by Doug Hammack
Continuing our discussion of sabbath-consciousness…
Sabbath Consciousness: Our Descriptive Selves (part 3)
This entry was posted in Sabbath Consciousness and tagged busyness, community, inner rest, inner voice, peace, peculiar people, sin, true/false self, value/worth. Bookmark the permalink.
1 Peter 2:9-10 (REPEAT FROM LAST WEEK)
But you…
You are a generation I have chosen.
You are a royal priesthood, a holy nation.
You’re a peculiar people; set apart with a mission…
To show forth the day and night difference God has made in you
• Christian spirituality is sick
• But that’s ok, it happens throughout history
• However, to live effectively in this generation, we have to take into account the state that things are in
• Ours is a generation seeking to return to healthy Christian spirituality
One of the indicators of sickness in our spirituality…
• Christian people tend to lose differentness Peter references in this text
• To use Jesus’ words…
salt loses its saltiness; light gets hidden under a bushel
• We live, work, raise kids w/ same value set that drives society
An authentic spirituality would draw onto a very different path…
• A road less traveled
• A path to becoming peculiar people; a tribe of priests
• A people who mediate the Divine to the earth
But our current Christian spirituality has not been drawing us in this direction
• we’ve been hijacked, hoodwinked, deceived
• so ours is a quest for an authentic form of Christian spirituality that will serve us and our children well
this has been our quest at NRCC…
the central organizing principle of life in God is the baptism of HS
• accessing the Divine presence w/in us is critical
• those parts of our souls previously filled w/ socially conventional instincts, filled w/ undigested hurts, illusory beliefs…
• we allow these parts of us to be baptized, infilled w/ HS
We’ve spoken about being more than people of the Book
• being people of the Inner Voice
• We teach our children that Jesus lives in their hearts
• That the HS is at our very center
• But our spiritual practices have sent us outside of ourselves to gain our bearings on how to live
• So we’ve talked about a spirituality that dismantles the noisiness of our outer layers of consciousness
• We’ve spoken of living lives centered on our Divine-Union selves
• Our “one with the Father” selves
• Our “in Christ and Christ in us” selves
• In short: listening to the Inner Voice
And now we’re talking about having the interior rest, peace, and space necessary to being in sync w/ that Inner Voice
• Sabbath-consciousness, that’s the term I used
• The rest referenced in Heb. 4
• In the fall we talked about two elements that carve out that interior rest and peace
• And last Sunday we introduced a third: how we think about our very selves
Last week, I introduced the idea that the way we think about ourselves is the same way people in our society think about themselves
And that sense of self, steals away inner peace
• It does so in our society…
• It also does for the majority American Christians who have become notably un-different, un-peculiar over these last few generations
• And this suffocating sameness as the world around us…
• This unhealthy Christian spirituality…
• steals away interior calm that is our heritage as followers of Jesus
• it keeps us living lives of doing, striving, driving, and pushing
I called that common version of self, “the descriptive self”
When we think of ourselves in categories of descriptors…
• occupation, marital status, nationality, gender, religion, race
• in accomplishments that distinguish ourselves from others
we set ourselves up for a life of striving, pushing, driving
we set ourselves on lives of constant struggle, constant busyness
Once we frame ourselves and one another in these descriptive categories, the struggle of life is set out for us
• The rest of our lives, our time, energy, and souls are spent struggling to attain, or to maintain, our descriptions
• We try all our lives to achieve descriptions of ourselves that are valued by society, by our family of origin, by our religious sect
• Our sense of worth and value is framed in these terms
• If we attain what those around us say is valuable, we are valuable
• If we miss out on what society says is valuable, we are not
And the precious few days we get on this earth…
The precious little bit of bandwidth we bring to bear on life…
…is spent trying to attain a description of myself
…a category of myself that the world reflects back to me is valuable, important, worthwhile
It never occurs to us that this sense of self is tyrannous and destructive
• It never occurs to us that this fundamental sense of self is steals away our peace, drives and pushes us to distraction
I broached the subject of value last week.
• Value, I said, is determined in our society by scarcity and envy
• When something is rare and scarce it is valuable
• And when we apply this socially normative scale of value, ours becomes a struggle to get our descriptive selves to be valuable
• We strive to distinguish our descriptive selves from the others
• We strive to be good, to be useful, to be important, to matter
And we saw through examples last week, that from the time we are born, there is a steady drumbeat enforcing this framework of value
• A blaring megaphone, constantly reinforcing that unless our descriptive selves shine…
• Unless we are a credit to our gender…
• Unless our work ethic causes us to stand out…
• Unless we hit the benchmarks of achievement…
Graduate by this time
Marry by that time
Own property by this time
Promoted at work by that time…
…unless we hit these benchmarks, our value is diminished
…unless we are born with some attractive trait, our value is diminished
…unless we compare favorably to other people’s descriptors
…unless our accomplishments make us stand out
…then our value is diminished
And the way this social system of values is set up…
• Not everybody can be on the top of the heap
• The system guarantees that we can’t all be valuable
• Some have to exist at the bottom to make the top the top
So the world has a built in drivetrain
• Everybody gets to run on the rat wheel
• Everyone has to keep going, striving
• Everyone has to keep buying the right stuff
• Everyone must move into better and better neighborhoods
• Everyone keep being slightly dissatisfied w/ their current lives
• And keep striving to get the slightly better life
…because if they don’t, the value of their very self will be lost
Today, I want to focus on how this toxic sense of value that grows from the soil of the descriptive sense of self affects our religion
• That makes our spirituality ineffective, even lethal and noxious
As I began 3 weeks ago, and reviewed just a moment ago…
• Our Christian spirituality is sick
• A) It is sick because we are on a rat wheel
It takes interior space to access the Divine
If we are driving, striving, rat-wheeling our ways through life…
Open interior space necessary to access the Divine is gone
But as long as we live in the culturally-dictated system of worth and value we were weaned and trained on…
• Not only will we be just like the rest of the world…
• Not only will we live on the rat wheel like everybody else…
• Not only will be we be very un-different, un-peculiar, un-priest-like…
…our very religion itself will become toxic
The very spirituality that is to help us transcend, will mire us down
Last week Michelle brought up in the discussion afterward…
• In the church, this system of value affects how we live in, or more accurately, do not live in spiritual community, spiritual friendships
Life is lived, in this system, paddling away to keep heads above water
• We’re driven to prop up our descriptive-self sense of worth…
• And church becomes one more place to seek out favorable comparisons
• And where better to do that, than in the area of sin
When I’m living out of my descriptive self, I am comparing my descriptors to yours.
• And a handy way to make myself feel good about myself…
• (or, particularly virulent way to make me feel bad about myself)
…is to compare my sin vs. yours
You have a really, really bad temper at your wife and kids
• Mine only comes out once in a while
• I compare favorably to you, so I’m ok
• I can feel good about that
Me feeling good about myself depends on somebody feeling bad
• People have to wish they could be doing as well as I am for my accomplishment or achievement to be important
• If no one else is wishing they sinned as little as I do, then what I’m doing is worthless
• comparison, contrast, someone up, someone down…
this is the way we judge life
this is the way we judge sin
this is the way we live out this sick, sick Christian spiritual life
consequently, it is in my interests for you to think I’m doing well
• and in my interests to keep it hidden when I’m not
• and since Romans tells us that all of us sin, every last one of us
• we start down the path of hypocrisy
• living for public consumption one way
• and living out our secret, private lives, another
• and these are good people!
• Wanting the life of God, people
• It’s not the people who are so sick, it’s the system of value
It makes our Christian spirituality very, very sick.
But there’s more…
Our system of value makes us busy, busy, busy in life
• Living on a rat wheel keeps from the internal rest, the Sabbath consciousness necessary to healthy spirituality
Our busyness makes our Christian spirituality very, very sick
And the combination of these two…
Hidden and secret lives
Busy, busy lives
• Kills off the experience of spiritual friendship
• We no longer walk the spiritual journey together
• We no longer mutually strengthen one another
• So divided, we our souls wither, dry up, and are vulnerable to whatever wisp of malevolence blows by
But wait, there’s more…
And this sense of self as descriptor makes our Christian spirituality is sick in another way as well…
When I inevitably find myself not the top dog in life’s comparisons…
• When my temperament, or personality, or family of origin, or life experience…
causes me to come out weaker than my opponents in life
• When I draw life’s short straw
• When I am rejected, ignored, despised, scorned, ridiculed
• It hurts me
When I am deprived the positive self-description I need…
The good feeling that accompanies coming out on top
• My sense of self, my sense of who I am, is injured
And when people are injured, they seek compensation
• My injured self feels it must be compensated for its injury
• I need a little feel-good, to make up for a heavy dose of feel-bad
• Reparations must be awarded me for getting life’s short stick
Something inside my injured self wants to balance out the score in life
• And a lot of what we call sin happens as our injured descriptive selves are seeking reparations
When we take on the role of the sinner, it is often because we have suffered some significant diminishment
• Some injury or loss registered to our descriptive selves
• So the descriptive self urgently seeks to protect itself
• The descriptive self is driven to find some measure of security, pleasure, or power to balance out the injury
And this inner urgency often manifests in what we call “sins”
• We put someone else down
• We diminish some other person
• We dominate someone
To bolster our descriptive self’s state…
• We lash out at the other descriptive selves around us
• We dominate our spouses
• We belittle our co-workers
• We pick at one another’s weaknesses
• We highlight in our own minds other people’s flaws and faults
To compensate for our descriptive self’s perceived indignity…
• We outdo some other person’s descriptor
• Or we downgrade or damage some other person’s descriptor
Reflect on the difficult interactions you’ve had over last few months…
• With a spouse, a child, a sibling, a coworker
• And see how much of that fight, that tension, that conflict…
• Had to do with some category of your descriptive self needing vindication
• Some category of self that needed to be compensated for a belittling injury
We are driven to come out top dog in our comparisons
• Because when we do, we start to feel better
• Even if we have to do something that we object to in its wrongness, we are driven to shore up our sense of self
And when we engage in these one-up interactions…
• we create in some other person that same sense of injury that motivated us to do wrong in the first place
• now this person needs compensation for injury we just inflicted
• They now need to turn the tables on some other person
• They now need to come out top-dog in some comparison
• Often they focus this need straight back at us
• Other times, exercise compensation on someone else
• They seek amends by belittling someone else
• They shore up their descriptive self by dominating someone else
• They accentuate someone else’s weakness
• They leverage some advantage over another
And a chain reaction is set up
• at an individual level, and at an international level
• one generation of persons or races or classes passes along a pattern of actions/interactions to the next
• In microcosm, we do in our families and friendships
…what whole groups of people do at an international level
and we call these interactions, “sins”
• we recognize that they are wrongs, they are offenses
• we call people who do them wrongdoers and we see these actions as human failings, human transgressions
but as much as we call them out as bad things
• as much as we teach our children not to do them and try our best to cap them off, to keep them in check
• as much as we try to modify our behaviors and try to do better
• try to be nicer people
• try to constrain this flood of offensiveness
• we are singularly unsuccessful in our efforts
and this is because, we keep right on promoting the sense of self and value from which these sins originate
people want to be good
• I meet a lot of people
• They’re not trying to be bad people
• They’re not trying to do the bad things that so often happen
• No, every person I know wants to be better than they are
• Wants to be noble and good and true
But every person I know was raised on a worldview that pretty much assures they’ll be this way
So the same rat wheel that drives us to social norms
The same suffocating clutches of normalness we talked about last week
• Also infects our religion, infects our spirituality
• We find ourselves trying to be the good people that Jesus followers are supposed to be…
• But all the while, we’re laboring with the same view of ourselves that everybody else in the world is infected with
• So how can we but be, amazingly un-peculiar
• Astonishingly, un-different
Our religion, while promising us something transcendent
• Becomes a thin veneer of religious behaviors and beliefs, spread out over a toxic view of self
• The same system of assigning value to self and others
…that beleaguers the world around us
But for Christians, it masquerades as something more
• It masquerades as spirituality that should awaken us to better
• That should help us transcend the world as we know it
• And that makes it all the more toxic
• Promising to be one thing…
• Luring us into depending on it to help us transcend
But failing us miserably
As long as we depend on comparison and contrast to define value…
As long as we define our worth on the basis of scarcity and envy…
As long as we live in a win-lose world of deficiency or deprivation…
As long as we define the struggle of life as striving against…
• Ours will be a heritage of disappointment, frustration, and injury…
A healthy Christian spirituality calls us to work for the kingdom of God
• To contend for peace, justice
• To look out for the poor, the oppressed, the downtrodden
But without a healthy spirituality, we go to the cupboard, and it is bare
• With only the tools of the society around us, our actions and motivations can be no different than theirs
• In fact, unburdened by the toxicity of religious hypocrisy, many in our society are doing better than we are
Healthy Christian spirituality is a journey of awareness into what already is
• The Divine life within us
• The true self orbiting around the indwelling presence of God
• We are not our descriptive selves
• We are our nature-of-God selves
Through the ancient practices
• Through the spiritual disciplines…
• Through the spiritual community…
• As we saturate ourselves in the truth of Jesus’ teaching…
• As we soak ourselves in the truth of those who have followed Jesus before us…
…we come to see ourselves in a truer light
…we come to transcend the descriptive self as our self-definition
And the ancient practices of healthy Christian spirituality awaken us to what is
• Make us aware of our truest identities
• Dismantle the illusory world of worth and value
• Dismantle the categories we identify with as our sense of self
Our true self is a relaxed self
• Our true self is a free self
• Our true self is a noble self
• Our true self is peaceful and saturated in Divine love
• Out true self is lived in a give/take dance w/ all that is noble, and good, and praiseworthy
Our true self sees the intrinsic worth of all human beings
• And the intrinsic worth of our selves
• The made-in-God’s image worth
Healthy Christian spirituality opens the eyes of our hearts
• Helps us see this truth, this way, this life
• All that is good, all that is beautiful, all that is noble
• This is the vision of the followers of Jesus
• This is the vision of transforming spirituality
• This is the promise of the ancients
• This is the experience of those who have walked the ancient paths
And this is what you should expect of your spirituality
what you should look for as you follow the ancient practices
I’ll pick up here next week…