Some books are wide-ranging and broad.  Some books are deep and specific.  David Runcorn, in Spirituality Workbook, deals with some of the nitty gritty of everyday expressions of Christian spirituality, and manages to do both; it is both deep and wide.  I read the slightly older 2006 edition.

The breadth comes from the simple amount of material covered.  Runcorn has put together work from years of the rhythm of theological formation.  The chapters are short and independent from each other, but each is a gem of insight and reflection.  The content ranges from topical analyses, to reflections on historical persons and movements, to unpacking specific spiritual disciplines.

It is impossible, therefore, to condense the book down into a governing argument, or to give a fulsome summary.  For myself, I take from the book a number of insights that interact with, subvert, and even blatantly combat some of the ways in which Christians and churches have capitulated to the spirit of the age.

Consider his early chapter on the spirituality of the desert, which draws on the example of the early monastics.  He identifies the motivation of a “longing for God” that cannot be satisfied in an “increasingly worldly church” (page 10).  And his enumeration of the value of the wilderness experience includes concepts such as “judgment” and being “confronted with the sheer depth of our need of conversion” (page 11) that are anathema to the comfortable pews of the western world which idolise success and fanfare.

“In the desert you leave behind all your familiar securities.  You come to a place of confessing your absolute need and the emptiness of all you have been placing your trust in…  The desert is a place that weans us off addictions and false dependencies.  If your god is not the true God the desert will find you out.  Only the true God can sustain you in the wilderness.” (Page 11)

Consider the irony in his reflection on exile in a changing world, that the word from which we get “parish” and “parochial”, paroikia, originally meant “a place of refuge or exile” for Christians who experienced themselves as “resident aliens, non-citizens… sojourners in the world… shaped by the experience of enforced mobility, vulnerable exile and disorientating change” (page 23).

Consider the frustration that recognises that “finding and sustaining community in today’s society is a real struggle” even when “the Christian vision of community is central to spiritual formation, prayer and faithful discipleship” (page 51).  Hear the challenging wisdom, quoted from Bonhoeffer:

If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian community in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith and difficulty, if we only keep on complaining to God, we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ.” (Page 55)

Ponder his counter to the addiction of churches to self-actualising mission management, as he values a rule of life that resists that greatest of all Christian predilections: the inability to say “no” to something that is good but wrong.

It is quite common for churches to have their own mission statement these days.  What is less common is to find churches that have gone on to think and pray through together a shared, sustainable shape of living that might make that vision realizable.  Without an agreed boundary to its life and mission, church life proceeds on the assumption that Christian time and energy can extend limitlessly into an ever-increasing range of worthy projects.  That this is all “for God” just makes the burden worse!  The result is corporate exhaustion, guilt and frustration.” (Page 65, emphasis mine)

He gives important correctives for our corporate life:  “Worship that is organized to impress outsiders is no longer true worship – which is offered to God alone” (page 70).  He gives insight into culture: “The defining identity on offer today is that of consumer” (page 89).  He plumbs the depths of spiritual practices that may have become staid: “Intercession involves seeking to be where Christ already is… [it] is a participation in Christ’s costly and life-giving presence in the world.” (page 122).

And whether it be in the presentation of the Jesus Prayer or a discourse on sexuality, Runcorn takes us deeper, uncomfortably deeper, blessedly uncomfortably deeper.  Here is the constructive challenge of an effective spiritual director.  Such challenge disabuses us of immature and insipid notions of Jesus and what it means to follow him.  It presses us beyond superficiality and the ubiquitous ecclesial shallows and provokes us.

Where we would settle for peace & tranquility, he would take us to the shalom of Christ, who also challenges, and provokes and questions our assumptions until we rely on him: the Christ who counters our agendas with “Unless you repent you will all perish” (page 177).  Where we would like to waft on clouds of easy ecstasy, he reminds us that “Christian prayer is more often marked by conflict than by feelings of peace” (page 179).  Where we would prefer the stagnancy of unrocked boats, we are reminded that true hospitality and receptivity “does not mean becoming neutral” (page 193).

It is neither polite nor respectful to just sit agreeing with everything your guest says.  We are to offer a real articulate presence, sharing our own beliefs, opinions and lifestyle clearly and distinctly. ‘An empty house is not a hospitable house,’ [Nouwen] says, ‘Real receptivity asks for confrontation.‘ (Page 193, emphasis mine)

We have challenge, confrontation, provocation, uneasiness.  This is the stuff of life. What we have then, is a book to return to, and a book to recommend.  It takes us to depths that are rare in the salt-pan of contemporary corporate Christianity.  It is both comfort and correction, broad and deep, and therefore utterly useful.

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Gill and I are long time fans of the Australian Christian musical phenomenon that is Sons of Korah.  Headed by Matthew Jacoby, the Sons of Korah project is to set the Old Testament psalms to music.  Their philosophy is one of interpretation rather than re-interpretation; they provide a literal musical “translation” more than a paraphrase.  The lyrics are often word-for-word of an English text.  The composition makes heavy use of strings and multi-layered folk melodies to communicate not just the meaning, but the feeling, of the psalms.  They are both affective and effective.

It was a great delight, therefore, to have Matthew Jacoby’s book Deeper Places thrust into my hands by Gill after she had eagerly devoured it herself.

Here Jacoby lays out not just his philosophy for approaching the psalms, but the philosophical imprints of the spirituality that he has learned from them.  It is the essence of his doctoral studies and so this is no touchy-feely pop-psych pseudo-tract; it is a deeply applicable theological treatise.  It has fed my soul, expanded my mind, deepened my homiletics, because it has drawn me to the Word of God and the words of God’s people.

For Jacoby the psalms express an holistic spiritual journey.  The ultimate end is to instil “rightly oriented desire” (p68) in the hearers/readers/singers.  It is no accident that the “chief end of man” is quoted towards the end of the book as he explores themes of enjoyment and praise.

At the highest point of the spiritual journey portrayed by the Psalter, we find people enjoying God.  In their enjoyment of God, they become vessels of praise to God. This deeper sense of praise is precisely what is meant to “glorify.”  We can praise God in a shallower sense with words alone, but we can only glorify God by enjoying him. (p161)

But, as they say, it’s the journey that counts.  The psalms are not just about praise and glory, they are also full of query, doubt, tension, and raw lament.  It is in the consideration of these aspects that Jacoby’s commentary is of the greatest value.

Jacoby locates the beginning of the praise-bound journey not in victory but in the raw brokenness of this world.

From our perspectives, they [the psalms] express the desire to feel loved, to be affirmed and validated, to feel secure, and so forth.  This earthly spirituality, as I have called it, is also seen in the psalms in the ample expression they give to the complications of our human dysfunction.  Human dysfunction does not guide these expressions, but our dysfunction does cause a constant tension in our relationship with God that must be brought to the surface with honest communication, as it must be in any relationship.  This is what we see in the psalms. (p26)

In his definitive metaphor God is imaged as an ocean in which we are suspended.  The human dysfunction is a shell that not only insulates us from the divine, but propels us upwards to the shallows like a bobbing submarine.  In contrast, the journey of the psalms is ever deeper, and necessarily a journey of tension; the lament of human hurt mixes with the life-filled promises of God until the shell bursts and we are consumed inwardly and outwardly by God’s presence, which we therefore glorify.

“…the psalmists deliberately bring two things into tension.  They deliberately highlight the reality of their situation as it stands in tension with the reality of God and his promises.  As both realities are amplified, this very tension then becomes the seedbed for faith and hope.  Faith is conceived by the injection of the divine promise into the open wound of a heart that has allowed itself to be wounded by reality.” (p86)

I have long rejected the association of “spiritual” with “ethereal.”  To be spiritual is to go deep, into gut-level issues. And spiritual work is work that (often painfully) adjusts our foundations, or is so rooted upon our foundations that the depths of our soul is welled up and out.  Jacoby threads this notion through the Psalter, revealing it’s nature not just as a song-book but as an exercise-book for life.

Like his songs, Jacoby has taken what already exists and has brought it to life in lively language that I for one will be referencing again and again.  He has done the preacher’s task in an extraordinary way.  In the very best sense he has opened the Word of God.

 

Mike Raiter is someone I, and many others, would place in the extreme upper echelons of biblical exegetes and expositors.  A book by Raiter that deals with spirituality therefore grabbed my attention.  I was expecting something that interacted with my two passions of studying the things of God and experiencing the things of God.  With Stirrings of the Soul I was not disappointed.

I will therefore begin by dealing with the three annoyances of this book so I can finish with the good stuff.

  1. It’s an Australian book, by an Australian author, based initially on lectures to an Australian audience.  The adaption of it to a British audience is obviously forced and looks like it’s been done by an editor with search-and-replace “Australian” with “British” functionality on their word processor.  I’m all for adapting to market contexts, but…
  2. Don’t be put off by the beginning.  Yes, working from the ground up is good.  And yes, it was written in 2003 when ‘The Internet’ wasn’t yet broadbandy, let alone all 2.0-ish.  But the first couple of chapters talking about the “spirituality explosion” and the outlining of postmodernity have dated significantly – it presumes a naivete about such things that has long since passed.  Persistence through these chapters is worthwhile because the strength of the book lies in its dealing with more eternal concepts.
  3. The structure of the book moves from New Age spirituality to Mysticism-in-general to Christian Mysticism to an Evangelical Response to Christian Mysticism.  What you don’t get is the completed circle (or the finished return journey) of an Evangelical Response to New Age spirituality.  How does a Christian respond to a New Age mystic?  I don’t know if this book fully answers that.  I think it does more to protect against New Age infiltration into the Christian world than it does to help the Christian world to outreach to the New Age.  In this way it is typical Matthias Media and can come across on occasion as an extended Briefing article.

There is plenty of good stuff.  Raiter achieves his aim of not pulling apart one form of mysticism in depth but looks at the forest more than the trees.  What he slowly reveals is that this spiritualistic forest is very human shaped.  Raiter lists the following characteristics within the appeal of spirituality:

  1. Hunger for relationship (p75)
  2. Thirst for experience (p80)
  3. Non-rational (p84)
  4. Non Judgmental (p86)
  5. Inclusive (p89)
  6. Everyday Spirituality (p92)
  7. Market Place Spirituality (p95)
  8. Therapeutic (p98)
  9. An Immanental, Inner-directed Spirituality (p99)

Not only are these found across the breadth of (post)modern spiritualities of today but also across history.   The point is that the appeal of spirituality is a common thread in the human fallen predicament.  Not only the God-shaped hole, but also the methods of spiritual enlightenment that rely on human endeavour or self-focussed technique, are indicative of human pride and self-realisation.

By this means Raiter brings Scripture to bear on these spiritualities and this is where his exegetical mastery kicks in.  And he is somewhat no-holds-barred in doing so.  I delight in the application of Romans that acknowledges that the base state of the human person is not to seek truth but “in their wickedness, suppress or restrain or hold the truth back.” (p109) and he concludes…

“As we live in a society of so many competing spiritualities we desperately need to hear Paul’s words on the human condition.  We need to listen to God’s diagnosis of the real character of people’s spiritual motivations.  We can be tempted to look at the new spirituality… and see it as the genuine longing of sincere spiritual seekers… People are looking for God and longing to get in contact with the One they know is there…  There is, of course, an element of truth in all that.  The phenomenal growth of the new spirituality does point to people’s awareness of the presence of God.  But, says Paul, such movements are not the signposts of spiritual seekers.  They are in reality, the hallmarks of spiritual hiders, of religious runaways, of deniers of the Divine.” (p118, emphasis mine)

It may seem harsh, but this attitude of Paul (both a “passion” and a “revulsion”, p130) is at the heart of Paul’s evangelistic zeal and his desire to connect with, but not commend, those who build spiritual idols but need Jesus.

Here Raiter’s engagement with the world outside of the Christian sphere ends.  The second half of the book looks at spirituality (in the guise of mysticism) within the church.  He presents something of an overview and introduces some key figures (Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila etc.).  He considers ascetism, quietness and other spiritual disciplines.  He looks at the philosophical foundations in neoplatonism.  His critique is helpfully Christocentric

“If the Lord has told us about himself and how he wants us to relate to him, then we will want to listen to him, and listen to him carefully.  We will want to respond to him in the way that best pleases him, and therefore in the way which will both change and transform us, and bring us the most God-honouring joy… Yet here are mystical classics where the Lord of glory is barely mentioned, and the benefits of his atoning death are misunderstood or marginalised.” (p174)

I appreciate that he does not ignore the over-reactions to spirituality.   In the last chapter he critiques evangelicalism and the tendency to reject emotion, not just emotionalism, and to glorify gospel more than Jesus.  The balance that Raiter strikes is commendable – it hits the truth point between the two reactive edges of charismania and dry dogmatism (for whom the chief end of man is to “read the Bible and study it forever”!  – p224).   In the second last chapter Raiter paints a picture of Christian Spirituality as portrayed in Romans 8.  It is a piece of exegetical wisdom which seems good to conclude with:

“Firstly, the spiritual life is intimately related to the saving work of God in Christ…
Secondly, for Paul spirituality, or life in the Spirit, was much more about living a life of righteousness, than performing personal and private acts of devotion…
Thirdly, Christian spirituality recognises the importance of the mind in pursuing a life pleasing to God…
Fourthly, there is a deeply experiential dimension to an encounter with the Spirit of God…
Fifthly, suffering is the context in which Christian spirituality is lived out…
Sixthly, frustration will be one aspect of life in the Spirit for each and every believer.” (pp203-208)

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