Growing Spiritually is…
The quote of the year for me from Donald Miller,
“It’s not a hard, fast rule to be sure, but the idea is that sitting around looking at your spiritual belly button isn’t going to provide an object lesson for your faith. The idea is that faith makes sense in the context of some other pursuit.“
Read the rest of his blog to give this quote some context, but the better we church leaders are able to communicate to our people that growing closer to God and discovering more about God and falling into a deeper love of God is done in the context of every aspect of life not just what we term “spiritual contexts” like Bible reading, study, meditation, prayer, etc. If I am paying attention God will reveal Himself in how I feel about Chocolate Chip Cookies, especially warm gooey ones…Mmmmmmmmmmmmm.
The Context for Spirituality is not Spirituality | Donald Miller’s Blog
The Context for Spirituality is not Spirituality
I don’t read very many books about faith. And I don’t listen to very many sermons about faith. I’ve not known exactly why for some time, or at least until lunch yesterday. Those books were fine (I may have even written one or two) but they didn’t seem to be very applicable to my life. And it’s never actually helped me to “work on my spirituality or my relationship with Jesus” either. What has helped me is finding myself lost in the woods and calling out to God, looking for wisdom in the scriptures.
Yesterday, at lunch, my friend David mentioned he’d spent some time in Colorado with the guys at Ransomed Heart. David used to work with them and went back to hang out with them for a weekend in the mountains. He mentioned that one of the guys reminded him that spirituality was not a context. I asked David what the guy meant, and Dave said what he meant was that you learn about God while learning to fly a plane or raising a child or planting crops in a field. It’s not a hard, fast rule to be sure, but the idea is that sitting around looking at your spiritual belly button isn’t going to provide an object lesson for your faith. The idea is that faith makes sense in the context of some other pursuit.
And that might be the reason I don’t migrate toward conversations specifically about faith.
In the Bible, God guides people through stories. Stories is how He teaches people about themselves and Himself. He doesn’t get the children of Israel out of Egypt instantly. God drags it out, creates plagues, guides them through positive and negative turns, all to shape their faith. He does the same with Joseph, giving him a vision, then immediately letting him be thrown into a well by his brothers.
If we think we are going to grow in faith by sitting around at a Bible study, we are wrong. That stuff is fine, but without a story, without diving into something really difficult, something that requires us to look to God for support and wisdom and comfort, it will be more difficult to become a person of great faith.
The Blog that spawned The Conversion Investment Series
[singlepic id=50 w=320 h=240 float=left]Are You a Slacktivist? | Donald Miller’s Blog
A friend of mine has a non-profit in which he raises money to provide academic scholarships to kids in South Africa. It’s a terrific organization doing terrific work. He raises funds on the platform of Academic Equality, and mostly mobilizes college students to host parties and fundraisers then works closely with students who are being provided scholarships. As he started his organization, I couldn’t help but notice it grew much more quickly than The Mentoring Project, an organization I started to provide positive male role models for kids growing up without fathers. I couldn’t help but wonder why.
As my friend and I talked about it, we wondered whether organizations that simply raise money in America and send that money overseas weren’t easier to grow because, quite frankly, they don’t require you to change the way you actually live? I know that sounds harsh, but think about it, if you could feel like a humanitarian for simply wearing a t-shirt and attending an occasional rally or updating your facebook status, or if you could feel like a humanitarian for taking a few hours a week out of your life and working with an actual child in an after-school program, which would you rather do? In other words, would you rather wear a t-shirt that says you are a humanitarian, or would you rather be a humanitarian?
My friend shared with me a term he’d learned that summed up our current dilemma: Slacktivism.
Are you a slacktivist?
Now to be fair, organizations building wells and freeing child soldiers and stopping sex-trafficking are doing extremely important work, but I don’t think we should feel all that altruistic for throwing them a twenty in exchange for a t-shirt. People need more than money, they need other people.
What if you laid out all your non-profit t-shirts and asked how you were directly dealing with the issue? And what if you no longer considered yourself altruistic unless the causes you supported were actually making your life more complicated? What if slacktivism wasn’t actually social change? What if it was just another way of exploiting the poor and marginalized, using them to foster our own false identity as humanitarians?
Does your activism cost you anything besides money? And in exchange for that money, do you get a social commodity and identity as an activist?
A Million Miles In A Thousand Years Review
I don’t really know who reads anything that I write, but for the few of you who do I cannot more highly recommend that you go to my Highly Recommended Books, click on the first book, and buy it from Amazon. The last time I checked they were selling it for a ridiculous discount. A Million Miles In A Thousand Years by Donald Miller is worth every penny and minute you’ll spend consuming it. Seriously!
I was first introduced to Donald Miller six years ago through his book Blue Like Jazz, which is now being made into a movie. I can honestly say that, except for a few writers who have only written one book, he is the only author of which I own every book he’s written. I say that I own every book he’s written because I haven’t actually read Searching For God Knows What yet, but it is sitting on my “To Read” shelf. I, with great enthusiasm, skipped right to this book.
Somehow I stumbled upon a sneak preview where I got to read the first three or four chapters and I was hooked. As soon as the book released I bought it with a store credit I had at Barnes and Noble. I was so enthusiastic about reading this book that I added it to my already weekly 150-200 page reading requirement for the class I am taking at Hope International. Reading this book was motivation for getting ahead in that class each week
This book is not only worth that additional commitment, but I will most likely re-read the book in one sitting before the end of the year. I may even take the book with me as we travel to Uganda to finalize our adoption as a reminder of what it is I am really doing as I renew old friendships and make some new ones. It was such a good book that I am tempted to book a flight to Portland, OR just to get him to sign my copy…seriously, this book is a must read for every high school senior, college student or graduate, every Christian, every American. I CANNOT STRESS this enough. Read this freaking book, and if you feel like I was completely misleading then I’ll buy it back…maybe.
If you buy one book this Christmas as a gift, other than the Bible, this is the one.
We need to be telling better stories!