Jason's Blog

Wendell Loewen has a great post on the shaping of Teen Identity on the Fuller Youth Institute Blog. He tells how a show like Extreme Makeover Home Edition can breed discontentent. His own kids told him, “I wish we had a new house.”

“The over-riding narrative of consumerism is: ‘You are what you consume.’ Identity is based on what a teen can purchase and put on display. The result is that adolescent identity tends to be formed externally rather than generated internally.”These words ring so true. Loewen goes on to identify over-the-top caricatures that have been created by the media that are then projected at teens to absorb. They love these characters—dress like them, talk like them – teens end up being branded.

So what kind of long- term impact comes from defining your identity from what you own? The stuff owns you, and God’s voice can’t be heard.

So what are we do?

Skye Jethani, managing editor of Leadership, a teaching pastor at Blanchard Alliance Church in Wheaton, Illinois has a great suggestion – keep quiet:

“Maybe God is waiting for us to be silent long enough so he may begin painting a new picture in our imaginations; to begin transforming our image of a manageable deity into one that can truly inspire.”

“Consumerism, with its never-ending noise about its consumable god, has led us to believe that our words and notions about God are of supreme importance. It has made the church into a noisy orchestra without harmony and fearful of silence. But humble silence offers us liberation from our digital cocoons to experience wonder once again. Silence allows us the space to contemplate the vastness of the heavens and the God beyond them. Silence can shatter the trivialized deity that has occupied our imaginations, and provide God the canvas to begin a new work in our souls I can’t help but agree. One of the major weapons in our battle for our soul is stillness and quiet.

Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” It doesn’t take a lot of stuff to follow Jesus (or a ton of pious deeds either). Our starting point is always our emptyness.

So this weekend may you spend your money and your time wisely. May you be aware of God’s presence in each transaction. May you be poor in spirit and find some moment—even if it is only 10 seconds when you flip a mute button on your TV—where you can be still enough to hear and embrace the love that God has for you in a deeper way. Be quiet and hear the quiet truth that drowns out the noise of every cash register.

“Listen to this; Stop and consider God’s wonders” (Job 37:14).

What I have been learning (and experiencing) is that these two kinds of prayer (discursive & contemplative) are not polar opposites.  In fact, they are emeshed.  True discursive prayer is a vehicle for contemplation.  God is drawing us into His presence as we pray.  He is hoping we will acknowedge Him as He is while we pour out all our requests.  He longs for us to open ourselves to His deeper love, deeper grace, deeper forgiveness, and deeper call to holiness.

However as life happens, we are so busy that we fail to connect with God in contemplative ways.  We are worried about life, money, our fears, our education and a thousand other less significant things—you name it and so our prayers are incomplete.  They lack the profound depth that they could have.

From the moment we are born we are in the process of growing.  I like how Kelly Nemick puts it “this side of death spiritual genesis is a slow, all embracing process.  Every person, event, and circumstance of our daily life contributes to that process.  We are transformed inch by inch, drop by drop” (The Mystical Presence, 20).

The question is, “What are we being transformed into?”

God longs for us to be transformed into his nature—that we might be contemplative beings.  So buried in the background of everday existence, God is singing a silent note.  Tuning us little by little into persons that are more aware of Him.  Do you believe that?  Do you believe that God is working all over your life so that you might be more consciously aware of Him?

Another idea—at specific points in our life, we cross thresholds.  Our expereinces, life with God (or apart from Him), our friends, our marriage, our children, our education carry us to new places.  Again to quote Nemick “a threshold occurs when the interior forces of convergence become so concentrated that they produce a breakthrough, a new and improved mode of being” (Mystical Presence, 20).

Has that happened to you?  Have experiences and life catapulted you to a new appreciation for God?

What is new in all of this for me is the integrated character of the discursive and the contemplative life.  What I see now is that God has been pulling me forward toward a life with Him and that I haven’t really surrendered to that drawing power.  But where I am now, I see it and I’m amazed.

I also believe now more than ever that it takes silence (or solitude) to grow our contemplative senses.  But as they activate, we can become more conscious of God around us all the time.

So thanks for reading.  What do you think?  Tell me about your experience of the contemplative life.  Is it anything like what I’ve described here or does what I’ve written leave you with more questions? 

In a way, I hope it does.  Questions are healthy I think.

In the previous post, I defined discursive prayer as the form of prayer we learn when we are young.  The focus is on wording whatever it is that is on our mind.  We thank God, we ask God, we tell God, and we might even complain to God.  There is, however, another type of prayer that is much more contemplative in nature.  Here, the focus is on being with God or even resting with Him.

Evan Howard has a tremendous definition of contemplation as “the conscious vision of the presence of God in as full a measure as possible here on earth” (The Brazos Introduction to Christian Spirituality, p. 325).  In this life, our ability to be with God has its limits.  In heaven, we will experience in a much fuller way the presence of God with us.

And yet the scriptures are full of teaching that we can draw near to God and He in turn will draw near to us.  Take these passages from the gospel of John:

I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life (John 5:24)

I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live (John 5:25)

I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you (John 14:18)

Remain in me, and I will remain in you (John 15:4)

These scriptures suggest a profound union between the Believer and the Savior—a deeper life together that surpasses imitation and quotation of ideas.  Almost shockingly, Jesus prays that the glory of the Father might be in us—“I in them and you in me” (John 17:22-23).

But if your life is like mine, the contemplative does not last long.  Pretty soon we are back to reality.

Yesterday in the chapel I taught a little class that took some snapshots of the practice of the Lord’s Supper over time.  We surveyed historical evidence in three distinct time periods:

• The Second Century (Didache & Justin Martyr)
• The Fourth to Seventh Centuries
• The American Puritan Practice (John Cotton in 1645)

I hope you enjoy these notes.