Year-end spiritual reflections, part 2: On asceticism and weakness

My first blog of year-end spiritual reflections focused on some key things I have been thinking about related to hospitality and defeatism. Today I want to share a few more key things that God has brought to my mind in the past few months.

On asceticism

I have slowly been reading some chapters from Thomas Merton’s spiritual classic No Man Is An Island. Merton was a Trappist monk (a type of Catholic) and often has a mix of ideas that I find unhelpful along with the truly brilliant and biblical. One of the more helpful chapters I have read in No Man Is An Island is a chapter on asceticism and sacrifice. Asceticism, to say the least, has fallen out of favor in the contemporary world, including evangelical Christianity. We live in a time when people generally find denying our pleasures to be pathological rather than a helpful aspect of character development.

What I find helpful in Merton’s discussion is that he says that asceticism is a way to truly enable us to give ourselves to God. He doesn’t deny the goodness of creation, but focuses on how we relate to creation, taking cues from the way Paul talks in 1 Corinthians 7:31 about enjoying the things of the world, but living as though we had them not. On the flip side, Merton says that many ascetics don’t use the things of the world, but live at though they did use them. That is, they’re so obsessed with the fleshly desire they are avoiding that they haven’t truly given themselves to God.

I see two key applications of these ideas. First, the Christian life needs to be centered on a vision of communion with God, not on the avoidance of certain wrong things or misguided pleasures. There is a place for rules, for telling people what to do and what to avoid. But if we are to truly grow in grace, we need to be motivated by a deep hunger to not just do the right thing, but to know Jesus and be conformed to his image.

Second, amidst much good theological work that has been done on the theme of “theology of culture” and enjoying the good gifts of God’s creation as part of our spirituality, I worry that some of the evangelical subculture is slipping into a complacency with hedonism in the name of spirituality. For example, people can justify an inordinate focus on gourmet coffee, craft beer, the outdoors (my characteristic temptation!), or even the arts in the name of enjoying the good gifts of God’s creation. I’m not inherently against any of those things (especially the outdoors and the arts), but my experience living in countries with higher poverty rates makes me sometimes think we maybe need to takes ourselves and our preferences a little less seriously at times. Maybe the more spiritual thing I could do is drink cheap coffee, abstain from Starbucks, save money by being a teetotaler (no, that’s not inherently legalistic), enjoy the outdoors for my health and pleasure within reason without making it my idol, and enjoy music and art without breaking my budget to do so. I could then give the difference to the church or a Christian agency providing micro-loans for the poor (or get myself out of debt). I don’t say this in judgment of anyone who happens to enjoy any of these things. There are way more factors involved than pure economic reasons—I often go to coffee shops for the social benefit, which I can often justify. This is a prudential issue of character focus, not an area with clearly defined right and wrong rules. I have to look in my heart and see why I do what I do, and leave others’ heart condition to them and God. I just raise the issue because I often see a despising of asceticism and simple living as “legalistic” while most of the world suffers in poverty, and that is something I know I for one need to take seriously.

On weakness

One of the best books I read while part of the Avance mission program in Mexico was the missiologist David Bosch’s A Spirituality of the Road. Bosch looks at key issues in missionary spirituality, with a special emphasis on Paul’s example in 2 Corinthians. For a short sermon at the end of the semester assembly for the Saturday Bible institute in November, I decided to preach on the theme of weakness and power in ministry, looking at 2 Corinthians.

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:7-12, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.”

I find it fascinating that God chooses weak vessels to make known his power. Often in the church we seem to think that we need a “powerful” testimony in order to be used by God. We need God to have done something big and miraculous. Those of us who grew up in the church often struggle with the feeling that we don’t have a testimony, or what we have isn’t quite up to par. Yet I think what Paul is getting at in this passage is that often the most powerful testimony of the death and resurrection of Jesus is not the person who has had all their problems miraculously whisked away—though that can be powerful at times—but the person who stays faithful in the midst of tribulation, carrying around in their body Jesus’ death so that Jesus’ life may be revealed in them.

How often do we look at the Christian life that way? How often do we look at our challenges as a chance to manifest Jesus’ life in the midst of the outward “death” we experience? For that matter, how do we experience our tribulations? If I were to honestly describe my current life as one of being hard pressed, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down, as Paul did in 4:8-9, would I think there was something wrong in my spiritual life? Or would I see that as a natural part of the journey of discipleship? Ultimately, Paul thinks it’s rather normal, especially in the case of those in ministry positions. But he can find hope in the promise of the resurrection: “because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you to himself” (4:14). As we live a life under the cross, we can find hope in our future resurrection. This is what ought to sustain the work of those in ministry. As Paul said elsewhere, capping off his magnificent explanation of Jesus’ resurrection and its significance, “Therefore [in view of the resurrection], my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58).