Holistic Salvation: A Life of Discipline Lent Week 4
March 14, 2010
Intro:
One of the things I love about being a pastor is that as a generalist, I get to experience an incredible variety in jobs, tasks, roles, and activities. Part of the time I am a public speaker, part of the time I am a counsellor, part of the time I am an administrator, part of the time I am a team builder, part of the time I am a boss, part of the time I am a friend on a journey, part of the time I am a researcher, part of the time I am a mediator, and so on and so on and so on… and I am very blessed to be a part of a community that accepts me as a generalist and doesn’t expect me to be excellent at all those areas. If you did, you’d just end up disappointed and I’d end up insane. Now, though I am a generalist, I love specialists and use their services and expertise frequently. However, as I look at our culture we have come to rely almost exclusively on the experts, the specialists, and thus we tend to lose the integration of the whole.
Let me explain with a physical analogy. As I look at the amazing way God has created us, I really believe He made us as an integrated whole. We are a body, mind, emotion, and soul all integrated into one whole person. I firmly believe that any illness in one of those areas is going to have an impact in all the others – it creates a problem for the whole. But we don’t tend to treat it as a problem of the whole, we put it in one box and drill down to the bottom of that and treat just that part; or else we leave it up to the sick person to tackle all the other areas on their own. Let’s take, for example, a medical diagnosis like cancer. Something doesn’t feel right, so we go to our GP (another generalist), who orders some tests on our body and likely hands us off to an oncologist and/or a surgeon and/or whoever else may be in that medical professional care team. And I praise God for all of them, value them highly, and believe they are active participants in God’s grand will for all humanity whether they know it or acknowledge it or not. But my point is that as a society we treat that illness almost entirely as a physical issue, with comparatively very little resources or efforts to address the other parts of our humanity that are deeply impacted. Now, again I do not say that to disparage or ignore the other supports that do exist, like counselling or support groups or music therapy or healing prayer, my point is that those are not really part of the conversation in the oncologists’ office. They might get mention, but they tend not to be part of a holistic healing plan that addresses each person as a whole. Some people are highly motivated and self-directed, and so create their own healing plans for their whole beings – Eileen Spillett is the best example I know of this. She never saw her cancer as just a physical thing, she fought it with her body, mind, spirit, and emotions, and sought out healing in cooperative ways for all those parts, and it was truly an amazing fight. But I see that very much as a rarity, and it was something she had to do on her own – even with some discouragement and disapproval of the physical/medical professionals treating her.
My point is that we tend to live as disparate parts instead of integrated wholes, and we seldom really recognize the interdependence of the parts. If someone breaks a leg trying some really risky ski move, we’d probably see it as a physical problem instead of wondering how to find health in the emotional and spiritual and intellectual areas that push this person to seek thrills. And the result of this fractured approach to life is a compartmentalism, where we put these different parts of our selves into different boxes on different shelves, and then struggle to really live. I especially notice that in our spiritual lives – we don’t tend to live with a fully integrated understanding of our selves as fully human where all these parts are interdependent and balanced.
The Body and the Rest:
Today I want to talk about how the practice of the spiritual disciplines help us to integrate our lives into a whole. I think the biggest place of divorce is between our physical selves, our bodies, and the other areas. We can mix up our minds, feelings, and spirits, lump them all in an “intangibles” box”, and leave them jumbled together. But I see a large gap between our bodies and those intangibles, especially our spiritual life and our bodies. We don’t generally see much of a connection, do we? But Scripture, and the wisdom of our spiritual heritage tell us the opposite. Let’s look first to Scripture:
Rom. 12:1: “1 And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.”
1 Cor 6:15, 19-20: “15Don’t you realize that your bodies are actually parts of Christ?... 19 Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, 20 for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.”
1 Cor. 9:25-27: “25Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. 26Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. 27No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.”
1 Cor 15:42-44: “42 It is the same way with the resurrection of the dead. Our earthly bodies are planted in the ground when we die, but they will be raised to live forever. 43 Our bodies are buried in brokenness, but they will be raised in glory. They are buried in weakness, but they will be raised in strength. 44 They are buried as natural human bodies, but they will be raised as spiritual bodies. For just as there are natural bodies, there are also spiritual bodies.”
Finally, not a specific verse but instead a universal theme: Jesus came in the flesh, and the cross and resurrection were essentially, fundamentally, bodily events. We hone in on the spiritual accomplishments of the cross and empty tomb, but sometimes compartmentalize and disassociate those from the bodily death and the bodily resurrection of Jesus, something Scripture does not do.
So… I’ve been talking for awhile, time for some input from you. Do you agree or disagree thus far – do we tend to divorce our spiritual lives from our physical lives and see little connection/interdependence, how does that compare to this quick and partial list of scriptures and what they teach us about the body, other thoughts…?
Wisdom from our Spiritual Heritage:
I mentioned that both Scripture and the wisdom of our spiritual heritage tell us of a strong interdependence of our bodies and our spirits – of an integration and a wholeness. As evidence, let me put up this list of Spiritual Disciplines we’ve referred to during this Lenten series on A Life of Discipline: Disciplines of Abstinence include: solitude, silence, fasting, frugality, chastity, secrecy, and sacrifice; Disciplines of Engagement include study, worship, celebration, service, prayer, fellowship, confession, and submission. Each of these are ancient, time-honored, and valuable parts of Christian discipleship through the history of the church. What I want you to notice today in this list is how many of these disciplines are physical/bodily in nature. Now of course there is overlap, and some might be difficult to categorize, but take a look and let’s pull out the obvious ones first: solitude is a physical removal of ourselves from being around other people; silence is a physical cessation of speech; fasting is the denial of food; chastity is the denial of sexual pleasure; sacrifice is most often of some tangible/physical thing; study is mostly about the mind but dependent on our body specifically the senses of sight or hearing; worship is generally a physical expression of praise from a spiritual connection (singing being the most obvious example); celebration is generally body-centric (food, laughter, time in the company of others); service is using our hands and feet to do for others; fellowship requires being physically able to interact with others; confession is speaking our sins to another. There are physical elements to the others as well, though perhaps not the primary part of those.
So here, then is the root question: why are all these “spiritual disciplines” so “physical” in character? What do you think?
God Saves The Whole Person:
My answer to that question goes back to my introduction. I believe that when God saves us, He doesn’t just save our souls. God saves the whole person. God redeems all that He made, not just a part. When we decide to live in the Kingdom of God, it has to be with “all our heart and soul and mind and strength”. These “parts” are not separate, but rather interdependent, and we are only really alive when they are acting in harmony with each other and not compartmentalized. The idea of a “liberated spirit” disconnected from the body is a Buddhist concept, not a Christian one – Scripture is clear that even after the death of our physical bodies we will not be disembodied spirits, we will be given a new (perfect) spiritual body.
Furthermore, I think the Spiritual Disciplines have such a strong relationship to our physical bodies because our spirits are housed in, and therefore dependent on, our physical bodies. So the activities (or “disciplines” if I can use that word again) that are essential to our spiritual health require our physical bodies to do something or not do something – even prayer, perhaps the most “internal” of the ones on the list, still requires our bodies to be disposed to prayer, and our minds active in prayer – and in many prayer practices physical posture is vitally important (think kneeling, for example). There is a deep interconnectedness, and these physical/bodily practices feed our spiritual selves, which then breathe life into our entire person.
Conclusion:
So… practically speaking, what do we do with all of this? The past several weeks I’ve been challenging us to put one or more of these spiritual disciplines into practice in our lives each day. I’d like to hear some of your stories about how it is going – if any of you would be willing to share next Sunday please let me know and encourage us with whatever God is doing in you as you practice these things – I think that could be really powerful. In light of what we’ve talked about today, about being whole beings with the parts interdependent and not compartmentalized, here is our homework, which I challenge you to do with a partner: pick one day, and each live Rom. 12:1 out the entire day long. Examine every physical, bodily thing you do and intend to “give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice”. At the end of the day, talk it through with your partner – how did it go, what was it like, how do you see the interdependence of the spirit and the body as a result of this one day. I hypothesize that there could be some very, very interesting things we learn, discover, and can incorporate into our daily life, and over time I really believe that living this kind of integrated, holistic life will lead us much deeper into the life that Jesus came to bring.
