The Imitation Of Christ?

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So, I have been pressing into a more “contemplative” spirituality over the last few years. This has been difficult as my temperament tends towards being an “activist.” I have made progress; even if it has been from ‘abysmal’ to merely ‘awful,’ that is still progress.

As part of my contemplative retreat process, I do some devotional reading. For years, people have been encouraging me to read The Imitation Of Christ by Thomas A’Kempis. It is an interesting work which can be positively challenging or negatively terrible – all in the space of a page.

A recent reading was one of those terrible sections – let me explain. Book Three, chapter 51 bemoans the horrible realization that we cannot be in a state of rapturous spiritual bliss all the time. OK, right off the bat, this strikes me as a Captain Obvious moment.

Our friend, Thomas, moves on: ‘… but you must need to, sometimes, because of original corruption lower yourself to inferior things’ (I paraphrased that because the translation I use has lots of “thees,” “thous,” and the like). Now our friend clarifies this: ‘As long as you carry a mortal body, you shall feel weariness and heaviness of heart.’ So, let me summarize: You should be always in a state of ecstatic spiritual bliss – but the world is awful because we are flesh and all physical existence is terrible and because of that, we sometimes have to accommodate our wonderful spiritual selves to the horrible world around us because we are stuck in a body.’ This is not an unfair reading of A’Kempis, here.

It seems to me that this reflects a “Platonic” or “Dualistic” view of life (popular among Greek and Persian philosophers and mystics). That is, that everything “spiritual” is good, perfect, and holy; but anything “material” is bad, corrupted, and evil. That notion is contrary to my understanding of the Bible.

God said, after he created the material world (Genesis 1:31), that all of it was “very good.” So, right off the bat, the ball of God’s material world was very good, not bad. Let that roll around your brain-pan for a while. The physical world was declared to be Very Good by holy, perfect, and good God. There is nothing INTRISIC or ‘of itself’ to the nature of the physical world that makes it bad, corrupted, or evil.

Then, in Genesis chapter three, we see that the spiritual world is broken by sin; specifically, in the relationships between humanity and God, humanity with each other, and humanity with the natural world. There seem to be concrete and physical effects, as well; but those are not (according to the Bible) the most devastating effects of sin. The apostle Paul, much later, comments that “… the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now” (Romans 8:22).

If, according to A’Kempis, we are to imitate Jesus; then what was Jesus’ attitude towards this (apparently awful, no-good, horrible) place?

First, holy God became human (John 1:14) – there was nothing incompatible with holy God becoming human flesh.

Next, Jesus liked being a human being (Hebrews 2:11b) and had a whole host of experiences that showed he enjoyed his life as a flesh-and-blood human being and did not spend his time mopping around because he was ‘stuck in a body,’ as our friend Thomas would have us believe.

Ultimately, it seems that A’Kempis was a product of his times (as are we all, of course) who was highly influenced by the Roman church. The Roman church, at that time, was very influenced by Plato and (again, very simplistically) tended to view the Bible through the lens of Plato’s dualism.

But here's The Thing: to imitate Christ is to embrace the physical world and the flesh of humanness, not to denounce or reject it. Christ came and redeemed the world, not to abandon it.

Perfection and Suffering

I was reading an old-school devotional book the other day, “Streams In The Desert.” It is arranged by days of the year, includes a small text of scripture, and a devotional thought. For the 2^nd of December, the text was a clause from Hebrews 2:10: “perfect through suffering.” The word, “perfect,” in Bible, doesn’t have the same force as the English use of the word. In Bible, the word merely means, “complete” or “aligned with the goal.”

But the text got me thinking about the nature of suffering as a passive spiritual discipline. Engaging in an active discipline of suffering CAN be appropriate: fasting, sacrificing, et al. The value of passive suffering is, of course, ignored in American Christianity. But Christendom has, for millennia, seen the usefulness of suffering to build character and form a healthy and thriving spiritual life. Why?

Suffering has several causes. 1) The natural consequences of our own foolish or sinful actions; 2) Attack of the demonic (e.g.: Job); 3) the corrupt and fallen nature of the world we live in.

In the first case, natural consequences, the world system is working just fine: we ought to feel pain and discomfort for wrong choices and actions. Suffering, like guilt, is a natural feedback mechanism of common grace that help to ‘perfect’ our character (1Peter 2:20).

In the second case, we are under attack and suffering unjustly (1 Peter 2:21-23). In this case, we are doing the right and good but we are still attacked and suffer from spiritual forces. Here, we can rejoice (James 1:2-4) because we should realize where the suffering is coming from and understand that it is actually a ‘reward’ – a back-handed compliment on our right choices and actions. As James says, this also works to ‘perfect’ us.

In the third case, we suffer unjustly or disproportionately due to the corrupt world. In the workplace; we do our job well. But unknown to us, someone is looking for a promotion. If we were made to look bad, it would improve their chances. We’re victimized and sinned against because of someone else’s greed or even the organizational culture. Rules that were intended to punish evil are twisted to punish good because the world system cannot discern good from evil and looks only at raw behavior. Again: you lose a promotion into a position where you would have performed very well to someone who sacrifices family on the altar of career. You are unwilling to do that, even though you would’ve done the job better. The other guy looks more “committed to the company,” but will eventually poison the organizational culture by destroying families and employees’ lives. I could draw out other examples from family, friendships, and community contexts.

All of this is not because you are ‘righteous’ or ‘persecuted;’ it is “just the way things work” in our world.

But in that last cause of suffering, we are being perfected; our character and spiritual life is being brought closer to an intended goal. This is because we realize that the suffering we experience (due to the world’s system) is largely a part of our poor affections. We see that we are tied to this world and hold on to it – after all, it’s what we know best. The world and what it says is still important to us, even when we know there’s another – better – way. We realize, when we suffer from ‘the way things are’ that we are too much “of” the world rather than merely being in the world.

As we see how messed up the world system really is, we should release our hold on it and become attracted to the alternative Jesus presented: the Kingdom of God. We start letting go of our old world-view and see a new world coming (1Corinthians 7:29-31). This is part of our perfection – giving up our affection for the world system (1John 2:15-17).

This is how suffering perfects us; it brings up the contrast and the decision point regarding our affections: either this world, or the Kingdom of God.