Something I’ve been thinking about lately is the relationship between habit, tradition, and the spiritual life. The simplest way of putting it, I suppose, is that even though I can never imagine being Catholic or Orthodox because of some significant theological differences, I think my day-to-day Christian life would be way easier as a Catholic. (Read the first part of that sentence again and then unclench your intestines, Protestant friends.) I say that because, in my experience, Protestant spiritual theology at its worst consists of simply browbeating a person into observing certain desired behaviors. In other words, shame ‘em enough and they’ll start reading their Bibles every day.
I’d like to think the Reformed tradition is a bit better on this front because we try to draw out the connection between a statement of Christian belief and the practical manifestation of that belief–”indicatives drive imperatives” is something of a mantra at my denomination’s seminary. That’s better, of course. “Because you belong to Christ, who bought you with his death, therefore you should ______.” Definitely an improvement.
And yet I still struggle with these exhortations at times because they so often feel disconnected from simply living a healthy life in God’s world. Put another way, I don’t know that Protestants do a very good job of drawing the line between “a healthy life” and “desired Christian behavior x.”
I tried making myself go to a “life group” at one church I was in because it was such a big deal to them. (By the way–ten points for the first evangelical congregation to call their small groups “small groups” and not some variation of “grace group,” “life group,” “kingdom group,” etc. Those names are the adult version of the ambiguous monosyllabic words that usually involve fire that are inevitably used for evangelical youth groups.) I didn’t really want to go to a life group because I knew I was already working several nights a week, I’m a pretty strong introvert, I didn’t feel safe with most of the people there yet, etc., but I went. It ended up becoming a weekly chore that I looked forward to about as much as I looked forward to mowing the lawn when I was a teenager.
What I find so attractive, therefore, about Catholicism is the fact that many–though certainly not all–of the practices within the church are grounded in something beyond fad and the opinion of a single pastor or leader. Put another way, I think a huge part of me would actually like it if my pastor said, “For the next 40 days, you’re fasting.” I wouldn’t like it if he was just making a power-play, trying to bind my conscience and create a new means through which to shame me. But if he could say, “You are fasting for the next 40 days because it is a practice that Christians have done in different ways for centuries and it has proven a helpful tool for spiritual formation,” then I would love to be told to do something like that. And that seems a much easier thing for a Catholic or Orthodox believer to say than a Protestant.
I say all that because this is why I really like and appreciate Lent. If someone just tells me, “You need to die with Christ,” I’ll look at them and say, “OK. It’s in the Bible, so you’re right. But I don’t know how to do that.” But with Lent, I have something of an answer–Lent teaches Christians how to die. And so for me, I find myself at one of my jobs going through my feed reader wanting to post things here and I can’t do it because of the “fast” I’m taking during Lent. Something that seems very natural and instinctive and that allows me to kinda prop myself up as a blogger–that’s out for this season. Instead, I have to make myself read the story simply because it interests me. That other potential motive for reading–seeing the story as a means for exalting myself–is out of bounds for this season.
It’s a trivial thing, to be sure. There will be far harder lessons God must teach me on my way to dying to myself so that I can be resurrected with Christ. But it’s a little lesson that I’m able to recognize and talk about in concrete language. And for that I’m grateful.
UPDATE: I asked one Catholic convert from evangelicalism about her experience moving to Catholicism and specifically if a more systematized approach to spiritual formation was helpful to her. Her response: “Short answer: yes, Catholicism offered great solace to me because I was very weary from trying to free-form it all the time. As a weary mother, the written prayers provided a beautiful way for me to speak with God without having to come up with everything myself–I was never very good at spontaneous prayer. Catholicism provided a tangible framework and within that framework there is FRESHNESS and NEWNESS b/c it’s a matter of love making each day new. For me, Catholicism is a very easy yoke to bear b/c I find great graces poured out on me. Thank you for the question!”
Jake,
Have you considered becoming a Benedictine Oblate? Many Benedictine abbeys are more than happy to take on Protestant oblates. The vow of stability has to be appealing, and the Rule would help with structure.
I enjoy your blog, by the way.
God bless. Don
Don – Can you tell me more about that? I’m intrigued, but don’t know the first thing about how that would work. What is an oblate and what would being a Protestant oblate involve?
Nobody asked me, but this is a large part of why I’ve found so much peace since stumbling into Lutheranism. It’s an approach that sees itself as free to embrace the tradition of Western Christianity, while still regarding it as subordinate to Scripture.
Jake, so much of this rings true. I’m an Evangelical who is a few weeks from entering full communion with the Catholic Church, and in my journey into Catholicism thus far, I have had much the same experience as your correspondent.
What amazes me is how flipped things are in this area, between Evangelicals and Catholics. One of my initial qualms with Evangelicalism, when I began to admit I had frustrations, was that while the worship and prayer forms were so dependent on innovation and originality, as your Catholic friend put it, efforts to engage the arts – visual, dramatic, film/video in particular – are chained to rigid formulas of what “Christian” or “gospel-centered” art should be. As a filmmaker and writer myself, I eventually realized that this imbalance was suffocating me in my ability to both offer myself to God through corporate worship, and through my work. Discovering the opposite approach in Catholicism has been an unbelievable joy – an endless rediscovery of grace poured out, as your Catholic friend put it. This isn’t to say that Catholicism doesn’t have it’s own problems with kitsch, but the pressure I felt as an Evangelical artist to force my work into being a certain sort of message delivery platform is gone. There is freedom to create the work that I am made to make.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts (and to Rod Dreher for linking here). I pray that this Lent will draw you even deeper into His intimate joy.
Become an Anglican. Problem solved!
[...] wanted to pick up a few loose strands left behind by this post that got a decent amount of attention last [...]
Have you looked into Anglicanism (Reformed Episcopal Church)? It is grounded in Catholic (universal–not necessarily Roman) tradition, and reformed theology.
[...] fair… but what is your practice of the Sabbath?” A month or so later, I’m still a believer in Lent, but my friend raised a good point that pertains not only to this particular conversation, [...]