My first analogy regarding contemplative prayer involved alcohol, and I still think it's fitting in a number of ways.
+ Some people enjoy alcohol well. That doesn't make it harmless.
+ Some people experience a form of relief while drunk. That doesn't make it healthy.
+ Some people cannot control their drinking once they've started. They must be supported in staying clear of their personal enemy.
Even the scripture is ambiguous about wine:
For:
Prov 31:6
Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts.
Against:
Prov 20:1
Wine [is] a mocker, strong drink [is] raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.
Alcohol is a difficult subject, because it's potent. Wine does stuff. If you tell a person who profits from wine to forego the benefits, expect resistance and appropriate resistance at that. If you tell someone who is overcoming the damages of wine to taste its benefits, expect even stronger and equally appropriate resistance.
Ah, but what about the person who is of legal age, and has never tasted alcohol? (That's a fictional character, I know, but this is analogy not history.)
Here you have the chance to teach straightforwardly about the risks and benefits of alcohol. You can teach how alcohol eases social tension, and tends to lighten the mood of a group gathering. You can teach not to drink alone, but with upright people you know and trust. You can teach that some people simply need to avoid the stuff.
Meditation is potent too.
===
When I was a teen, I went through some stuff that was too heavy for me. I think most people would have taken it in stride, but it knocked me out. My emotions were both exhausted and hyper; my mind was overtaxed, out of answers, and exploring down the wrong roads; my will was taken out of the game. What I did to survive was an anti-contemplative prayer, and what I found has stood in me good stead over all the years. I found my spirit.
When my soul was beyond the pale, it was very easy to find my spirit. It was the thing not moving. It was like my soul was wind, rain, and sea all thrown into a horrible hurricane. The rock unmoved in the middle of it was my spirit.
In the middle of the hurricane, I found a profound, healing, and desperately needed silence. On nights I had forgotten what it used to feel like to want to live, I would fight through to that silence again and remember. In the height of the blow, I would suddenly find my soul warm and dry, filled with joy, and truly happy to be alive. When I woke up the next morning, the silence would be gone but I remembered enough of it to know it was real and that God was still true and good. I could fight through another day on the energy of that night's prayer, that night's meditation.
There's nothing "ascended" or "second blessing-ish" or special about what I've described. Every Christian has touched something like this (though not every Christian is as emotionally delicate as I am to take it quite as hard as I do.) What's more, any New Age afficianado will describe the same experience. The difference is how they get there and how the Christian gets there.
The New Ager, and the deceived Christian contemplative, get there by emptying themselves of all thought through the use of a mind-stilling technique. In so doing, they place themselves in a passively receptive state and place themselves in spiritual danger. The Christian fills himself or herself with Truth of God.
Look at any of David's Psalms of desperation for an example. Ps 62 is a good one. See how David does nothing to empty his mind? Instead, he tells the Truth about God, then he tells the truth about his enemies, then he tells the Truth about how the two compare. David's soul is in great unease, or he'd not have had to write that song. But David repeated the Truth to himself. In verses 2, 6, and 7 he reminds Himself his God is a Rock, and by the end of the song the little rock/island within himself is answering in full song to the continent-sized Rock that saves him. David declares that mercy belongs to God alone, and He will not withhold it.
Christian meditation has always been, is, and will always be the filling of one's heart with the Truth, whether comforting, challenging, daring, scaring, or drawing. And when the Christian's heart is filled with the Truth of God, there will be silence. We actively tell God and ourselves the Truth about Him, and the storm within us is becalmed to a blessed silence.
The counterfeit of true meditation anaesthetizes our minds to achieve a cheap silence, then backfills us with a lying feeling of expansive oneness with [fill in the blank - God, the universe, the All, the Cosmic Christ, etc.]. They tell us that we cannot know God, and that to pretend we can allows pride to block our true approach to God. They tell us that meditation focusing on truths "about" God is the best we can achieve, and that such meditation cripples us; that our minds cannot apprehend God, our wills cannot serve Him, our emotions cannot appreciate Him. And so they say we must be silent, and let His Spirit move in our silence.
They lie.
Read Psalm 62 again. They promise to reach God in a higher way than David himself used, and higher than God chose to reveal in His word. We can know God. You can know God - as you, just as you are, just as David was. You don't need to be emptied to know God. You need to be filled with His Spirit of Truth, and nowhere does scripture talk about anything human being emptied out of anyone to make that happen.
Would you like to try an experiment in Christian meditation? Would you like to test to see whether Christian meditation beats contemplative prayer?
Do this.
+ Go somewhere that you won't be disturbed for a while. This is "enter into your closet" type prayer.
+ Place firmly in your mind the biggest problem in your life right now. Fix it there, and don't let it go.
+ Ask that the Holy Spirit would reveal to you the Truth about God as it relates to this problem.
+ Tell Jesus the gospel as it applies to that problem. Pray the gospel to the ear of the Man Who lived it for you. Tell Him everything He did.
Nothing fancy here. No mind tricks. Just tell Jesus your life story from His point of view, leading right up to this moment. Start at the beginning, don't leave anything out the Spirit brings to your mind, and if a moment of trust and appreciation comes praise Him for what you see.
Some examples:
+ Just before Genesis 1, God knew you would have this problem, and He loved you for caring about it.
+ Just before Genesis 1, God declared that Jesus would pay the price necessary to allow God to embrace you as a daughter or son, and let Him handle this problem.
+ Just before Genesis 1, God knew exactly how beautiful you would be after He led you through that valley of the shadow of death, and after this problem refined your character such that it would look like Him.
+ He looked into Adam's and Eve's eyes, and He knew you were coming. He loved all humanity in loving them, and in killing the first lamb to cover their nakedness, He was proving that He'd not forget you when your time came.
+ He called Abraham so He could bless Abraham's Seed - you.
+ Jesus came to Earth, and He endured what you are enduring, so He could comfort you as a Friend. Instead of telling the starving man to wait, dinner would be along soon, He joined us in our suffering and starved right alongside His brothers and sisters until we could all sit down to the feast together.
And get personal.
+ Tell Him what He must have been feeling when He first touched your heart to draw you to Himself.
+ Tell Him how deeply He thrilled the day you turned to Him for life, and repented of your dead life before.
+ Tell Him about some of the little moments that got you from that day to this, and how careful He must have been of you all along.
And finally, tell Him that you don't know how He will overcome this problem, but ...
[You fill in the blank.]
Showing posts with label Universal Prayer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Universal Prayer. Show all posts
25 November, 2007
23 November, 2007
Anatomy of an Apostasy
I met Jeanine (pseudonym) in 1989 when we all decided to move to the same neighborhood and start a home church together. She lived two blocks away, and my wife and I both loved her. Most everyone did.
She was one of those very positive people, and one of the people who was always building, not destroying. She added something to every meeting, and did a lot of the behind the scenes work that so often gets forgotten. As one of the oldest people in the church, and oldest in the Lord, she was pretty highly respected and did a fine job of living up to those expectations. Mostly, she was just a lot of fun. She knew how to enjoy wine, people, and laughter and her husband was brilliant to boot.
I still miss Jeanine.
She was predisposed toward ecstatic experience. She dripped of life and imagination, so for her to experience everything to the full was only natural. She had already progressed a good way down the path to successful contemplative prayer (I'm tired of typing this, so I will call it ConPrayer for the rest of this post) before she ever joined us. Under the tutelage of our leader, she took to it like a fish to water. She was a trailblazer all the way.
Of the thirty or so of us, there were 5-10 who really got it, 5-10 who were doing something other than ConPrayer but thought they were getting it (I was one of these), 5-10 who mostly slept, and a handful whom we never quite figured out why they were there at all. (Some things never change.) Jeanine was in the first group.
I suspect initial success at ConPrayer is personality-driven, though its practitioners assure everyone that anyone can do it. Either way, Jeanine shared loads of her experiences and we all got to know her experience of ConPrayer pretty well. Some of the group resented her openness, feeling that she was faking or at the least grandstanding, but I was fully convinced that she was experiencing the things she described, and that her personality would have grated on her detractors in any case.
In the seventh year of our home church experience, everything started falling apart at the foundations. The church was in dire crisis, and the pressure it put on everyone individually and as families was incredible. I think about half the marriages in that church have already ended in divorce, and hers was the first. My marriage was broken during that period as well, though we held on for another six years.
Handling her divorce was hard for everyone: her, her husband, and all of us who had to decide how to act and react. She and her husband were both hurt in the proceedings, but for better or worse we muddled through. The decision was made that her husband should leave the church, and he did. That left Jeanine with the solace of fellowship, and we hoped it would be for the best.
One day we learned she was in love again.
Her new man was a little bit older than her, an acknowledged pot smoker, and into Native American spirituality. He was the prototypical old hippie who had not decided to adjust. He was a good guy, but semi-unemployed (which is a deal-breaker with me - don't bring no unemployed man home to me and hope for a blessing.) He was not even remotely Christian. That should have been a deal-breaker to Jeanine. It was not.
Jeanine had changed over the years.
She had discovered the intoxicating glory of ConPrayer, and discovered that it worked no matter whether it was Jesus or "the God force within us all" that she invoked. She was right. She found that as she threw off the fetters of narrow Christian law, her prayer times were only better, not worse. She found freedom, love, and acceptance by everyone except the Christians who had rejected her divorce in the first place, and now rejected her new live-in arrangements.
I talked to her a few months ago. It seems she has finally found a stable man, and settled into a productive life. I'm happy for her, of course. And she keeps praying that I will continue to follow my interpretation of God. She has outgrown my interpretation, of course, but she understands and accepts me the way I am. I can only return the favor to a degree. I accept and love her still, but cannot accept the decision that sets her in opposition to Jesus Christ.
I still hope some day to embrace my sister again. May the Lord so bless us.
She was one of those very positive people, and one of the people who was always building, not destroying. She added something to every meeting, and did a lot of the behind the scenes work that so often gets forgotten. As one of the oldest people in the church, and oldest in the Lord, she was pretty highly respected and did a fine job of living up to those expectations. Mostly, she was just a lot of fun. She knew how to enjoy wine, people, and laughter and her husband was brilliant to boot.
I still miss Jeanine.
She was predisposed toward ecstatic experience. She dripped of life and imagination, so for her to experience everything to the full was only natural. She had already progressed a good way down the path to successful contemplative prayer (I'm tired of typing this, so I will call it ConPrayer for the rest of this post) before she ever joined us. Under the tutelage of our leader, she took to it like a fish to water. She was a trailblazer all the way.
Of the thirty or so of us, there were 5-10 who really got it, 5-10 who were doing something other than ConPrayer but thought they were getting it (I was one of these), 5-10 who mostly slept, and a handful whom we never quite figured out why they were there at all. (Some things never change.) Jeanine was in the first group.
I suspect initial success at ConPrayer is personality-driven, though its practitioners assure everyone that anyone can do it. Either way, Jeanine shared loads of her experiences and we all got to know her experience of ConPrayer pretty well. Some of the group resented her openness, feeling that she was faking or at the least grandstanding, but I was fully convinced that she was experiencing the things she described, and that her personality would have grated on her detractors in any case.
In the seventh year of our home church experience, everything started falling apart at the foundations. The church was in dire crisis, and the pressure it put on everyone individually and as families was incredible. I think about half the marriages in that church have already ended in divorce, and hers was the first. My marriage was broken during that period as well, though we held on for another six years.
Handling her divorce was hard for everyone: her, her husband, and all of us who had to decide how to act and react. She and her husband were both hurt in the proceedings, but for better or worse we muddled through. The decision was made that her husband should leave the church, and he did. That left Jeanine with the solace of fellowship, and we hoped it would be for the best.
One day we learned she was in love again.
Her new man was a little bit older than her, an acknowledged pot smoker, and into Native American spirituality. He was the prototypical old hippie who had not decided to adjust. He was a good guy, but semi-unemployed (which is a deal-breaker with me - don't bring no unemployed man home to me and hope for a blessing.) He was not even remotely Christian. That should have been a deal-breaker to Jeanine. It was not.
Jeanine had changed over the years.
She had discovered the intoxicating glory of ConPrayer, and discovered that it worked no matter whether it was Jesus or "the God force within us all" that she invoked. She was right. She found that as she threw off the fetters of narrow Christian law, her prayer times were only better, not worse. She found freedom, love, and acceptance by everyone except the Christians who had rejected her divorce in the first place, and now rejected her new live-in arrangements.
I talked to her a few months ago. It seems she has finally found a stable man, and settled into a productive life. I'm happy for her, of course. And she keeps praying that I will continue to follow my interpretation of God. She has outgrown my interpretation, of course, but she understands and accepts me the way I am. I can only return the favor to a degree. I accept and love her still, but cannot accept the decision that sets her in opposition to Jesus Christ.
I still hope some day to embrace my sister again. May the Lord so bless us.
22 November, 2007
Meditation: The False
If some other religion does great paintings, I'll not reject paint brushes. So why would I reject meditation? If a Buddhist experiences something spiritual through meditation, why would I not meditate in some Christian way? Will I really allow my relationship to God to be defined as merely different from everyone else's?
No. Of course not.
Merton's affinity for Buddhism and Sufi-ism is still significant. If a man says he's bringing back something anciently Christian and lost, but is actually bringing in something foreign to Christianity, he loses credibility. And since meditation is being widely promoted as the bridge between West and East, between Christianity and everything else, then such doubts jump to the forefront.
Still, that's all smoke and mirrors if there's nothing wrong with meditation in and of itself.
Briefly stated, the difference between healthy and dangerous meditation is this:
+ Meditation that brings about a state of ready quietness before the Lord is a beautiful thing
- Meditation that induces a state of passivity makes one vulnerable to demonic influence.
Saying the word, "demonic," opens up a huge field of discussion that has never been part of this blog before. So, let me lay a couple foundational thoughts about demons.
+ Demons exist.
+ They are evil. That is to say that they want their way, and don't hesitate to cause harm to get it.
+ They are capable of introducing imaginations, lies, accusations, temptations, feelings and thoughts to humans.
+ Their methods work best with people who passively admit their lies.
+ They want to counterfeit the church of Christ on Earth.
Alongside the reality of the demonic, observe the message of Buddhism: All suffering is caused by craving, therefore cease to crave. The four conditions of śīla are chastity, calmness, quiet, and extinguishment, i.e. no longer being susceptible to perturbation by the passions.
Christians are fans of one type of chastity, of course, but total chastity is really just another incarnation of passivity. The last three elements of that list are explicit shades of passivity. There is a time for calmness and quietness, but there is also a time for aggression and volume. And nowhere in all of scripture will you find extinguishment of normal passions advocated. Buddhism is a beautiful collection of insights calculated to open humanity to demonic enslavement.
1 John 5:19
We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.
And the Christian's way of encountering this situation is passionate:
2 Cor 10:3-5
For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare [are] not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;
Innocent people by the billions have been trained for millenia to paralyze their own minds, emotions, and wills, while Jesus taught His followers to use them to their full abilities. Buddhism is not "another path to God," but to subjection under the ruler of this world. Buddhism is not a beautiful path from which we should learn, but a deception against which the kingdom of God must make all-out war.
We are slitting our own throats when we celebrate the entrance of these doctrines into His church.
Transcendental Meditation works. If you do the things TM's advocates teach, you will experience the things they promise. Your consciousness will expand. You will feel an amazing connectedness to the universe and to God. You will feel energy coursing up and down your body. And you will have to decide whether phenomena define truth.
1 John 4:1
Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that [spirit] of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.
The truth of a thing is found in its relationship to Christ, and nothing else. Lying wonders are wonders still. The wonderfulness of a thing has nothing to do with whether it is true.
Meditation is a simple technique for silencing the mind. Focusing on the sound of a single syllable each time the mind activates will lull it into passivity. This is a simple, biological fact and it is measurable by the change in brainwave patterns of experienced meditators (slowing of beta waves, increase of alpha waves and possibly increases in theta and delta waves with experience.) The single syllable chosen doesn't make any more difference than whether Dumbo held the magic feather. Whether the mantra is "om" or "Lord", the effect is precisely the same. The mind is taught to descend into passivity.
Merton's teaching was that this state allows the spirit to open into God. This mind expansion is universally acknowledged to be a very spiritually receptive state.
But if this is the way to God, then why is there no example of God having required passivity of anyone in scripture? Moses was not asked to empty his mind to receive the word of God. Abraham was not asked to empty his mind to receive God's promise. Gideon was not asked to empty his mind to receive assurance of God's purpose. David was not asked to empty his mind to show his heart after God. Deborah and Jael did not empty their minds before delivering the people from God's enemy. Elijah did not receive power by emptying his mind. Even Isaiah in the very throne room of God was not silent, but spoke repeatedly and so pleased God. There is no story of one of God's chosen people being instructed to empty themselves to be filled with God.
That is for good reason.
God made us as we are, and when He saw Adam He blessed us and said we were good. Had He wanted us to be without will, mind or emotion, He would have created us so. God wants us to grow into the full stature of redeemed humanity, employing every talent with which He endowed us. Our passions are to burn hot toward Him and toward our neighbor in love, not to be lulled into silence.
God came to Earth blazing with tears, mercy and anger. When we are most purely living out His purpose, we will do the same. We will weep with those sin has crushed. We will forgive those who violate us. We will wage war to free those whom God has called.
The call to passivity comes from the one against whom we fight. The call to mind-emptying prayer comes from the one who would deceive us. The call to will-quenching prayer comes from the one who would enslave us. The call to passion-cooling prayer comes from the one who would displace love with comfort.
There is a way to quietness before God, and a tremendous value in going there, but the path of passivity is a false trail.
Deut 13:1-5
If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them; Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the LORD your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Ye shall walk after the LORD your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him. And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn [you] away from the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, to thrust thee out of the way which the LORD thy God commanded thee to walk in. So shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee.
No. Of course not.
Merton's affinity for Buddhism and Sufi-ism is still significant. If a man says he's bringing back something anciently Christian and lost, but is actually bringing in something foreign to Christianity, he loses credibility. And since meditation is being widely promoted as the bridge between West and East, between Christianity and everything else, then such doubts jump to the forefront.
Still, that's all smoke and mirrors if there's nothing wrong with meditation in and of itself.
Briefly stated, the difference between healthy and dangerous meditation is this:
+ Meditation that brings about a state of ready quietness before the Lord is a beautiful thing
- Meditation that induces a state of passivity makes one vulnerable to demonic influence.
Saying the word, "demonic," opens up a huge field of discussion that has never been part of this blog before. So, let me lay a couple foundational thoughts about demons.
+ Demons exist.
+ They are evil. That is to say that they want their way, and don't hesitate to cause harm to get it.
+ They are capable of introducing imaginations, lies, accusations, temptations, feelings and thoughts to humans.
+ Their methods work best with people who passively admit their lies.
+ They want to counterfeit the church of Christ on Earth.
Alongside the reality of the demonic, observe the message of Buddhism: All suffering is caused by craving, therefore cease to crave. The four conditions of śīla are chastity, calmness, quiet, and extinguishment, i.e. no longer being susceptible to perturbation by the passions.
Christians are fans of one type of chastity, of course, but total chastity is really just another incarnation of passivity. The last three elements of that list are explicit shades of passivity. There is a time for calmness and quietness, but there is also a time for aggression and volume. And nowhere in all of scripture will you find extinguishment of normal passions advocated. Buddhism is a beautiful collection of insights calculated to open humanity to demonic enslavement.
1 John 5:19
We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.
And the Christian's way of encountering this situation is passionate:
2 Cor 10:3-5
For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare [are] not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;
Innocent people by the billions have been trained for millenia to paralyze their own minds, emotions, and wills, while Jesus taught His followers to use them to their full abilities. Buddhism is not "another path to God," but to subjection under the ruler of this world. Buddhism is not a beautiful path from which we should learn, but a deception against which the kingdom of God must make all-out war.
We are slitting our own throats when we celebrate the entrance of these doctrines into His church.
Transcendental Meditation works. If you do the things TM's advocates teach, you will experience the things they promise. Your consciousness will expand. You will feel an amazing connectedness to the universe and to God. You will feel energy coursing up and down your body. And you will have to decide whether phenomena define truth.
1 John 4:1
Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that [spirit] of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.
The truth of a thing is found in its relationship to Christ, and nothing else. Lying wonders are wonders still. The wonderfulness of a thing has nothing to do with whether it is true.
Meditation is a simple technique for silencing the mind. Focusing on the sound of a single syllable each time the mind activates will lull it into passivity. This is a simple, biological fact and it is measurable by the change in brainwave patterns of experienced meditators (slowing of beta waves, increase of alpha waves and possibly increases in theta and delta waves with experience.) The single syllable chosen doesn't make any more difference than whether Dumbo held the magic feather. Whether the mantra is "om" or "Lord", the effect is precisely the same. The mind is taught to descend into passivity.
Merton's teaching was that this state allows the spirit to open into God. This mind expansion is universally acknowledged to be a very spiritually receptive state.
But if this is the way to God, then why is there no example of God having required passivity of anyone in scripture? Moses was not asked to empty his mind to receive the word of God. Abraham was not asked to empty his mind to receive God's promise. Gideon was not asked to empty his mind to receive assurance of God's purpose. David was not asked to empty his mind to show his heart after God. Deborah and Jael did not empty their minds before delivering the people from God's enemy. Elijah did not receive power by emptying his mind. Even Isaiah in the very throne room of God was not silent, but spoke repeatedly and so pleased God. There is no story of one of God's chosen people being instructed to empty themselves to be filled with God.
That is for good reason.
God made us as we are, and when He saw Adam He blessed us and said we were good. Had He wanted us to be without will, mind or emotion, He would have created us so. God wants us to grow into the full stature of redeemed humanity, employing every talent with which He endowed us. Our passions are to burn hot toward Him and toward our neighbor in love, not to be lulled into silence.
God came to Earth blazing with tears, mercy and anger. When we are most purely living out His purpose, we will do the same. We will weep with those sin has crushed. We will forgive those who violate us. We will wage war to free those whom God has called.
The call to passivity comes from the one against whom we fight. The call to mind-emptying prayer comes from the one who would deceive us. The call to will-quenching prayer comes from the one who would enslave us. The call to passion-cooling prayer comes from the one who would displace love with comfort.
There is a way to quietness before God, and a tremendous value in going there, but the path of passivity is a false trail.
Deut 13:1-5
If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them; Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the LORD your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Ye shall walk after the LORD your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him. And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn [you] away from the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, to thrust thee out of the way which the LORD thy God commanded thee to walk in. So shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee.
20 November, 2007
Contemplative Error
Thanks for the comments about prayer by silencing the mind. I wanted to know whether anyone was drawing their primary sustenance from such silence before I started writing about it.
I lived in a group that practiced silence increasingly for 10 years. In year 2 I wrote a strongly questioning letter on the subject to our fearless leader. By year 8 I was completely done with it, and wrote an even stronger letter. Silly boy that I was, I thought the group was running afield of his wishes. It turned out I was the black sheep of the family, as his reaction to my letter proved beyond question.
We live and learn.
Over the years I heard many members of our group call out Thomas Merton as the deepest writer they'd ever read (even more so than our leader they'd say - if the doors were shut. :-) So, I cracked his, "Seeds of Contemplation." I almost always finish a book when I start it, but this book was too wrong to spend that much time. I made it two thirds of the way through. So, I will be commenting on a book which I did not finish, and which begins with the admonition not to judge it before reading the whole thing.
Since giving up on the book, I have read a good bit of the negative press about contemplative prayer and agree with a large swath of it, but I reserve the right to question pieces of the argument too. 20+ years ago Madame Jean-Marie Bouvier De La Mothe Guyon (from memory) meant an awful lot to me, and I bet if I picked her up again her work would still appeal. There is and always will be a huge place in my life for silence in the presence of God. The question is one of goal, and Merton's and mine seem to be completely different.
I hope I can say with accuracy that this blog has never been about pointing out error, but sometimes a thing advances to the point of genuine error and makes me nervous. Having done my time in prayer by silence, I think it's worth the risk of criticizing brothers in Christ to save others from traveling down that fruitless road. Merton, and those who teach his vision, does not edify the church.
Allow me to snip from the last chapter of the book.
Then there is a quietud sabrosa, a tranquility full of savor and rest and unction in which, although there is nothing to feed and satisfy either the senses or the imagination or the intellect, the will rests in a deep, luminous and absorbing experience of love.
... you are in the presence of a more definite and more personal Love, Who invades your mind and will in a way you cannot grasp, eluding every attempt on your part to contain and hold Him by any movement of your own soul. You know that this "Presence" is God. But for the rest He is hidden in a cloud, although He is so near as to be inside you and outside you and all around you.
The most important thing that remains to be said about this perfect contemplation in which soul vanishes out of itself by the perfect renunciation of all desires and all things, is that it can have nothing to do with our ideas of greatness and exaltation, and is not therefore something which is subject to the sin of pride.
Some of you will, in those quotes, quickly see why Merton is so popular. They are high-flying promises and they ring well in the ears. The problem is that they are utterly empty. They are clouds that bring no rain.
I'm sorry that my argument will seem so obtuse. It's a function of ten years under such teaching, and ten years of seeing its fruitlesslness in perfect practice. I watched 30 people sit under a man who taught these things as understandably and effectively as Merton writes about them, and I watched five to ten people succeed at everything that was asked of them, and I watched it all amount to nothing.
And I asked why.
Merton's promises are half-truths. If you do everything he says, you will have the experiences he advertises. You will feel you have been cast loose upon the great and beautiful sea of God's love. You will sense light and energy flowing through your being, and feel at one with the Creator of everything. You will feel completely empty of any will that could possibly oppose God's. I never went there, but I trust the people I knew and loved who described their journeys. Merton's method is effective.
There are two problems.
The first is a little dramatic, and I'm sorry. The method is simply and exactly the same as any Zen meditation or Sufi prayer. I learned after reading the book that Merton was striving to be as good a Buddhist as he already was a Christian. The techniques of transcendentalism work as effectively for Christians as for anyone else, much the same as prayers to Ba'al worked as effectively for Jews as for worshippers of Ba'al. God rejected His people when they turned to idols and demons, and He rejects His people when they turn to Buddha, Allah and Gaia today.
The second problem is that none of the things promised by Merton are promised anywhere in scripture. They are not even encouraged. Merton promises that if you empty your soul of all desires, will, and thoughts you will be invaded by a presence whom you know to be God. He promises this is a good and wonderful thing, and that this is the deeper level of spiritual life for which you have been seeking. He even makes this experience the temporal salvation of the whole world,
But in the moment of time, the minute, the little minute in which he was delivered into God (if he truly was so delivered) there is no question that then his life was pure; that then he gave glory to God; that then he did not sin, that in that moment of pure love he could not sin.
...
They are the strength of the world, because they are the tabernacles of God in the world. They are the ones who keep the universe from being destroyed. They are the little ones. They do not know themselves. They whole earth depends on them. Nobody seems to realize it. These are the ones for whom it was all created in the first place. They shall inherit the land.
It is a plain and sad error to be able to say such things when there is not one word of Christ to support them. They are delightful promises, but they are not the promises of God. If you have been exposed to New Age mysticism, you will recognize them word for word. I listened to Elizabeth Claire Prophet speak almost exactly this same constellation of promises, in almost exactly the same words, but I never heard Christ say anything like them.
There is a glory in silence before God, and I praise the Lord for the opportunity to be silent before Him. There is no place for self-destruction of the will in order to reach silence. There is a place for deep consideration of the holy law of God. There is no place for repetition of a holy word of one syllable to silence the mind. There is a place for embracing the deep, satisfying love of God. There is no place for starving the imagination, senses and intellect in order to declare the profound emptiness that remains, "God."
If this were an isolated experiment by some Christians with vivid imaginations, I might encourage it; there is a lot to be learned by experimenting. That is not what contemplative prayer is, though. Contemplative prayer is the Christian adoption of New Age Transcendental Meditation techniques.
I don't know how much interest this post will generate, and I'm open either way. I would love to talk about how to correctly engage God through silence, why I think the contemplative prayer movement's way is wrong, or to move on to another subject.
What do you think?
I lived in a group that practiced silence increasingly for 10 years. In year 2 I wrote a strongly questioning letter on the subject to our fearless leader. By year 8 I was completely done with it, and wrote an even stronger letter. Silly boy that I was, I thought the group was running afield of his wishes. It turned out I was the black sheep of the family, as his reaction to my letter proved beyond question.
We live and learn.
Over the years I heard many members of our group call out Thomas Merton as the deepest writer they'd ever read (even more so than our leader they'd say - if the doors were shut. :-) So, I cracked his, "Seeds of Contemplation." I almost always finish a book when I start it, but this book was too wrong to spend that much time. I made it two thirds of the way through. So, I will be commenting on a book which I did not finish, and which begins with the admonition not to judge it before reading the whole thing.
Since giving up on the book, I have read a good bit of the negative press about contemplative prayer and agree with a large swath of it, but I reserve the right to question pieces of the argument too. 20+ years ago Madame Jean-Marie Bouvier De La Mothe Guyon (from memory) meant an awful lot to me, and I bet if I picked her up again her work would still appeal. There is and always will be a huge place in my life for silence in the presence of God. The question is one of goal, and Merton's and mine seem to be completely different.
I hope I can say with accuracy that this blog has never been about pointing out error, but sometimes a thing advances to the point of genuine error and makes me nervous. Having done my time in prayer by silence, I think it's worth the risk of criticizing brothers in Christ to save others from traveling down that fruitless road. Merton, and those who teach his vision, does not edify the church.
Allow me to snip from the last chapter of the book.
Then there is a quietud sabrosa, a tranquility full of savor and rest and unction in which, although there is nothing to feed and satisfy either the senses or the imagination or the intellect, the will rests in a deep, luminous and absorbing experience of love.
... you are in the presence of a more definite and more personal Love, Who invades your mind and will in a way you cannot grasp, eluding every attempt on your part to contain and hold Him by any movement of your own soul. You know that this "Presence" is God. But for the rest He is hidden in a cloud, although He is so near as to be inside you and outside you and all around you.
The most important thing that remains to be said about this perfect contemplation in which soul vanishes out of itself by the perfect renunciation of all desires and all things, is that it can have nothing to do with our ideas of greatness and exaltation, and is not therefore something which is subject to the sin of pride.
Some of you will, in those quotes, quickly see why Merton is so popular. They are high-flying promises and they ring well in the ears. The problem is that they are utterly empty. They are clouds that bring no rain.
I'm sorry that my argument will seem so obtuse. It's a function of ten years under such teaching, and ten years of seeing its fruitlesslness in perfect practice. I watched 30 people sit under a man who taught these things as understandably and effectively as Merton writes about them, and I watched five to ten people succeed at everything that was asked of them, and I watched it all amount to nothing.
And I asked why.
Merton's promises are half-truths. If you do everything he says, you will have the experiences he advertises. You will feel you have been cast loose upon the great and beautiful sea of God's love. You will sense light and energy flowing through your being, and feel at one with the Creator of everything. You will feel completely empty of any will that could possibly oppose God's. I never went there, but I trust the people I knew and loved who described their journeys. Merton's method is effective.
There are two problems.
The first is a little dramatic, and I'm sorry. The method is simply and exactly the same as any Zen meditation or Sufi prayer. I learned after reading the book that Merton was striving to be as good a Buddhist as he already was a Christian. The techniques of transcendentalism work as effectively for Christians as for anyone else, much the same as prayers to Ba'al worked as effectively for Jews as for worshippers of Ba'al. God rejected His people when they turned to idols and demons, and He rejects His people when they turn to Buddha, Allah and Gaia today.
The second problem is that none of the things promised by Merton are promised anywhere in scripture. They are not even encouraged. Merton promises that if you empty your soul of all desires, will, and thoughts you will be invaded by a presence whom you know to be God. He promises this is a good and wonderful thing, and that this is the deeper level of spiritual life for which you have been seeking. He even makes this experience the temporal salvation of the whole world,
But in the moment of time, the minute, the little minute in which he was delivered into God (if he truly was so delivered) there is no question that then his life was pure; that then he gave glory to God; that then he did not sin, that in that moment of pure love he could not sin.
...
They are the strength of the world, because they are the tabernacles of God in the world. They are the ones who keep the universe from being destroyed. They are the little ones. They do not know themselves. They whole earth depends on them. Nobody seems to realize it. These are the ones for whom it was all created in the first place. They shall inherit the land.
It is a plain and sad error to be able to say such things when there is not one word of Christ to support them. They are delightful promises, but they are not the promises of God. If you have been exposed to New Age mysticism, you will recognize them word for word. I listened to Elizabeth Claire Prophet speak almost exactly this same constellation of promises, in almost exactly the same words, but I never heard Christ say anything like them.
There is a glory in silence before God, and I praise the Lord for the opportunity to be silent before Him. There is no place for self-destruction of the will in order to reach silence. There is a place for deep consideration of the holy law of God. There is no place for repetition of a holy word of one syllable to silence the mind. There is a place for embracing the deep, satisfying love of God. There is no place for starving the imagination, senses and intellect in order to declare the profound emptiness that remains, "God."
If this were an isolated experiment by some Christians with vivid imaginations, I might encourage it; there is a lot to be learned by experimenting. That is not what contemplative prayer is, though. Contemplative prayer is the Christian adoption of New Age Transcendental Meditation techniques.
I don't know how much interest this post will generate, and I'm open either way. I would love to talk about how to correctly engage God through silence, why I think the contemplative prayer movement's way is wrong, or to move on to another subject.
What do you think?
15 November, 2007
The Silencing of the Lambs
I hate clouded issues.
If you were to walk up to me and ask me what I thought about wine, I'd say something along the lines of, "Great stuff, but I never touch it." If you asked me that same question among a group of unacknowledging alcoholics though, that answer would not work any more.
If you ask me about the silencing of the mind in prayer in 1990, I'd say it was great stuff in moderation. In 2007, though, the scenery has changed. Suddenly, the whole church seems to be jumping on the contemplative prayer wagon and taking the ride to wherever it stops. Suddenly, this once fringe practice is being mainstreamed and presented as a panacea.
So, have you heard about it? Is it being introduced in your church? Are you being taught how to silence your mind and listen for the guidance of the Spirit? Breath prayers? Repeating the Name of the Lord to still your soul and make room for your spirit to touch God?
If you were to walk up to me and ask me what I thought about wine, I'd say something along the lines of, "Great stuff, but I never touch it." If you asked me that same question among a group of unacknowledging alcoholics though, that answer would not work any more.
If you ask me about the silencing of the mind in prayer in 1990, I'd say it was great stuff in moderation. In 2007, though, the scenery has changed. Suddenly, the whole church seems to be jumping on the contemplative prayer wagon and taking the ride to wherever it stops. Suddenly, this once fringe practice is being mainstreamed and presented as a panacea.
So, have you heard about it? Is it being introduced in your church? Are you being taught how to silence your mind and listen for the guidance of the Spirit? Breath prayers? Repeating the Name of the Lord to still your soul and make room for your spirit to touch God?
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