Spiritual Growth Essay Example

Spiritual Growth Essay People are born into a world in which there are some objects and processes which are to them fully understandable and others that are not. When man releases his hold on a stone which he has held in his hand and it falls to the ground, the result is always the same, and there is nothing to excite any feeling of dependence on unknown forces. Birth, however, and growth and sexual relations and death and success in fishing or hunting and agriculture are all matters in which man is not his own master and appears to be dealing with something uncanny. This distinction is fundamental, and we can observe it in the behaviour of animals. Where man differs from the animals so far as we yet know is that throughout as much of his evolution as is known to us he has normally not remained supine but has striven to take a positive attitude and assume a definite line of conduct towards these mysteries.To be converted, to be regenerated, to receive grace, to experience religion, to gain an assurance, are so many phrases which denote the process, gradual or sudden, by which a self hitherto divided, and consciously wrong inferior and unhappy, becomes unified and consciously right superior and happy, in consequence of its firmer hold upon religious realities. This at least is what conversion signifies in general terms, whether or not we believe that a direct divine operation is needed to bring such a moral change about (Cohen 65).Conversion is neither the time of disbelief nor the time of belief. It is the passage between them; this is why some specialists prefer to speak of converting instead of conversion (Rambo and Farhadian 1999). Conversion is the moment when one ceases to disbelieve and starts to believe. There can be oscillations between belief and disbelief, but there cannot be any coexistence of both. It is a consequence of the principle of non contradiction: one may believe in God and not believe in the Holy Trinity, but one cannot both believe in God and not believe in H im at the same time, since this would contradict the very idea of believing in something. Conversion is therefore a punctual event, and not a durative one.As Christian conversion transforms an initial global commitment of religious faith into a psychologically responsible, intuitive perception of the future, Christian conversion infuses into human experience the theological virtue of hope. As Christian conversion transforms an initial global faith into the intuitive and inferential beliefs which intellectual conversion renders methodologically responsible, Christian conversion infuses into human experience the theological virtue of faith.Initial conversion begins with initial repentance. Initial repentance engages the heart. One repents initially by facing conscious and unconscious negative emotions which blind one to the excellence incarnate in Jesus and in people whose lives resemble His. By negative emotions, I mean shame, guilt, fear, rage, despair. As one brings such negative e motions to healing through conscious ego-integration, the positive emotions have more scope to play. By the positive emotions I mean love, affection, friendship, sympathy, aesthetic sensitivity.One converts initially as a Christian when one acknowledges in Jesus the human embodiment of divine excellence. The beauty of His life makes one desire to follow Him. Christian conversion culminates, then, in a life of discipleship; and the practical, moral demands of discipleship require the conscience to submit to the religious norms and ideals which Jesus embodied and proclaimed. In other words, repentance and practical commitment to Jesus in faith describe the first dynamic of Christian conversion.The first dynamic of Christian conversion exemplifies faith in the broadest sense of that term. We call such faith justifying because it initially rectifies the conscience and puts one in an obediential relationship to a self-revealing God. Justifying faith opens the whole of the person to the t ransforming action of the divine Breath. It therefore requires the subsequent transvaluation through ongoing conversion of the four natural, or secular, forms of conversion: namely, affective, intellectual, personal moral, and socio-political conversion. In transvaluing the other forms of conversion, Christian practice demands, as we have also seen elsewhere, practical progress in hope, faith, charity, and the Christian search for social justice. I have called the religious awareness which results from the ongoing transvaluation of the four natural forms of conversion â€Å"Christological knowing† because it assimilates one to Jesus in the power of His Breath.Logic of ConversionEvery religious conversion contains a language. The way in which people change and represent their spiritual evolution is often determined by recurrent structures. A foundational analysis of the gracing of the natural forms of conversion discovers an intuitive, passionate element in theological hope, i n theological faith, and in theological love. Hope dwells primarily at an affective level. Theological hope heals, perfects, and elevates natural human hopes by making God their future and by insuring that humans hope for the same realities which God does. The God revealed in Jesus, however, wills the establishment of His reign on earth as in heaven through the creation of faith-filled communities of sharing, mutual forgiveness, and worship. Inevitably, then Christian hope embodies a deeply affective perception of ones interpersonal relationship with God and with other persons. It therefore qualifies as a passion. Because it comes from God and leads to God, Christian hope also qualifies as a theological passion. The theological passion of hope motivates the graced acts of hope which infuse the theological virtue of hope.Christian faith too has a passionate dimension. In my own case, conversion began by attending Christian churches. Even before conversion I experienced great pleasure in finding myself in a church of the Christian religion. Not habit, therefore, but the pleasure of forming the habit, began the conversional process. It can be easily understood that participation in the sacraments, and the performance of the simple ceremonies which belong to the cult, assist in producing a complete conversion, and once the conversion is effected, strengthen it powerfully, as in my case, and many other converts.Theological faith heals, perfects, and elevates me by conforming to the normative historical revelation of God which we have received in Christ Jesus and in His illuminating Breath. Belief, however, comes in two forms: intuition and inference. Intuitive beliefs engage human affective perceptions and judgment. Because Christian faith believes in a tri-personal God and in the human community of faith which proceeds from the historical revelation of that God, like hope faith grasps and grapples with affectively complex interpersonal relationships. As the affect ive grasp of interpersonal relationships, faith, like hope, qualifies as a passion. Its focus on divine things makes it theological. The theological passion of faith motivates the graced acts of faith which infuse the theological virtue of faith (Leone 2003).The theological virtue of charity also engages my heart. Hypothetical thinking engages the intuitive mind; but deductive and inductive inference proceed dispassionately according to the rules of logic, even though rational thought never loses affective connotations. All other forms of human knowing engage the imagination and the affections directly. When we love other persons we perceive them with affective benevolence and act toward them in ways which embody that benevolence. Christian love finds its motive and ultimate object in God and in those persons whom God loves. The God of Jesus Christ loves with an all-encompassing universal benevolence. As the affective perception of human interpersonal relationships, Christian love c ounts as a human passion. Its focus on God makes it into a theological passion. The theological passion of love motivates the graced acts of love which infuse the theological virtue of charity.By committing my heart to the practical establishment of Gods reign on earth, my Christian hope mounts a frontal assault on the causes of despair: pain, frustration, failure, oppression. It inserts those tempted to despair into a healing community of hope. When personal hopes dwindle, the shared hopes and longings of the Christian community have the power to nurture hope and longing in the despondent. Despair stifles the imagination. Christian hope, by contrast challenges the human imagination to allow Gods Breath to expand it to embrace the dawning reality of our future in Christ.Finally, Christian hope universalizes the natural aspirations of my heart by teaching it to hope the best for all people. Left to its own resources, natural hopes content themselves with wishing only ones own well. N atural hopes ordinarily leave out enemies, aliens, and strangers.As Christian I see myself and others truly when I view both with Jesus own compassionate eyes. We see one another truly when we forgive one another with the forgiveness of Christ. That forgiveness recognizes in every human person the capacity to repent of past sins and failings. Graced repentance creates a new capacity to live for and in God and to serve others in Jesus image. As a consequence, Christian faith will not tolerate the hypocritical rationalization of sin, injustice, and immorality. My Christian love heals all the other passionate disorders by expanding my heart to embrace the triune God and the entire human family. Christian love also replaces all seven deadly sins with charitable benevolence toward all.Jesus loved not just theoretically but practically. Christian love begins with practical concern to meet the basic physical needs of all people. It creates a community of sharing in which the least members of human society receive the greatest care, concern, and honor and in which the great and powerful serve the rest. The synoptic gospels, which best preserve Jesus proclamation of the kingdom, all testify to these practical demands of Christian love.Charity heals hatred through forgiveness in the name and image of Jesus. While hatred divides people from one another and encourages violence by destroying communication among enemies, the practical demands of Christian love reconcile enemies and teach them to love one another. Reconciliation teaches me to look for the best in people rather personal conversion to Christ.The Holy Christian ChurchThe Church is the earthly family of God, the place where the fact of the universal divine Fatherhood is recognized and where there is made at all events a sustained effort to carry out its implications. Where there is fatherhood there must be the family. Only by sharing in the life of the family is it possible to have fellowship with the father. Th e Fatherhood of God implies the brotherhood of man.It is not possible to love the Father acceptably while in a state of chronic estrangement from the brethren. When God calls us to Himself He calls us at the same time to each other. That God has created a Church for men to belong to is an essential part of the gospel. Belief in the reality of a Church, a world-wide fellowship of the faithful, created by God the Son and indwelt by the Holy Spirit for the Fathers Glory, is an essential article of the Christian Faith, and hence the Creed boldly sets it side by side with belief in God Himself as a matter of comparable importance. We believe in the divine Fatherhood and the human brotherhood. Without the belief in the Fatherhood, faith in the brotherhood would be sheer nonsense. Where the brotherhood is not acknowledged both in theory and practice, the reality of the divine Fatherhood is by implication denied. Where there is no churchmanship there is no true Christianity.There is, of cou rse, a sense in which it is true to say that God is the Father of all men, churchmen and nonchurchmen alike. Gods attitude towards all men is certainly paternal but the attitude of men to God is far from being perfectly filial. The perfect Son is the eternal Son and we can only become true sons of God by learning what perfect sonship means from Christ, by sharing increasingly His attitude towards the Eternal Father and His unity with the Eternal Father. It is in that state of unity with Christ, and with each other for His sake, which we call the Church that the sons are reconciled to the Father and begin to live again their family life with Him.The Church is described in the Bible as the Body of Christ. It is the visible agent which He now employs to make known His presence and carry on His work. It is, indeed, a kind of diffusion and extension of the Incarnation, so that, in and through the Church, Christ still continues to live an earthly life. The Church is thus not a mundane ass ociation of like-minded human beings, united by a common admiration for the personality of Jesus and a common reverence for His teaching. No early Christian ever said or thought that the life of Jesus was such a superbly good thing that the world must never be allowed to forget it, and that those who had known Him ought to form a society, to be known as the Church, for perpetuating His memory. Christ gave the Church to men. It is not a human contrivance. The Church was designed by God for our salvation. It was not created by men as an ingenious way of giving Him glory. Churchmanship is not therefore a superfluous excellence, one way among many of serving God on earth, and perhaps the best way for those disposed by temperament to enjoy participation in its mode of life. Membership of the Church, on the contrary, is a universal human duty, and to turn deliberately away from it is to spurn Gods gift, to disobey His will and to frustrate His purpose. Because churchmanship is a duty, non -churchmanship is a sin.Moral and Ethical GrowthIn living fellowship with Christ the natural powers of the regenerate are put at His disposal, whereby there is produced a life akin to His perfection and blessedness; and this is the state of Sanctification (Mackintosh 505).Sanctification as an effect of the Spirit is already implicit in the modifier â€Å"Holy.† The texts in which Paul speaks of this effect of the Spirit are many. â€Å"God chose you from the beginning to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth† (Dabney 36). Although sanctification radically means consecration, a once for all setting aside of a thing or a person for Gods service, it also has in Paul a strong ethical sense, as can be see from 1 Thes 4:1–8, where Paul says, â€Å"This is the will of God, your sanctification,† and then goes on to define it in terms of sexual morality, concluding: â€Å"God has not called us to uncleanness, but holiness. Therefo re whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.† The present tense â€Å"gives† is significant. God is constantly giving the Holy Spirit to the believer, just as living water, image of the Spirit, is constantly flowing. The ethical demands and power of the Spirit are elaborated in great detail in Romans 8:1–13, Pauls favorite contrast of the flesh and the spirit, as in Gal 5:16–25, where he pits the fruit (singular) of the Spirit against the works (plural) of the flesh.The retention of the term sanctification is justified because it is scriptural. But as it depends on a rather indefinite concept of the holy, a concept which divergent interpretations and usages have made yet more intricate, a still further exposition is necessary if it is to be used in Dogmatics. The first etymological consideration that has to be taken into account is the Old Testament use of the word for everything separated from ordinary social l ife and devoted to some use relating to God. This relation to God, however, makes no difference in any activity due to an impulse proceeding from Christ; for since it is produced by the absolutely powerful God-consciousness of Christ, it of itself includes severance from participation in the common sinful life. And fellowship being essential to human nature, this of itself supplies a basis fork an active tendency to a new common life; just as, owing to its Old Testament use noted above, the expression carries with it the priestly dignity of all Christians and represents the new common life as a spiritual temple. So that the state of sanctification too may be regarded as service in this temple.The second consideration is the connexion of the term with holiness as a Divine attribute; for of course we hold by the interpretation of this given above. It is, however, also clear that the regenerate man, through the manner of life, develops a conscience also in others, in proportion as all his activities diverge from what happens in the common sinful life.In both its aspects, however, we cannot call this condition holiness—that is, being holy—but sanctification, which means becoming holy, sanctifying oneself; which we call sanctification, because it is a striving for holiness. If the meaning were being holy, it would imply that a complete transformation had occurred at the moment of regeneration, every link with the sinful common life entirely ceasing, and the whole nature being completely and instantaneously penetrated by the life of Christ and brought under His sway.The Godward ImpulsePrayer and worship, based on and guided by the conviction that God has revealed His Nature and Purpose in Jesus Christ, are thus the essential characteristics of the Christian life. Few words are more completely misunderstood than the familiar word prayer. It is conventionally interpreted as though it meant a kind of spiritual bombardment of the Deity with a series of sel finterested human requests, slackening somewhat during those periods when life is more or less kind to us and growing more urgent whenever she frowns. All this is mere caricature. Prayer has been better described as the ascent of the mind to God; it is an offering of the self to God, the spreading out before Him of the whole content of the conscious mind, the submission of the disordered human will, confused and weakened by the endless conflict of opposite motives and mutually exclusive desires, to the perfect will of God.The underlying psychological and spiritual urge which has impelled men of all religions and all stages of mental development and civilization to prayer is the human longing to be completely known and perfectly understood. The same urge makes the anxious man open his heart to his friend, directs the neurotic to the consulting room of the psycho-analyst and prompts the penitent to seek absolution from his confessor. But the longing which each of these valuable and ef fective expedients can satisfy to a certain extent is completely set at rest only in communion with God, only when the long persevering life of prayer culminates in final vision.Who really knows me through and through? It is a decisive question, one which leads as surely to prayer as prayer at long last leads to God. Experience will teach the man who asks it that he will never be perfectly understood by other people, not even by those with whom he is in closest sympathy. Even his dearest friends will fail sometimes to see things as he sees them, or manifest surprise at some word or action which he feels to be necessitated by the very nature of his personality. He will discover that he in his turn fails to achieve a complete understanding of them. It is possible to have known and loved a man for a lifetime and yet to observe with a sudden shock some hitherto unsuspected facet of his character. But our self-knowledge is as partial and defective as our understanding of others. Again an d again in life a man surprises even himself. The trite remark that it is good for us to see ourselves as others see us is an admission that our self-knowledge is inevitably onesided and incomplete.Who really knows me through and through? No man sees and understands me whole and entire. The inner mystery of my being is not visible even to myself. I am driven back upon the fundamental truth that a created thing is perfectly understood only by its creator. The standpoint of the creator is the only one from which the whole truth can be seen. We understand best and most intimately what we have ourselves constructed. The poet is the best interpreter of his poem, the artist of his picture, the craftsman of his craft. Even so the whole truth about man is only visible to God. It is this frustration of mans desire for understanding and sympathy on the natural level that drives him to that supernatural intercourse with the God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known and from whom no s ecrets are hid. Thou that hearest the prayer, unto Thee shall all flesh come.St. Paul is fired by the same thought as he reflects for a moment on the far-off goal of the life of prayer and cries out, Then shall I know even as already I am known (Ramsey 67). God already possesses a perfect knowledge and vision of man, and man, his appetite stimulated and desire kindled by this imperfect and one-sided intercourse, presses slowly forwards in his quest for a more adequate knowledge and vision of God.To pray is a great adventure for me, a launching out into the uncharted spiritual spaces which separate God and me. It is a costly adventure, demanding, like all worth-while enterprises, self-discipline and sacrifice. It is at this point that morality and goodness become plainly relevant to my life as prayer. For   me to live a Godcentred life, my own personal and moral perfection is not an end in itself. It is a means to the higher end of finding fellowship with God. I do not pray in orde r that I may succeed in living what is called a good life. Rather I strive to live a good life in order that I may pray. Such goodness as the Christian attains is not the central aim and purpose of my existence, dominating my thoughts and energies. It is a by-product of my quest for God. That is why the goodness of godly men is less selfconscious, more graceful and unassuming, than the goodness of the conscious man of morals.For me prayer not in its contractual and magic form, but in the mystic sense is in reality a contact and a fusion. It is through the power of prayer that the suppliant attains to momentary identification with the divine power supplicated. It has been observed that in the ancient religions of Egypt, Assyria, Phcenicia, and Greece, as well as in those of to-day, the supplicants in prayer have used gestures identical with those attributed to the deity. This has come to be interpreted, not as an imitation, but as a momentary projection and identification of the wo rshippers soul with the soul of God.