Intentionality Of The Heart

To walk up to the Homeboy Industries building in the shadow of Los Angeles City Hall is to find yourself in the middle of a community with surprising similarities to a monastery. There, in gang-neutral territory, former gang members dressed in various colored T-shirts with the slogans “Jobs, not Jails” and “Homeboy Industries” sweep the sidewalks, step aside to let you pass, and say, “Hello, Ma’am” or “Hello, Sir.” As you open the door, you are greeted by a 20-something male receptionist who smiles and speaks to you more politely than the teen who lives next door to you ever has.

One  reason Rebecca found trusting God so difficult was that Christians had tried to move her out of grieving by saying, “But you have another child,” and “God wanted your son in heaven,” and even, “God thinks you’re strong enough to handle this.” She said to me, “I don’t think I like their god.” She was not so much angry as she was confused.

A week after I turned 50 years old, I encountered those elephants. I had a heart attack. At the emergency room, I was quickly hooked up to an IV, an EKG machine, and an oxygen mask. The cardiac nurse asked what my pain level was. “Nine!” I gasped.

God wants to marry us, soul and body. Not only that, but the Love that brought us forth from the raw materials of earth wants to woo us with the sweet Breath of Life into a full and complete conjugal union, making us “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4, KJV).

One of the most memorable characters in Toni Morrison’s Beloved is Baby Suggs, an old woman who has cared for scores of escaped slaves as they tried to make new lives for themselves on the “free” side of the Ohio River.

Baby Suggs is “an unchurched preacher, one who visited pulpits and opened her great heart to those who could use it.”1 Every Saturday she makes her way into the woods where she summons those who have suffered to join her in a ritual of recovery and gratitude. Her words to this beloved community go right to the heart of their pain: she calls them to take a long, close look at their bodies—abused and despised as they have been—and to love them.

Contemplation and action. Justice and prayer. Centering and caring. Finding and seeking. How do these two aspects of the spiritual life work together? Can they work together? Are they necessarily separate? Or do they reinforce one another and work together for transformation?

Most of our adult lives Felicia, my spouse, and I have been doing our best to live in a way that balances these dualities. Felicia is a natural contemplative; I am more of an activist. Felicia’s inclination is to stay in her cell and sit in silence; my bent is toward being with people and working on projects. We have tried growing in each area in the midst of everyday life. We have come upon no solutions; what we have found, instead, is a sense of direction. But first, I’ll offer a little history for contextualizing what we recommend.

TRANSITIONING: ALONE AND TOGETHER

When Felicia moved to Denver to attend Iliff School of Theology and to pursue our relationship, she needed a place to live. During her search, she found out about a unit available at Shepherd’s Gate, an intentional Christian community in downtown Denver. Felicia had lived in cities before—Orlando, San Francisco, and Portland—but never in quite as diverse a neighborhood nor with other families in “community,” a term she associated with people sleeping on cots in one big room and sharing toothbrushes. While Felicia didn’t know what to expect, she took the leap and enjoyed it, and we continued to live there after we were married.

Even so, Felicia had previously been exposed to lifestyles different from her own. Her father and mother worked for many years in international development, and her father helped found Heart to Honduras, a holistic ministry that works with villages near San Pedro Sula, Honduras. By this time in life (late 20s), Felicia had been to Central America many times for lengthy periods. Also, she would soon take a position at Inner City Health Center, a medical facility for mostly uninsured people in one of Denver’s least affluent neighborhoods. So she felt comfortable with other ways of living and people who looked and spoke differently from her.

Also in my 20s, I, on the other hand, experienced quite a shock transitioning to living among people different from me. Having grown up in a small Kansas town, I had limited exposure to diverse communities. As a junior at Friends University in Wichita, I became familiar with Tony Campolo and Eastern University, as well as John Perkins and the Christian Community Development Association movement. This set me on a trajectory to attend Eastern University and live with other students in West and Southwest Philadelphia. It was a seismic shift to live in the Kingsessing neighborhood—ten square blocks of pavement that is home to 80,000 people, broken up into African Americans (90 percent), Asians (5 percent), Hispanics (3 percent), and those of other ethnicities (2 percent). (I was one of the “others.”) At the time Kingsessing experienced one of the highest infant mortality rates in not only Philadelphia but also the United States. In short, Kingsessing said to me, “Welcome to the real world.”

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Writing about how I have intentionally sought to integrate contemplation, compassion, and the struggle for justice into my life is rather daunting. I feel a little like Gandhi must have felt when a troubled mother brought her daughter to see him about her addiction to sweets. He supposedly asked the mother to come back in three weeks. She did so. This time the spiritual master took the young girl aside and explained to her in a few simple words the harmful effects of eating too many sweets. Thanking Gandhi for giving her daughter such good advice, the mother asked him, “Still I would like to know why you did not say those words to my daughter three weeks ago when I first brought her to you?” He explained, “Three weeks ago I was still addicted to eating sweet foods myself!”[1]

Even though I have been a Christ-follower for over four decades, my struggle to integrate the personal and social dimensions of discipleship continues. There are several reasons for this. To begin with, I live within a social context of immense suffering and injustice in the Republic of South Africa. Even though, as a nation, we have witnessed the birth of democracy, human misery abounds. The tragic gap between the haves and have-nots remains one of the widest in the world. Corruption and violent crime permeate all levels of society. Rape statistics involving women and children reveal a country that is in danger of losing its soul. Within this context I am constantly searching for ways in which my life can contribute towards the common good. Often I feel quite overwhelmed by the challenges that lie all around.

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First, a confession: I gulped when the editorial team assigned me this article. They spoke bluntly: “Every church lobby should have a sign that says, ‘Go downstairs for change; stay upstairs to stay the same.’” When I winced, they explained that while real change happens in twelve-step programs, there seems to be a lack of change happening in the sanctuary. Finally one editor said, “We want to focus on the fact that there’s real honesty and acceptance in the basement (where Alcoholics Anonymous, otherwise known as A.A., meets) as well as an understanding that transformation has to be worked out.”

I’ve believed these things for decades, but I never expected a Christian magazine to address this topic. So hold on to your hat while we examine the grace-drenched content, approaches, and methods of the twelve-step movement that facilitate a radical change of life for narcotics users and neurotics, online gamers and embezzlers, and those who manage pain by eating too much, drinking too much, or chasing women. In a twelve-step program’s safe atmosphere, these people and many others come face to face with their inner selves and throw those selves on the mercy of God day after day.

Grace-Drenched Content

A.A.’s philosophy that alcoholism is a disease and that alcoholics need to be restored to sanity has been hotly debated for decades, but it has nonetheless worked for transformation. This approach conveyed a practical sense of grace that was otherwise absent in a 1930s culture in which being an alcoholic was a public disgrace,[1] much like being a sex offender is in today’s culture. A.A. acknowledged that alcoholics, in their heart of hearts, did not want to abuse alcohol. It lifted the blame and shame enough to provide hope that healing could occur. It empowered alcoholics to believe it possible to be freed from alcoholism as their destructive pattern of pain management and their source of comfort, companionship, and celebration. This dynamic of grace (encompassing both pardon and empowerment) also played itself out in twelve step’s approach to God and to community. In that era of denominations competing and condemning each other, A.A. offered God “as we understand him”[2] to all faiths and even those with no faith. It gave people a place to start without insisting on any doctrine.

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[2] The actual Twelve Steps use the wording, “God as we understood him.” See http://www.aa.org/en_pdfs/smf-121_en.pdf

David Kinnaman (along with Gabe Lyons) is the author of unChristian, a book that reports and analyzes the Barna Group’s research on what 16- to 29-year olds who are on the outside of Christianity really think of Christians. After interviewing thousands of young people and listening to their stories, Kinnaman found that the church has more than a superficial image problem; often outsiders’ perceptions of Christianity reveal “a church infatuated with itself.” For example, one young person made this blunt observation: “Christianity has become bloated with blind followers who would rather repeat slogans than actually feel true compassion and care. Christianity has become marketed and streamlined into a juggernaut of fearmongering that has lost its own heart.” From the research, Kinnaman came up with nine recommendations for new directions Christians need to take. (To learn what they are, read on.) One of his conclusions was this: “It comes down to this: we must become Christ-like again…. In many ways a focus on spiritual formation fits what a new generation is really seeking.” This conclusion made Conversations eager to hear more.

Jan Johnson: In unChristian, you say that in many ways a focus on spiritual formation fits what a new generation is seeking.[1] Why do you say that?

David Kinnaman: A new generation is looking for a Christianity of depth and significance rather than “spirituality lite.” Our research points out that four out of five American teenagers spend at least six months in a Christian church, experiencing and testing what we have to offer. They leave because they find it boring, unintellectual, and out of touch with reality. We give young people just enough of Jesus to be bored, but not enough to be transformed. When so many try it and drop out, we have to ask if this is the best we can do.

To preview articles on how the spiritual formation community can respond, please click here for Jamin Goggin’s article and here for Alan Fadling’s article.

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Mirrors reflect reality. In our spiritual journey God uses many things to mirror to us the reality of our heart. The book unChristian is a mirror (a full-length mirror, at that) to the Christian church. It reflects not only external realities but also the truth of our heart. As the church, we are called to notice all the details that we find displayed on the full-length mirror in front of us.

Adrian Van Kaam offers three distinctions regarding how we might respond to exposure of our heart: willlessness, willfulness, and willingness.[1] When the mirror reflects hypocrisy, lack of care, hostility toward others, ignorance, polarization, and judgment, those who are will-less see these blemishes and despair of such reality. They feel hopelessly incapable of enacting any change. They may even avert their eyes from the mirror and convince themselves that what they saw was an illusion.

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