Later on in the chapter, it says the following: “In chapters 3-4 of In the Spirit of Happiness by the Monks of New Skete, the aspects of spiritual living that come into focus are that of the discipline of change (chapter 2) and Asceticism and Life (chapter 3).
The Discipline (and inevitability) of Change
It is something that I just take for granted now. It has been so long since I’ve read In the Spirit of Happiness that I almost have forgotten that there was a time that what is here in chapter 3 was a brand new revelation to me. What was new to me when I first read the book, and what has become just a fundamental aspect of my spiritual outlook now is the concept that one’s salvation—one’s spiritual journey—is a process that involves perpetual change.
Early on in the chapter, it is mentioned that biology shows us that our very bodies are in a state of perpetual change, with cells dying off, regenerating, rebuilding—a constant state of change our entire lives. In fact, I think this idea was in the back of my mind a few years ago when I was writing quite a lot about the creation-evolution debate. The more I learned about the theory of evolution, the more I realized that the constant change and evolution we see in the biological world really do mirror our spiritual journey—our spiritual evolution, so to speak.
The key difference, of course, is that in biological evolution, change and adaptation just happen. Organisms don’t consciously “choose” to evolve. In our spiritual journey, since our salvation is a perpetual process, our spiritual growth depends on how we choose to respond to the various challenges in our lives. Indeed, what I thought was a pretty brilliant idea on my part in my book The Heresy of Ham, now that I’m looking back over In the Spirit of Happiness, may not have been original as I had originally hoped. I think I got that idea from here: “The real question here isn’t whether we can or will change, but how we will change. We can either embrace the inevitable changes of life or become their passive victims. Whether we want them to or not, things change, and wisdom teaches us to direct the changes for the good, for personal growth and maturity” (50).
Later, it says this: “Paradoxically, this is the unchanging principle of spiritual life that monks discover: that each of us must work constantly to change every single aspect of our lives in the light of the goals of the spiritual life. It is a perpetual process” (52).
The reason we need to see salvation as a perpetual process of change is because it involves perpetual repentance. Repentance is not something you do at an altar call before you “get saved,” (although that might be the start). Repentance is a process that never ends. In fact, the Greek word for repentance, metanoia, involves a changing of one’s mind, and that will inevitably result in a new way of looking at everything—and that’s not a one-time deal.
The book puts it this way: “Metanoia is not an isolated act of conversion, of coming to ‘believe in God,’ which is only the first step in a total transformation of life. To follow the spiritual path authentically is to be immersed, baptized into a river of change, to die to our old rigidities. Jesus tells us from the start that lively, true belief will turn long-cherished opinions and ingrained attitudes upside down, plunging the life of anyone who takes his message seriously into the ‘insecurity of faith’” (60). And in what way is faith “insecure”? I think brings about “insecurity” to our false selves, the “old man” that must be repented of and crucified.
Another thing this chapter emphasizes is the need to have a spiritual teacher, for a true teacher will “give us no rest” (63). One of the interesting observations made in this chapter is that it is very easy to accept teaching on an academic level, but when it comes to true, spiritual teaching, where we are told that there might be something wrong with hour mindset or behavior—well, we just don’t really like that too much! Indeed, as an academic who knows a few academics, I think I can say that a temptation for academics (in Biblical Studies and Theology in particular) is that it is very easy to build up our academic knowledge as a defensive wall to keep us from having to face the fact that there might be something that needs to be addressed in our spiritual lives. Or, to put it this way, instead of wrestling with the spiritual truth that might lie in a passage of Scripture, it is really easy to just start yapping about some textual issue, or some historical, “Trivial Pursuit” type of nugget to impress people with.
That being said, I’ve never felt like I’ve ever had a “spiritual teacher” on a personal level. The teacher who has had the biggest impact on my life has been Gordon Fee, but there was never a “personal mentorship” there. For whatever reason, most of the teaching I’ve received has come from books. In that respect, I suppose I’ve always felt somewhat “in exile” in my spiritual journey, never really feeling like I fit in anywhere. Even at Regent College, which was a huge spiritual turning point in my life, outside of a handful of close friends I still have today, I have to say that I never really felt part of the greater Regent Community.
Perhaps that says something about my personality, but in any case, in a short interlude in the book entitled “What is a Monk?” I came across something that immediately related to: “’Exile’…is what characterizes a true monk. To discover and encounter the true God and find our real home in this reality is the monk’s perennial task, making him by nature a wanderer (though living in one place), a pilgrim (though already tasting the goal), exploring the vast wilderness of the human heart (though guided by those who went before him)” (69).
The reason why that quote immediately spoke to me (and still does) was because years before I read this book, while visiting my sister in Wyoming, I remember writing this short poem: “I have been much acquainted/with the silence between two voices/–the vast desert between two human hearts.” Not surprisingly, reading In the Spirit of Happiness, and passages like the one I just quoted about monks, that frustrated feeling I had expressed in that poem found its focus. It’s okay to feel that way, because that is what being on a spiritual journey sometimes entails.
Asceticism and Life
Chapter 4 in In the Spirit of Happiness is all about the spiritual practices necessary in one’s spiritual journey. Now, growing up in Evangelicalism, there was always some pushback whenever there was a suggestion that salvation entailed some amount of effort on the part of a person, “No, that’s a Catholic thing,” was normally the response. Of course, if you view salvation as a “thing” God gives you, of course the idea of doing anything to “earn” it flies in the face of receiving the “gift.” And, to be fair, salvation is a gift—but it’s not a “thing.” The gift is a new way of life, a new mode of existence—and that means that new life has to be lived, and that means you have to work at it.
Unfortunately, as we see here in chapter 4, “Christianity is too often reduced to the theoretical, the academic on the one hand, or the sentimentality emotional on the other” (75). Those two extremes (probably leaning more toward the emotional side) typifies much of Evangelicalism. That being said, as I said earlier, there is plenty of danger on the “academic” side as well. As the book says, “Knowledge can’t just sit in our heads like money collecting interest, but so often that seems to be the experience in academia. If [academics, students] don’t integrate their book learning with inner development, the results are still darkness” (76).
Obviously, knowledge is important and vital, but it isn’t the whole answer. Some of the more spiritual and insightful people I’ve met are not academics. And there are plenty of academics who, quite frankly, rather clueless when it comes to the spiritual journey. They’d much rather stay isolated in the white towers of academia than get out and start journeying down the spiritual path. That tendency to not want to journey on reminds me of a passage from Walt Whitman that has impacted me ever since I first read it in college.
Allons! we must not stop here,
However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling we cannot remain here,
However shelter’d this port and however calm these waters we must not anchor here,
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to receive it but a little while.
As far as I’m concerned, that is a pretty good summary of the call and challenge of the spiritual journey.
The final thing mentioned in chapter 4 is that key to spiritual practices and asceticism is avoiding extremes. Not to sound too much like a Jedi (!!!) it is about balance. It is wrong to think God despises the natural world, and therefore you have to severely deprive yourself of things because “this world is sinful and evil.” At the same time, over-indulgence breeds hedonism. As the book says, “The extremes of both self-indulgence and self-deprivation have equally harmful consequences for human life. They result in a distortion that alienates and even kills the spirit” (91). And, obviously, if something kills the spirit, it’s going to be really hard continuing on the spiritual journey!
The chapter ends with this quote, that I feel is always good to keep in mind: “To discipline and train ourselves correctly requires a willing desire to do what we know should be done, in spite of the negative, self-centered feelings that may accompany such acts. Even these smaller acts, the composite of our daily life, contain within themselves the practice that steadily fosters our interior transformation” (93).
