Features
After seven years of producing Conversations: A Forum for Authentic Transformation, the editors felt it was past time to devote an issue to, well, transformation.
Even after a couple of decades in the limelight, this topic remains relevant and controversial. Just yesterday I was sitting with a friend at a restaurant talking about everything from our families to the Atlanta Falcons. (Perhaps it was the Falcons that made me think about transformation.) When I mentioned how we change in the context of spiritual growth, my friend surprised me by stating flatly, “I don’t think that it [transformation] is possible.”
Now this was not an unplugged friend. He is well trained as a counseling psychologist and a practical theologian. He has pastored several churches, taught in a conservative seminary, and is a gifted teacher in the area of psychotherapy. So I asked him to repeat what he had said.
“I don’t think it is possible for people to transform, to actually become like Jesus. Sorry, but I don’t.”
Hmmm.
As my friend offered evidence for his point, I began to examine my own life. The lyrics to a song from the early days of Christian rock became the background music as he spoke: “If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” After his evidence, my personal examination, and the melody stopped, my left brain began to recount statistics. These statistics detail how Christians and non-Christians look so much alike in categories like divorce rates, domestic violence, charitable contributions, and pornography downloads.
It hit me that this friend and Dallas Willard may be singing a similar song (with slightly different endings). While Dallas strongly believes that real change does happen, they both have been struck by the fact that non-transformation is the elephant in the sanctuary.
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DEAR READER,
Like any group or organization, the staff of Conversations Journal has our own jargon. Some of them are original (like the way we respond to Gary’s jokes during conference calls) and some of them are lifted liberally from respected friends and colleagues. You’ll find one such phrase—“the elephant in the sanctuary”—frequently in the pages of this issue, and we have to admit that we stole it from Dallas Willard.
Both he and we use that phrase to refer to the issue of “non-transformation” in the body of Christ. This issue of Conversations not only aims to make that elephant a little more visible (and a little harder to ignore), we hope that it will provide examples and experiences of transformation that will refuse that elephant reentry. We, like you, desperately want change. We want to be transformed ever increasingly into Christlikeness. We know you do, too.
We extend the invitation, as we do in each issue of the journal, to join in the conversation, this time about how we change. We want to hear your stories. How have you seen change in your life? Where have you been frustrated by its absence? Where are you seeing Christ’s work take root within you? Your family? Your church?
The Christian spiritual journey is a response to God’s invitation to allow grace to transform us. Following the way of Christ, we live the Christian mystery and increasingly reflect the image of God. In his book Surrender to Love, David Benner describes the beginning of this journey as “an encounter with the living God. This encounter may be gradual or it may be sudden. But it will always involve a turning and an awakening.” The Bible records many
conversions or awakenings where God is met in a spectacular way. Generally, however, most involve a non-dramatic first encounter and recurring acts of returning.
Turning toward God suggests that God is the one who has made the first move. It is God who always takes the initiative—who first notices us, lays eyes of love on us, calls us by name, and invites us to join in the unitive fellowship of the Trinity. Our response to this invitation will be but a first step on a lifelong transformational journey of awakening and coming to know God experientially. It is journey of becoming our true self-in-Christ—a journey toward union with God.
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To appreciate the early Christian writers position on transformation it is helpful if the reader is sympathetic to the theological assumptions under which these writers worked. Early Christian writers operated under the assumption that God’s action in history (particularly the Incarnation), God’s teaching, and God’s being along with the practices of the Church (baptism and Eucharist) produced genuine knowledge that if applied properly (discernment) under the right circumstances (holiness of life) may affect personal transformation. This transformation encompassed the whole person—affective, intellectual, moral, and social. The Greek term most often used to describe this transformation was theosis, that is, deification. The choice of this term was deliberate and directly challenged pagan usage of apotheosis, in which human beings, particularly emperors, advanced to the rank of the divine. For the early Christians it was abundantly clear that human beings belong to the created order. As created, human beings remained finite whereas God was infinite.
Incarnation and Deification
Very early in the church’s reflection on scripture, the concept of deification was associated with the doctrine of the Incarnation. Athanasius’s formula, “the Word of God… became human so that we might become God” was one of the more famous examples. Athanasius reasoned that humans are most unlike God in the fact that they sin and die. Yet Christ became a human being in order to redeem humanity from sin and death. Consequently, in doing so, Christ makes humans Godlike, that is, deifies humanity. In addition, human beings, originally created in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26) lost their rootedness in that divine image because of sin. Athanasius taught that it was through the Incarnation that the image of God was renewed, “The Word of God came in his own person, in order that, as he is the image of the Father, he might be able to restore man who is in the image.” As such the Incarnation affirms the image character of humanity and opens up the possibility of our development/transformation into the likeness of God.
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I remember the first time I noticed that some people arrange their lives to see sunsets. It was summertime in the Gulf of Florida when the days were hot and the nights were balmy. During the day, crowds of people were out lying in the sun and playing noisily on the beach, but in the early evening the real sun lovers came out. These were the ones who planned their whole day around seeing the sunset; in the early evening they would emerge from their condos with beach chairs and maybe a glass of wine. They would position their chairs at the edge of the water and settle in as though they were awaiting the beginning of a much-anticipated movie or play. At first there was chatting, but as the sun sank lower in the sky, people would become quiet; couples would lean in closer to each other; children would stop their playing, and beachcombers would pause just to watch. As the sun hung low on the horizon, pregnant with color, and the cloud formations glowed from the inside out, a reverent hush would descend upon all who were gathered. In that fullness of time no words were necessary. It was enough just to be in the presence of such beauty.
Despite how hard we often tend to work at it, Christian spiritual transformation is not something we are either responsible for or able to do much about. It is God’s business. And we should be careful to keep our noses out of God’s business and mind our own.
Self-improvement spirituality is the offspring of the therapeutic culture of the late twentieth century and the spirituality culture of the opening decade of the twenty-first. It is far too narcissistic and willful to be of the Spirit. Getting our spiritual act together is not the point of Christ following. God is that point. Even checking to see how my transformation is going is a distraction that merely shifts my attention from God to myself. The self-preoccupation this involves gets in the road of seeing where God is actually at work—something we are seldom able to glimpse because God’s ways are not our ways. Have no doubt about it; God is at work making all things new in Christ. But the way God does this is much more like the mustard seed in the story Jesus told in the Gospels than the sort of triumphalistic stories we want to hear—and sometimes tell each other. It happens in the darkness beyond our sight, and it seems to take forever.
While God’s work in our depths is beyond our control, we can cooperate with it. We do this by making space for God and for the things that bring God to us and open us to God. One of the most transformational ways we can do this is by turning toward God, as we can, in openness and surrender.
This is where contemplation enters in. Contemplation is not merely a style of relating to God or the world that is suitable for those of a certain disposition or personality type. Contemplation is important for all of us who seek to make space for God. Contemplation is as basic as turning and looking.
Recall the story of Moses, the children of Israel, and the poisonous snakes in the wilderness. After many of them were bitten and started to die, God told Moses to create a bronze replica of the snake and hold it high on a rod, instructing people to look at it and be healed. In doing so, Moses illustrated the role of artist as healer—creating a work of art that others, by gazing on it, might experience a restoration of well-being and a renewal of life that has been lost. He also offered a prototype of the contemplation that has been encouraged by the cover art and guided meditation on it that has been part of each issue of Conversations to this point.
Stillness before God is essential for the deep encounter with self and God that forms the core of spiritual transformation. Our part is to make time and space for that encounter in stillness. Contemplation is an important way in which we can do this. Most essentially, it is simply being still before God in openness and trust and turning our attention from ourselves to God.
With this issue we end our regular involvement with Conversations. When we signed on to our respective roles at the launch of the journal, we made a commitment to support the project through its first seven years of development. That has happened, and we now look forward to turning our responsibilities over to others as we move on to new opportunities. Thanks be to God for grace and blessings received over the course of these seven years and fourteen issues. And blessings on those who now carry the journal forward. May we all continue to learn how to keep our focus on God and make space in stillness for the deep meeting of God and self that is the gift of our new life in Christ.
—David & Juliet Benner
A Note from the Editors:
We are grateful for the gifts and talents that David and Juliet have brought to the pages of Conversations over these past years. We are also blessed that Conversations will remain in dialogue with the Benners. In our upcoming issues, we will continue to hear their wisdom, through interviews with David and features on their upcoming projects. David will also continue on our masthead as one of the three executive editors, along with Larry Crabb and Gary W. Moon. Please join us in praying for and blessing the Benners as they pursue God by embracing new opportunities in their journey.
The early Christian writers were well versed in the metaphors of scripture. They explored these metaphors within the context of the overarching narrative of scripture and employed a variety of strategies to achieve their goal of an integrative reading. A basic element of the interpretative process was to determine reliable meanings of important words used in various contexts and genres.
Basil of Caesarea takes the opportunity in his Commentary on Psalm 1 to explore life as a way. Basil states:
We read in the Book of Psalms: “Blessed is the one who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor follows in the way of sinners.” Life has been called a “way” because everything that has been created is on the way to its end. When people are on a sea voyage, they can sleep while they are being transported without any effort of their own to their port of call. The ship brings them closer to their goal without their even knowing it. So we can be transported nearer to the end of our life without our noticing it, as time flows by unceasingly. Time passes while you are asleep. While you are awake time passes although you may not notice. All of us have a race to run, towards our appointed end. So we are all “on the way.” This is how you should think of the “way.” You are a traveler in this life. Everything goes past you and is left behind. You notice a flower on the way, or some grass, or a stream, or something worth looking at. You enjoy it for a moment, and then pass on. Maybe you come on stones or rocks or crags or cliffs or fences, or perhaps you meet wild beasts or reptiles or thorn bushes or some other obstacles. You suffer briefly then escape. That is what life is like. Pleasures do not last but pain is not permanent either. The “way” does not belong to you nor is the present under your control. But as step succeeds step, enjoy each moment as it comes and then continue on your “way.”[1]
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[1] Thomas Spidlik, Drinking From the Hidden Fountain: A Patristic Breviary. Translated by Paul Drake. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, 1994, 38.
If you were to walk into my office, you would find hanging on the wall Sieger Köder’s picture of Jesus kneeling before Peter, washing his feet. Almost each day this piece of artwork invites me into a deeper engagement with the question Jesus asked his disciples after washing their feet. Do you remember it?
“Do you understand what I have done for you?”
