Positive and Encouraging?
About a month ago I wrote that “Positive and encouraging (was) not always sanctifying.” When I did I promised to write about that “next week.” Well, in keeping with my personality I am coming back to that idea a month later.
Last night a friend asked me on facebook – in a public forum no less! – what my frequency goal was in blogging. I should simply respond, “unmet” and leave it at that. And I probably will after I have posted this and can feel a little better about myself.
I have spent the morning doing a little bit of study in preparation for advent, true humanity, and Jordan Peterson’s popular teaching on archetypes which are built on top of Plato and Jung’s ideas of spirituality. And all of this has reminded me that I am way behind on addressing the themes of positive and encouraging as those ideas have merged with modern evangelical theology thanks to a well known radio network.
I know, that’s a lot of disparate and confused ideas that barely make sense all in one paragraph. But I need to boil some of it together for you really quick and then maybe we will all get something out of this together.
Let’s begin for just a second on Biblical humanity. The Bible presents a humanity created as flesh and spirit in the image of God. Let me say it another way to be super clear. A spirit is not a human being. A human being is embodied and connected materially to the earth and other humans. A spirit cannot shake hands with another spirit. A human being must shake hands in order to be human. Humanity not only enables but actually requires interaction with other humans and with our creator.
According to the Bible a human being exists as a human being only in relationship to God, to others and to the earth. Key concepts involved in being human are separateness, dependance, and connection. I am me, not you. I am a creature dependant upon my creator. I exist in relationship to my surroundings and to others.
Plato taught that human beings were essentially spirits trapped inside a physical body. The truest part of our humanity is the part that can transcend the physical body and enjoy a purely spiritual experience. The Buddha also taught something similar.
Carl Jung and Jordan Peterson both follow in Plato’s interpretive footsteps teaching us to look at the Scriptures individually. We are encouraged to look through the metaphors we find there as a means of discovering who we are really meant to be.
Now I have oversimplified a few things, so please don’t troll me by pointing that out, but this is the gist of some very popular voices who are speaking into a worldview that we all share if we are living as human beings in relationship with the world and with other people.
So what the heck does all this have to do with the themes of positive and encouraging? Well, who doesn’t want to feel positive and encouraged? Don’t we all want that? But why? I would argue that this is attractive to us precisely because we are aiming our hearts at something “out there.”
Jung and Peterson would advise us toward personal growth just as Adam and Eve left the Garden to explore the great world and to discover final and full fulfillment in a new city. The goal of the human being is to go out from where we find ourselves now and seek fulfillment “somewhere else.”
Often church services are designed to create a spiritual experience of touching on something transcendent, something “other than,” something more fulfilling than the mundane. This is heavily influenced by Plato and his followers. It is something the church has done for centuries. As if the goal of the Christian life is to escape from the reality we actually live in and to enjoy an experience of the spiritual.
Mundane life is anything but positive and encouraging. It is anything but the spiritual highs we might experience once in a while in a church service. Mundane life is filled with spreadsheets, TPS reports, baby changing, health issues, struggling against addictions, grocery shopping, fighting with loved ones, aging, and ultimately death. We don’t use the phrase, “the daily grind” for nothing.
In order to really grow in life the greatest thing we need to do is learn to be faithful in boredom. Sanctification (referenced in the first sentence of this post) is the process of growing more and more into the image of Christ. Essentially becoming better human beings.
I heartily disagree with Plato and Jung, though I believe Peterson may have repeated some rudimentary ideas that will help. Becoming a better human being never involves an escape from humanity. Becoming a better human being never means escaping the daily grind and feeling positive or spiritual or encouraged.
Becoming a better human being, if humanity is defined biblically, must actually mean encountering discouragement and negativity. It means entering into the grind with daily faithfulness to follow Jesus. It means when we fight with our loved ones and go grocery shopping we do these things as Christ would. A man who experienced abandonment, loss, poverty, and hunger.
Becoming a better human being means we live fully into our humanity as people in relationship with the messed up world and messed up people. But also in relationship to our creator who is calling us to bring beauty and goodness into all of these things.
If you are looking for positive and encouraging, know that the only way to see those things is to put those things out into the world, not to consume them for yourself.