John
Ortberg
The Danger of
Pseudo-transformation
vs. Authentic Christian Spirituality
“Spirituality” wrongly
understood or pursued is a major source of human misery and rebellion
against God,”
Dallas Willard.
Most of us
want to be changed, to become more like Christ. But is it happening?
According to a Gallup poll, nine of ten Americans say they pray daily, and
84 million Americans almost a third of the population say they have made a
personal commitment to Christ as Savior. But as William Iverson writes,
"A pound of meat would surely be affected by a quarter pound of salt.
If this is real Christianity, the 'salt of the earth,' where is the effect
of which Jesus spoke?" Because by and large we do not expect people
to experience ongoing transformation, we are not led to question whether
perhaps the standard prescriptions for spiritual growth being given in the
church are truly adequate to lead people into a transformed way of life.
The great
danger that arises when we don’t experience authentic transformation is
that we will settle for what might be called pseudo-transformation. We
know that as Christians we are called to "come out and be
separate," that our faith and spiritual commitment should make us
different somehow. But if we are not marked by greater and greater amounts
of love and joy, we will inevitably look for substitute ways of
distinguishing ourselves from those who are not Christians. This deep
pattern is almost inescapable for religious people: If we do not become
changed from the inside out…we will be tempted to find external methods
to satisfy our need to feel that we're different from those outside the
faith. If we cannot be transformed, we will settle for being informed or
conformed.
BOUNDARY MARKER
SPIRITUALITY
James Dunn
notes that in the first century A.D. a vast amount of rabbinic writing
focused on circumcision, dietary laws, and Sabbath keeping. This seems
odd, because no devout rabbi would have said these matters were at the
heart of the law. They knew its core: "Hear, 0 Israel: The LORD is
our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your
heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might." So why the
focus on these three practices?
The answer
involves what might be called "identity" or "boundary
markers." Groups have a tendency to be exclusive. Insiders want to
separate themselves from outsiders. So they adopt boundary markers. These
are highly visible, relatively superficial practices--matters
of vocabulary or dress or style--whose
purpose is to distinguish between those inside a group and those who are
outside
For
example, imagine that you were driving through the Haight Asbury district
of San Francisco in the nineteen sixties. If you came to a stoplight and a
Volkswagen van pulled up next to you, plastered with peace signs and
"Make Love Not War" bumper stickers and driven by a long haired,
tie dyed, granny glasses wearer, you would have known you were driving
next to a hippie. If it were the nineteen eighties and you were to see a
BMW with a driver wearing Gucci shoes, a Rolex watch, and moussed hair so
and nibbling on brie, you would know you were driving next to a yuppie.
Bikers, too, are recognizable by their preference in fashion color
(black), fabric (leather), skin ornamentation (tattoo), and beverage of
choice ("great taste, less filling"). Farmers, doctors,
politicians, and rock stars all have their own ways of distinguishing who
is in their fraternity or sorority.
With this in
mind, the importance of circumcision, dietary laws, and Sabbath keeping in
the first century becomes clear. These were the boundary markers; the
highly visible, relatively superficial practices that allowed people to
distinguish who was inside and who was outside the family of God. What is
worse, the insiders become proud and judgmental toward outsiders. They
practiced what might be called a "boundary oriented approach" to
spiritual life: Just look at people and you will know who are the sheep
and who are the goats. This is pseudo transformation.
SPIRITUAL LIFE
DEFINED BY ITS CENTER
With Jesus it
was not so, Jesus brought a message that spoke to the deepest longings of
the human heart, to become not simply conformed to a religious subculture
but transformed into "new creatures." Instead of focusing on the
boundaries, Jesus focused on the center, the heart of spiritual life. When
asked to identify what the law is about, Jesus' response was simply
"Love God, love people." He named a fundamentally different way
of identifying who are the children of God: "Do they love God, and do
they love the people who mean so much to him?
Jesus'
early followers understood this clearly. The apostle Paul wrote to the
church at Corinth about the significance of having many spiritual
"markers" but lacking the center: "If I speak in the
tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong
or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all
mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith, so as to remove
mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing." John put it even more
bluntly: "Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God, for God is
love."
This is why the
religious leaders of Jesus' day so often fought with him about
circumcision, dietary laws, and the Sabbath. Jesus was not just
disagreeing with them on how to interpret the Law. He was threatening
their very understanding of themselves as the people of God.
BOUNDARY MARKERS
IN OUR DAY
The search for
identity markers did not die out in the first century. The church I grew
up in was a fine church, and I am deeply in its debt, but we also had our
own set of markers there. The senior pastor could have been consumed with
pride or resentment, but as long as his preaching was orthodox and the
church was growing, his job would probably not be in jeopardy. But if some
Sunday morning he had been smoking a cigarette while greeting people after
the service, he would not have been around for the evening service. Why?
No one at the church would have said that smoking a single Camel was a
worse sin than a life consumed by pride and resentment. But for us,
cigarette smoking became an identity marker. It was one of the ways we
were able to tell the sheep from the goats
That is why
the marker held an emotional charge far beyond its theological
significance. For the pastor to smoke a cigarette would have caused a
scandal, not because we were so naive that we thought it an evil thing to
do, but because it would have violated an unspoken boundary marker. It
would have threatened our sense of identity.
Of
course, many beliefs and values will inevitably divide those who choose to
follow Christ from those who don't. Jesus himself said he came not
"to bring peace, but a sword." But what makes something a
boundary marker is its being seized upon by the group as an opportunity to
reinforce a false sense of superiority, fed by the intent to exclude
others.
Religious
boundary markers change from generation to generation. The Christian
college I attended in the late seventies still had in effect a rule
against the performance of jazz music on campus, a rule instituted in the
early twentieth century. Fifty years later, no one was willing to rescind
it for fear of appearing to compromise essential beliefs. The irony is
that students were perfectly free to listen to punk rock or heavy metal--but
Louis Armstrong was off limits.
On Sundays the tennis courts were locked
up, but for some reason the volleyball court was left accessible. As a
tennis player, I always maintained that volleyball was the more worldly of
the two sports, as it was more closely associated with California and was
often played on the beach.
If you give it
much thought, whether your religious background is liberal or
conservative, Protestant or Catholic, you can probably come up with your
own set of identity markers.
A boundary
oriented approach to spirituality focuses on people's position: Are you
inside or outside the group? A great deal of energy is spent clarifying
what counts as a boundary marker.
But Jesus
consistently focused on people's center: Are they oriented and moving
toward the center of spiritual life (love of God and people), or are they
moving away from it? This is why he shocked people by saying that many
religious leaders--who
observed all the recognized boundary markers--were
in fact outside the kingdom of God. They were…increasingly dead to love.
And this is why Jesus could say that "the tax collectors and the
prostitutes" who were a million miles away from the religious
subculture, but who had turned, converted, and oriented themselves toward
God and love, were already in the kingdom.
This was the
great irony of his day: The "righteous" were more damaged by
their righteousness than the sinners were by their sin.
<*{{{><
From,
“The Life You’ve Always Wanted; Spiritual Disciplines For Ordinary
People,” by John Ortberg, published by Zondervan, Grand Rapids Michigan.
Used by permission.
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