The Problem of Emotionally Unhealthy Spirituality
Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, prt. 1
Wildwind Community Church
October 10, 2010
We all know that some things look great on the surface, but they're a disaster underneath. For example, in Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, the radar was picking up a large formation of planes heading towards Hawaii, and it was, of course, the first wave of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The officer on duty said, "Don't worry about it. It's nothing." President William McKinley in August 1901, a few days before he was assassinated, said to reporters, "I have no enemies. Why should I fear?" And the CEO of a company called Digital Equipments, in 1977 said, "There's no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home." I'm not sure the company exists anymore.
And, of course, sometimes things don't look very good on the surface, but underneath they are really very good. In 1954, a manager of a club told Elvis Presley at one of his first performances in Nashville, Tennessee, "You ain't going nowhere, son. You ought to go back to driving a truck." In Germany, a teacher told a 10-year-old Albert Einstein, "You will not amount to much." And then in 1958, the CBS producer said to Barbara Walters. "With your voice, no one's going to let you broadcast."
So, things are not always as they appear to be and it can be very confusing. During the next 8 weeks we're doing a series called "Emotionally Healthy Spirituality." It's from the book of the same name, which I trust many of you will be reading. The thesis of the book is
"Emotional Health And Contemplative Spirituality Must be Brought Together to have Emotionally Healthy Spirituality." When our spirituality is not emotionally healthy, we are not who we appear to be – there are broken places in us deep beneath the surface of our lives. When our spirituality is emotionally healthy, God has been allowed to transform not just the surface parts of us, but all of us.
So today, we're going to talk about the problem of emotionally unhealthy spirituality. And we’re going to use an iceberg as an illustration, which probably some of you have seen before. It shows how ten percent is visible above the surface of the water. That's what everybody can see in our lives- that's behavioral change. But it also reveals the ninety percent that is below the surface. It is the things deep beneath the surface in our lives, those things that we can't see and that come out when we are under great stress, that’s the 90% that Jesus is out to transform.
Now the stuff we’re going to look at, intellectually, you can understand it quite easily. But it's another thing entirely to actually begin to implement it into your life, where it actually changes the way that you live, the way that you see God, the way that you follow Jesus Christ, and the way that you make decisions on an everyday basis. And so what we're after as a church is to integrate this more deeply into us. It's God's time for us, my friends. I know it. This has been forming in my heart and mind for about three years. I have chosen not to bring it to you until it was right in my heart and in my life and now is the time. And this is not just an eight-week thing. This is really where I’ll be laying out for you my vision for the kind of people, and the kind of church, I believe we need to be. Important changes will be made in our lives and in our church in the coming years that will point back to this season. Count on it. But you just can't read through this and say "Oh yeah, I get it!" It really does require talking about it. It requires working out the kinks. It requires small groups. And that's why a workbook was created for your small groups. It's not just throwing something into your Christian lives like a little icing on the cake. We're talking about a real revolution in the way that you look at God and the way that you follow Christ. And it's so different from the way the world functions. It's even very different from the way the church-at-large functions. I'm well aware of what we are up against because we’re talking about changing habits - unhealthy habits that go back your whole life. And I really believe it's where God's calling us. So today, we are going to talk about emotionally unhealthy spirituality.
Pete Scazzero, the author of Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, says this about emotionally unhealthy spirituality. He says, "I've lived it full force for the first 19 years of my life. I became a Christian at 19, but for the next 17 years, as a Christian, the truth was, the gospel didn't extend very far beneath my own iceberg. I continued to live on the surface. A lot of things were changing, but I was unhealthy. I embraced it. I lived it. And I experienced its destructive effects. And I think it's part of what God used in my own life to begin to show me some things. It's been a very slow process for me to come out of that into some health. And I'm still working on it. By
no means, have I arrived."
Of course Pete isn't the first person to live an emotionally unhealthy life. Let's look at Saul. Saul is probably one of the greatest examples in Scripture of someone whose lack of emotional health and contemplative life brought such destruction to his life. And he was a person with great promise. What a future he had. He started out well, with humble beginnings, but then things didn't go so well. We're going to pick up the story in 1 Samuel chapter 15, beginning at verse 20. In the story, he is given a command by God to muster the armies of Israel, hundreds of thousands of troops, and to go up against the Amalekites, and to wipe them out. [Now I’ll say here that I don’t know the answers to all the questions this passage might bring up. Like some of you, I have some problems with this text and some of the implications of it. And I have some feelings about what some good approaches to this text might be, but we could all get really distracted from a great overall point and get lost in endless questions that could be raised by the text. Try to avoid that, to allow the text to speak to your life.]
The prophet Samuel brings Saul this message from God to go and be obedient and to do this thing. And Saul does go. He musters the armies of Israel, and out he goes on the mission. But he doesn't do it all. He does most of it. In verse 9, it tells us that instead of wiping out all the sheep and cattle, and the king and all of the Amalekites, "Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves and lambs -- everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed."
Now of course, pragmatically speaking, it didn't make sense to lose all those financial resources. Politically, as well, it wasn't a wise thing to do to the Amalekites. You just make more enemies. And so they made a pragmatic decision and just didn't go all the way with the mission. Now Saul went on the mission, just not all the way. He probably felt, "Hey, at least I went! What do you expect?” And then the prophet Samuel shows up. Saul's response to Samuel in verse 13 is, "The Lord bless you. I've carried out the LORD's instructions." I mean as far as he's concerned everything is just fine. But it’s not fine. He hasn’t really listened. He hasn’t really done what was asked of him. He hasn’t really connected with God and plugged in and gotten on the same page. His life is out of order underneath the surface where nobody can see it. For political reasons, perhaps because of fear, perhaps because of greed, or whatever, Saul has not done what was asked of him. But he thinks he has. If you read about King Saul in the Old Testament, you’ll realize that in his whole life, he just never lets God really get in. He never really plugs in and listens. But not only does he not plug in and not listen, but then he fools himself. He denies that he was not listening. He insists he has done what he was supposed to do.
1 Samuel 15:19-22 (MSG)
19 So why did you not obey GOD? Why did you grab all this loot? Why, with GOD's eyes on you all the time, did you brazenly carry out this evil?"
20 Saul defended himself. "What are you talking about? I did obey GOD. I did the job GOD set for me. I brought in King Agag and destroyed the Amalekites under the terms of the holy ban.
21 So the soldiers saved back a few choice sheep and cattle from the holy ban for sacrifice to GOD at Gilgal—what's wrong with that?"
22 Then Samuel said, Do you think all GOD wants are sacrifices— empty rituals just for show? He wants you to listen to him! Plain listening is the thing, not staging a lavish religious production.
And so what I want to do this morning is try to take this apart and give you three basic characteristics of emotionally unhealthy spirituality in Saul. And I want to go after these characteristics, make some applications to us, and then launch us on our journey.
The first thing Saul does as an emotionally unhealthy person here is he says, "No" to reflection and self-awareness. He's just not going down that road. He's praying. Kind of. He's listening. Sort of. He's doing some of God's will. It's like he's going to church. He's doing worship. He's doing the whole thing. But underneath, he's very concerned about the approval of people. In fact, that's a real theme in this text. Even when he repents. He does repent, but when he does, look what he says,
1 Samuel 15:30 (MSG)
30 ...."I have sinned. But don't abandon me! Support me with your presence before the leaders and the people. Come alongside me as I go back to worship GOD."
He wants Samuel to go back with him so he doesn't look so bad. This need or desire for approval is just so deep in him. And he can't see that. He's unaware of his own fears. He's just not in touch. He can even say, I was afraid, but his conduct shows that he doesn't really understand how deeply his fear is dominating his life.
Notice in verse 24 he actually admits it.
1 Samuel 15:24 (MSG)
24 Saul gave in and confessed, "I've sinned. I've trampled roughshod over GOD's Word and your instructions. I cared more about pleasing the people. I let them tell me what to do.
We can refuse to see certain parts of ourselves. Or we can see them, but not understand them on any deep level.
Not only is Saul fearful, but he is incredibly envious of David, who is to become the next king. He tries killing him over and over again. His jealousy of David just consumes him. He's crazy and full of anger. It's repressed anger. He's envious and blaming, and he gets explosive and tries to commit murder again and again, but the whole time he’s totally unaware of all the stuff going on inside of him, and he's just acting it out. His jealousy and envy get to a point where he can't even think or see straight. In the middle of all this, he continues to believe he's doing God's will. That's the killer! And if you're in a small group with him, he's probably leading the small group, and he thinks he's doing wonderfully. But he's shallow. His spirituality is very shallow. And he's really not paying attention to God. You might say he goes to church, but he truly wants the approval of people and he's making decisions out of fear, and he's got a lot of jealousy and envy inside of him.
Have you ever seen this type of behavior? Have you ever found yourself getting jealous of somebody at work or at school? You see them prospering and doing great and it starts to eat away at you. And, you know, rather than get alone with God and say, "God, I'm really jealous! LORD, I bring you this jealousy and hatred of this person that I can't stand. Help me LORD to actually rejoice that someone else does well," instead of bringing that to God and letting God be there with you, you just push it away. You end up acting all sweet and nice. When you see that person at the coffee shop, you act very sweet, like nothing’s wrong, like everything is great. You haven't brought it to God or been reflective about it.
So maybe you’re at church singing away in worship, going to small group and making your prayer requests, but inside you are mad at God for something, or fearful about something, But you're not going to admit it, to God or to yourself.
Parents, when we raise our kids, we are so often pushing and driving our children out of fear – fear that they won’t love us, won’t respect us, won’t grow up properly, won’t stay in the church. We often make decisions at work and in our romantic relationships that are based on fear, and not wisdom or truth or God’s love for us.
Or maybe you know what it's like to be in conflict with people and know that you need to say some hard things, but it is out of fear that you don't engage them because you don't want to risk them not liking you. And so you shrink back and you don't tell the whole truth. And sometimes, we do hear God's will; we kind of know it intuitively, but it's too emotionally painful to go down that road. It requires too much of this reflection and self-awareness stuff. So what happens is we end up living one reality above the surface, and another reality underneath the surface that
just doesn't correspond with what others see.
Staying in touch with God -- and staying in touch with yourself -- requires silence. It requires solitude. And it's not just paying attention to what's going on in life around you, but it's actually looking at the motives inside. You need to ask yourself, "Why am I doing what I'm doing? What
are my feelings about what's going on? And what are my thoughts on the inside?" And it's about wrestling with these things. You see, you can't be in touch with God if you're not in touch with yourself. And Saul is not in touch with himself. And you are not in reality if you're not in touch with what's going on inside of you.
And because of a lot of bad theology, many of us are not in touch with what's going on inside of us. We just keep ourselves busy and try not to think about this stuff. You see, I need silence and solitude to be in touch with me. To know what I'm thinking and feeling. It takes silence and solitude to tame the monsters of our false selves. It takes that silence and solitude to draw us out, because the pressure of society, our culture and our past is so great to conform us to something that's not true to us; to live superficially and conform to other people's expectations. So instead of really looking at this stuff, we just say, “That’s how I roll and people are gonna have to deal with it.” I have a better idea. How about WE deal with what’s inside of us, rather than just expecting everybody else to deal with it?
It takes a tremendous amount of silence and solitude to be reflective and aware. Unlike David (who wrote most of the Psalms) you will never see Saul spending time in silence and solitude. Unlike David, you’ll never see Saul pouring out his conflicted inner self. David has the same conflicts as all of us. The same conflicts as Saul. The difference was that David was aware of them and he poured them out before God. And he prayed and he wrestled with them. Saul was
unaware. He's unreflective and he just keeps moving along for God. And as a result he makes a decision to just go with the flow. And we can make that decision too, can't we, so easily, because most of the people in our culture (and in the church) aren't reflective and self-aware. We can so easily say, "You know what, I'm just going to live my life on autopilot and just move along and keep myself busy."
The second thing Saul does is he says "No" to cultivating his relationship with God. He doesn't spend the energy and take the time to cultivate it. He has a public life in God, but you never see any evidence of a private life in God. He’s just on autopilot. Let’s look at verse 22 when God speaks to him. These are poignant, sharp words, not just in Saul's life, or in the Old Testament, but for us today.
1 Samuel 15:22 (MSG)
22 Then Samuel said, Do you think all GOD wants are sacrifices— empty rituals just for show? He wants you to listen to him! Plain listening is the thing, not staging a lavish religious production.
Now the Hebrew word for “obey” and the Hebrew word for “listen” – they’re the same word! Obedience is evidence of having listened. And Saul doesn’t listen.
You are free to listen or not listen as well. I mean you could sit here this morning and think, "That's a clever message. Where did he get those opening illustrations? That gave me some food for thought." You know maybe you read books and go to church, but the reality is you're spending your time evaluating, not listening. Is the sermon clever or boring or interesting or could I share this with a friend. You are focusing on other things rather than cultivating a personal relationship with God, and asking, "What's God saying to me?"
It's incredibly easy to have an intellectual Christianity, because Christianity has focused for so long on beliefs. Beliefs happen in your head. I might be learning. I might be “getting something out of it.” But it's really not experiential. It's really not in the heart. And, the difference between David and Saul was David was always asking the question, “What is God saying to me?" It was very personal. Saul just couldn't get that personal. It took too much energy.
I did that for a very long time – pursued God mostly in my head. I was letting God come in from the outside. I was listening to Scripture and other people and prophetic words, and all. But what changed for me is that I moved into emotionally healthy spirituality as I began to realize that God is inside of me, and I began to say, "How do I feel – in this moment - about what's going on? How is God coming or not coming to me through this thing that I’m hearing or experiencing?” Rather than saying, “I disagree with this part of the sermon, Mr. Preacher, and I’m angry with you for preaching it,” I began to realize that the anger is exactly what I need to listen to – what I need to allow to lead me to where God is waiting for me to find truth – not necessarily truth about whether the sermon is right or wrong, but truth about myself, about my anger or fear, truth about who I am. On that note, when I preach things you don’t agree with, things that may sometimes in fact be wrong, you can rest assured that God will deal with me about that – that’s my stuff. Your stuff is how you react, how you feel, how you hear or don’t hear what is being said, or how you interpret what is going on at work, or what that person intended to say, etc. etc. Your emotions and reactions – they don’t belong to other people. They’re not caused by other people. They are yours and you have to own them and bring God into them, not blame other people and circumstances for them. If you don’t, God is not getting below the surface 10% in your life.
Part of what we're talking about in these next eight weeks is taking responsibility for your life in God and not blaming. You'll notice Saul's a big blamer, isn't he? He's blaming a lot of people for why he's messing up. But nobody can cultivate your life in God except YOU. We have small groups; we have a church and lots of things going on around us, but it's your responsibility, and that will be a big theme for us, and really always has been. Contemplation is about taking responsibility, and clearing space out in your life, so you can go deep. It's about developing the interior space of your being. It's about experiencing the love of God that we normally just believe and talk about.
Thirdly, Saul just doesn't say 'no' to reflection and awareness. He doesn't just say 'no' to developing his personal relationship with God. He says 'no' to being broken through setbacks and difficulties. Setbacks, trials, difficulties, and tests come to every one of us. There are no exceptions. But Saul refuses to be broken by it. He just gets up and fights again. He'll come to the altar and cry, but he's not broken by anything. But his trials come. In chapter 13 we see the army of the Philistines are about to wipe out Saul and his army, and they're hanging by a thread. And God says He's going to show up the seventh day. And it's the seventh day and God's not showing up. He's in this test of having to wait. You know what it's like. We all know what it's like to wait. Testing and waiting breaks your self-sufficiency. And Saul just says, "I can't take it." And he takes things into his own hands. Then, back in chapter 15, he feels the pressure of his soldiers to do something. Let's keep the wealth, and give it back to God, of course. It's a trial for him to resist that, and he just doesn't do it. But, you see it's only through your hurts and your setbacks and your sufferings that you will learn humility. There is no other way to learn brokenness and humility except through trials and difficulties. "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Those are the first words out of the mouth of Jesus in the New Testament. Saul does not embrace poverty of spirit. He does not want to be that dependent, hanging on God. But you cannot have God without poverty of spirit. You can have yourself, you can have religion, but you cannot have God. We forget what Hebrews 5:8 says about the life of Jesus, that
Hebrews 5:8 (MSG)
8 Though he was God's Son, he learned trusting-obedience by what he suffered, just as we do.
Just as we do. As it was for Jesus, so it will be for you. Do you think that you can learn or I can learn brokenness and obedience any other way? And Saul, when trials come in his life, he just throws them out. God's trying to humble Saul and break him so that he could become something great. And Saul was just trying to be something great. Saul wanted to be, without becoming.
You see, God wants to take the Saul out of us. There's a Saul in every one of us. And God wants to rip it out of us. Your self-will and stubbornness has to be ripped out. And so yes, maybe you've been betrayed. Maybe you've been misunderstood. Maybe you have had to wait and you're still waiting. Maybe you're in the middle of an incredible setback and difficulty, and people that you love don't love you back. That is how you are stripped of your attachments to the world and learn to trust God – that is, if you are willing to be there, not to take things into your own hands, not to run to power and mindless action. There is nothing like difficulties and trials and suffering to destroy our illusions; about ourselves, about others, about life. It gets us into reality.
Proverbs 20:9 (NIV)
9 Who can say, "I have kept my heart pure; I am clean and without sin"?
You know who would say this? Saul would. “I did what you said, God. I’m good, right?” A broken person would say “not me!”
Emotionally healthy spirituality, instead of saying 'no' to reflection and self-awareness, says 'yes.' Even though you maybe weren’t raised that way, even though church tradition is not like that, and no one around you is necessarily doing this, you’re still choosing to be self-aware and reflective before God. Emotionally Healthy Spirituality says 'yes' to cultivating my personal relationship with God even though nobody around me is encouraging me. EHS says ‘yes' to being broken through setbacks and difficulties.
And so, for the next seven weeks, we're going to talk about emotional health and contemplative spirituality. To come out of being Saul is a life. It's not a moment, it's a path. And that's why I'm going to beg you; I plead with you to do something with this material during the week. Get in small groups and use these little workbooks. Your small groups will hit the same themes. You need to hit these themes over and over again. In fact, I'm going to ask you to read chapter 4 in the book before you even show up for church next week, which is "Know Yourself That You May Know God." Read it. Let it get in you. I mean just let it wash over you and meditate on the appropriate scriptures day and night. Again, my dream is that we would get this deeply into our lives. And so I'm inviting you into a process.
I’m asking you to say, "I'm going to enter into this process for the next two months." It's not the whole Christian life, but it's a critical piece. That's what God is bringing to us right now and we want to receive it. So, as we close here, we are going to look at a list of the ten top symptoms of emotionally unhealthy spirituality.
The first is using God to run from God. And that's clearly what Saul does. Your prayers are basically my will be done, not God's. You get just enough God in your life to bless your plans, stamp your own agenda, and show that you are right and others are wrong. Using God to run from God.
Second, ignoring the emotions of anger, sadness, and fear. Not looking at how God may be coming to me through those emotions.
Third, dying to the wrong things. Maybe you're dying to the healthy pleasures of life that God's giving you, rather than to the unhealthy things that have to go.
Fourth, denying the past's impact on the present. You have not looked at some of the issues of your family of origin and your culture and how it impacts you today.
The fifth symptom is dividing your life into secular and sacred compartments. You have a spiritual life right now in church, and Sunday mornings, and maybe in the mornings when you have a quiet time, but you don't see all of life as God’s. You have work and recreation in another compartment.
Sixth, you're doing for God instead of being with God. Again, it's not developing your personal relationship with God.
Seventh, spiritualizing away conflict, refusing to deal honestly with it.
Eighth, covering over brokenness, weakness, and failure.
Ninth, you live without limits, instead of letting God stop you and saying no.
Tenth, you judge the spiritual journeys of other people.
If I went down this list, I could probably pick almost all of these in Saul's life at different times. So be honest. Do you see any of this in yourself? If not, you are Saul-ing – plain and simple. Some of this exists in all of us. Over the next few weeks, we’re gonna look closely enough at ourselves to find it and let God get in there. I want Wildwind to be not a 10% church, but a 100% church – letting God tell us the truth, getting all the way down, and letting the healing come which is sure to come anytime God is invited into something.
