise a way of life. They are like a package—or we might say that they come in bulk. Each vice works together. There is continuity between them, with each vice playing off another or building on another: gluttony feeds fornication, and vainglory gives rise to pride, for example. Although all of them are bad, Cassian notes, some of them are more destructive than others. Some are easily expressed in everyday living and have more disastrous effects than others, which means that some are more difficult to control and uproot than others. Pride, for example, is more difficult to uproot than gluttony. It’s easier to stop eating so much than it is to stop thinking so highly of oneself. Because each vice builds on another, Cassian notes, the monks have to combat them in bulk. In other words, they have to live differently, not just do a couple of things differently.

In a quite detailed exposition, Cassian explained to the bishop how these vices emerge in the monks’ daily activities and how they can be fixed through certain “institutes” and “remedies” in the community. By “institutes” and “remedies” Cassian meant rules and practices. So he essentially suggests that the community of monks—or the monastery—take up certain rules and practices to help them fix the malformed ways that they do daily activities. And they must do this together as a community. Together they will observe rules and institute practices so they can perform these activities in the right way. The remedies that the monks practice to rid themselves of these vices are what we nowadays call spiritual disciplines. They practice silence, solitude, fasting and feasting, Sabbath keeping, meditation, and simplicity. They change the way that they dress, own, think, eat, interact, talk, work, and rest. Spiritual disciplines will fix their habits and practices and get them living the way that they should in community or in shared spaces together.

Growing up as a Protestant evangelical, I used to think that monks (and nuns) make vows to cloisters to escape the world and enjoy personal intimacy with God. Fed up with the impurities of the world, they go away and hide in the far corners of the earth where they can be pure and undisturbed by the inconveniences of life while they wait for the Lord to return. This always struck me as rather selfish and cowardly. “Must be nice to get away from the inconveniences of life and annoying miscreants of the subway and enjoy the peace and quiet,” I thought to myself. But, as Cassian’s observations make clear, this couldn’t be further from the truth.2 Monks and nuns make vows not to a cloister but to a community. And they do so not to escape the world but to enact a different one. They commit to living with others and to living differently with these others. They commit to disciplining their daily deeds for their own sake and for the sake of others. They take living in community very seriously—the way God does, as we saw in Isaiah.

Now some of us may be thinking, “A long time ago in a land far, far away is right! This is a monastic community! Cassian was a fourth-century monk! He’s talking about monks! To a bishop, nonetheless! I’m a cashier at a grocery store. I don’t live in the desert. I haven’t taken any vows. I don’t live in an intentional community with others—I live in a six-hundred-square-foot apartment by myself! We’re worlds and centuries apart. What could this even mean for me? What hath fourth-century Egypt to do with twenty-first-century El Paso?” Our lives may take different shapes and twists and turns, but the cashier and the cenobite, the hedge fund investor and the hermit, the nun and the nurse are not so different. As followers of Jesus, we are all called to the same thing: God and citizenship in his kingdom. We are all called to bring our whole selves and all aspects of our lives under the power and sway of our King.3 We are all called to bring the little things as well as the big things under his rule. Like the ancient brothers and sisters before us, we are called to discipline our daily deeds, and we are called to love our neighbor as ourselves.

I like how Reformed theologian Klaas Schilder (1890–1952) put it:

We must serve God, everyone in his own way, wearing either a leather apron or an academic gown—it does not make any difference. Everyone has to serve God, wearing rubber boots or carrying a gasoline can, having as emblem a hammer and sickle (these belong to us) or a painter’s palette, rather than a censer as such. We have to serve God, everyone in his own place in the new God-created community.4

We can learn a thing or two about discipleship and the discipline required of a disciple from our fourth-century monastic brothers and sisters. Like them, we do basic, ordinary activities every day. We get dressed, we buy things and take them home, we think, we eat, we hang out with friends, we talk (a lot), we work (a lot), and we rest. But what we don’t realize is that we tend to do these activities in selfish and vicious ways. We do these things in ways that hurt our neighbor (and are unhealthy for us). And we are completely unaware of it because we have been doing things this way since childhood. And to top it all off, this way of doing things is unassumingly reinforced by culture and society—this is what everyone does and how everyone does it! But what the lives of these monks reveal to us is that we have to relearn how to be a human being and how God intended for us to act and live on a very basic human level. We have to relearn how to use our minds—not the mental faculties but the thoughts. We have to relearn how to eat—not the use of utensils but how much to consume. We have to relearn how to socialize—not to network for future jobs but to give people space. We have to discipline our daily deeds.

Disciplining Daily Deeds

As John Cassian rightly saw them, what we nowadays call spiritual disciplines are practices for a community to reform its way of life together—the thoughts, attitudes, habits, practices, and behavior of individuals, and the general lifestyle or way of living of the community. These practices are for a community as it interacts in healthy and harmonious ways in shared spaces. “We set ourselves against these struggles,” Cassian said.5 Notice the “we.” This “we” is a company, not a collection of individuals. These monks saw themselves as a social body working together to weed out the vices that work against their communing and dwelling with one another. Together they disciplined their daily deeds. They improved their behavior for their own sake, as well as for the sake of one another. They fixed themselves for the community and their life together. It’s pretty simple: in order to live in community and even to stay alive in community, we have to alter our lifestyle. We can’t just do whatever we want to do. We can’t just live selfishly. We have to be disciplined to some degree. We have to discipline our lives at least a little bit.

Many of us don’t like this word “discipline.” It makes us feel uncomfortable, even icky. It has negative connotations. We often associate it with punishment or retribution. To discipline is to punish, right? When a child does something wrong, we discipline him and send him to time-out. He sits in time-out as punishment for the wrong he committed. He has violated some rule in the house, and to make up for the “crime” we send him to time-out. And sometimes we tell him that he won’t get a snack later. We are disciplining him; we are punishing him. To our contemporary mind, they are one and the same. But this confusion is unfortunate. Discipline and punishment are not the same thing. The root of the word “discipline” carries a much more favorable connotation than punishment. “Discipline” means instruction. To discipline is to teach, and to be disciplined is to be instructed. In meaning and practice, it is worlds apart from punishment. Whereas punishment is about paying a penalty or compensating for a wrong committed, discipline is about making things right. It’s about getting back on track. It’s about settling the matter. It’s about resolving the issue. It’s about fixing the problem. It’s about healing a broken agreement or promise. It’s about reconciling so that we can keep going.

The word “disciple” comes from this same root word. When Jesus says “You are my disciples,” this means nothing less than that he is our teacher and we must learn from him. He instructs us in his way of life, and we implement it. He directs us in the way that we should go, and we go. He goes, and we follow him. But this implies that we aren’t on the right path. We don’t have it all together. Our way of living isn’t right. To be discipled—to be a disciple—implies that we don’t have it right. We don’t have it figured out. We’re doing it wrong. We don’t know how to live in the way that our teacher wills and wishes, so we have to learn from him. We have to be instructed, corrected, and disciplined by him. That is what it means to call him teacher or master and for him to call us his disciples and followers. This means that there can be no disciples without discipline. There can be no true image bearers without instruction. The endgame of following Jesus is not converts and confessors but citizens and custodians of his kingdom.

As many of us have come to see through years of following him, we have as many things to learn from him and from discipline in our lives as he has offices that he occupies and roles that he fills. Because Jesus is the firstborn of all creation and the second Adam, we must learn from him how to be a creature, a human being, and a son or daughter of the Father. Because he is our Savior and Redeemer, we must learn from him how to sacrifice our own agenda and live for others in love. Because he is our Prophet, we must hear the truth from him and learn how to witness to it in confidence and kindness. Because he is our Priest, we must learn from him to forgive others and intercede for the poor, the widowed, and the orphaned. Because he is the Judge of the world, we must learn to live more in tune with his ways and reign. Because he is our coming King, we must learn from him how to be citizens and custodians of his kingdom.

There is a trinitarian structure to be seen in our discipleship and the disciplining of our daily deeds. We learn from Jesus Christ how to take up and fulfill our original calling from the Father. As Christians, we believe that God the Father through the Son and the Holy Spirit created the heavens and the earth—a spiritual side to things and a physical side to things (Gen. 1:1). Both sides make up one creation, one world. Our world. Among all creatures, we human beings—because we have both a spiritual and a physical side—were called to cultivate, steward, and enhance this created order (Gen. 1:28). We were called to orient ourselves toward God and to bring all things given to our care and within our power under him. We were called to foster and contribute to making this world a place where God can dwell and his goodness and glory can shine. This is our calling as creatures, as human beings. And it has been ours since the beginning.

From the Son, we receive a new commission. Jesus singles us out, as his disciples, to follow and submit to him. He instructs us to learn from him and discipline our lives as he did and as we were originally supposed to do before things got out of whack (Gen. 3). He then sends us out into the world to baptize others and to teach them his way of life. He commissions us to teach his commandments and to make more disciples who will follow him (Matt. 28:16–20). He leads us to become renewed human beings in the world, to a life of doing everyday activities according to the Father’s design, his example, and the Spirit’s guidance, to a life of doing things in ways that liberate, empower, and enrich the lives of others and help creation flourish in wholeness and growth. Jesus challenges us to live a life of freedom through sacrifice. For it is through sacrificial living that we find life. It is in living for others that we find our life (Matt. 16:25; John 15:13; Col. 3:3–4), just as it is in him that we find ourselves. He reveals to us that we were made for something more than ourselves.

As we learn from him and live in him, we participate in a renewed creation and life in the Spirit, as he does. Jesus lived his life in, under, and with the Spirit. When we follow him, this is where he leads us, as the apostle Paul captures in his Letter to the Romans. Jesus does not lead us to reject the body (soma) or any other physical aspect of the created order, which the Triune God created good and Jesus redeemed. Rather Jesus leads us to resist living in fleshly (sarx) ways. He leads us away from sin and selfishness. He leads us to life in the Spirit. He invites us to bring our entire life under the guidance and direction of the Spirit, who is the power and source of life. Walk with the Spirit (Rom. 8:2–4). Be led by the Spirit (8:14). Think on the things of the Spirit (8:5–8). Let the Spirit change the way we behave (8:13), hope (8:23–25), pray (8:26–27), serve (7:6; 15:16), and love (15:30). Live in God and dwell in him. In Jesus we truly live life.

As Jesus showed, life is about bringing all things under the Father’s reign through the power of the Spirit. It’s about doing all things with, for, and in God. Sometimes we talk about a different aspect of our lives that we call our “spiritual life.” But when we look to Jesus and really think about it, there is no distinct portion of our lives that we can call “spiritual” apart from everything else: the only choice is life in the Spirit or life in the flesh. There is no “spiritual life,” there is only life in, with, and by the Spirit. God meant for every part of our life to be lived in tune with him who is Spirit (John 4:24). As his disciples, we learn from Jesus how to be creatures, human beings, who live by the power and guidance of the Spirit.6 We learn how to live wisely, obediently, and responsibly, as God intended. We learn how to do everyday, human activities in the way that we were created to do them.

Spiritual formation is not just one component of our lives. It’s not even one aspect of our lives. And it absolutely isn’t one field of Christian study, separable from theology, ethics, psychology, or economics, for...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Endorsements
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction: Spiritual Heroin
• 1. Spiritual Disciplines and the Way of Love
• 2. “What Do You Have That You Did Not Receive?”
• 3. Directions for Ruling the Mind
• 4. This Is My Tummy, Which I Will Curb for You
• 5. Time-Out for Adults
• 6. Controlling the Chatterbox
• 7. How to Make Friends and Empower People
• 8. Work Hard, Consecrate Hard
• 9. Who’s Afraid of Love?
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Further Reading
• Index
• Back Cover