Article Round-up 4 (Spiritual Formation)

The edition on spiritual formation

How to Get Out of a Devotional Rut: Excellent article exploring out the things we think are devotional actually can hinder our relationship with God.

Digital Fasting: The relevance of taking a break from digital things.

Confessions #1: A sample of confessions related to Anne Jackson's Permission to Speak Freely.

Our Relationship to Fear: Visualizing people's comments about fear. Watch the video for some interesting interpretation.

The Duct Tape Solution: How we respond to fear.

Article Round-up 3 (Church Structure)

The edition on church structure.

House Church, Part 1 and 2: Reflections on the institution of the house church.

For The Love Of Your Pastor: Emphasizing how damaging it can be to have the pastor do everything.

How to Become a Successful Religion: The horror of marketing on the church.

Drive-Thru Church?: A humorous, but all-too-true view of the contemporary church.

Our Idea v. God's Idea @keithgiles

Keith Giles recently posted a series of awesome, short posts, comparing what our ideas of things are versus God's ideas (rooted in biblical comments). I could probably elaborate on each of them for a while, but I'll let them stand on their own (for now :) ).

Faith

Knowing God

Worship

What's necessary to plant a church

Fasting

Article Round-up 2 (Theology)

This is the theology edition of articles. :)

The Parable of the Good Muslim: Nice redeux of the Good Samaritan.

What is Forgiveness: Self-explanatory. Not over-simplified, though.

The Secret Formula of the Kingdom: There is no formula.

Hell: A struggle with the theology of Hell. Nice, honest reflections.

A Mother's Dilemma Regarding Hell: Another struggle with Hell theology.

The Problem With Literalism: Noting interpretive problems with using literal interpretations of the Bible.

Letters to God... Pornographic?: Examining the definition of pornography and how else it can appear and be damaging.

What Do You Mean By Literal?: An exploration of how the word literal can actually mean different things, making its application to biblical interpretation very different.

Does the Slippery Slope Always Go To The Left: Noting that the fear of the "slippery slope" is always that people will become more liberal, not conservative. I think both ways can be quite scary.

Thoughts on Unity and Integrity: Excellent post on what actually unites people. It feels similar to my post on Big Tent Christianity.

Who Says That's an Error?: Exploring the definition of error in Scripture.

Article Round-up

It's been a while since I posted some good articles, so here they are (well, part 1):

Faith and Doubt: This could almost be a post on its own. It's a very moving and important emphasis on how faith and doubt not only can co-exist, but reinforce one another.

Isn't Counseling for Crazy People?: Another article that I could write a whole post on. Excellent emphasizing the utility of therapy for all people.

Sin in the Church: How often we ignore sin within the church while condemning it outside of the church.

4 Ways Christians Damage Sex: Excellent article (self-explanatory).

And for something fun: Cross USB Drive

Technology and the Presence of God

Yesterday, I reviewed Gregory Boyd's Present Perfect: Finding God in the Now. As I said in it, I particularly love the practice of the presence of God. I find focusing on the present very meaningful and important both psychologically and spiritually.

Traditionally, this spiritual discipline has not received a lot of attention. Perhaps that is because it is so simple (yet so complex). Maybe it's because in its simplicity and incarnational approach, it's not always explicitly "spiritual." And people like feeling "spiritual."

However, I also wonder if it has to do with a societal shift. In another book I'm reading on Celtic spirituality, the author noted that people's activities were often mundane, repetitive, and boring. They livened the activities up by creating prayers and praise songs to go along with the daily activities. In many ways, this is a perfect example of living in the present and seeing God's presence in all we do.

With technology, many of these mundane, repetitive tasks have become automated and literally mechanical. This is a good thing. We have been able to achieve so many wonderful things in the world because of these advances. However, with the advances, we are now free to focus our energies on more engaging tasks. These tasks are less boring and require us to truly focus on them. That makes focusing on something else (namely God) more difficult. It's easier to say a rhythmic prayer while churning butter, doing laundry, or cooking a meal than it is writing a paper, doing therapy, teaching a class, running meetings, etc.

Could this be part of the reason that (stereotypically) blue-collar workers can often have more vibrant spiritual lives than white-collar workers? White-collar jobs often feel like they can do more good for the world and more ministry-related than many blue-collar jobs (again a generalization and stereotype that could be the topic of an entire other post). However, these ministry-related jobs may be the things that are removing us from God more than anything else because they distract us.

We are often doing so much for God, but doing it without God by our sides...

Almost Perfect Present Perfect @zondervan

As many people who know me well know, I love spiritual formation and exploring the spiritual disciplines. However, I also have a lot of criticism for most of the disciplines. My favorite has been the practice of the presence of God, particularly made famous by Brother Lawrence's book of the same name. That made me very excited to have the opportunity to review Gregory Boyd's Present Perfect: Finding God in the Now, made possible through a complimentary copy from Zondervan.

In this text, Boyd explores the practice of God's presence, particularly leaning on the works of Brother Lawrence, Jean-Pierre de Caussade, and Frank Laubach. While I was familiar with the former, I was not aware the latter two authors contributed to this little-known discipline.

Rather then a rehash of what practicing the presence of God is and how to live living in the present out, Boyd does a nice job of taking it to the next level. He explores the ways it can be beneficial in a modern era and also many of the modern hindrances to this practice. This approach makes the book very useful to people already familiar with the discipline and concept of living in the present. Further, Boyd's writing is very accessible, making it much easier to digest and interact with than old translations of Brother Lawrence's tome.

Boyd also takes a bit of a twist on the practice of the presence of God, emphasizing staying present as a way to accomplishing experiencing God's presence. This is an excellent approach, biblically, psychologically, and sociologically. Particularly in modern times, we are living in the past or the future, neither of which are where God is, as Boyd states. We need to remember to live in the now much more frequently. That is where we find God. There are plenty of hindrances to living in the present, many of which are psychological and which Boyd addresses quite well (that may be a topic for a future blog post). Presenting living in the present in such a hope-filled, life-enhancing way, Boyd encourages the readers to really struggle with themselves and with God in order to truly engage more effectively.

Additionally, the focus on staying present fits well with a lot of pop psychology, pop spirituality, and even true clinical psychology. Staying grounded in the moment is actually a clinical technique (and a very good, effective one). Intentionally or not, Boyd capitalizes on this trend and shows how it can be used to enhance our spirituality. Once again, psychology and spirituality need not be in conflict, but rather mutually supportive.

I highly recommend Present Perfect for both people struggling spiritually and who also want to grow spiritually. It's also one of the few books that explores an incarnational view of spirituality.