Exorcising the empty self (Part 2)
(Part 1)
My apologies to anyone who may have been frustrated by my delay in completing this series of posts.
To continue, J. P. Moreland has outlined some steps to cure the epidemic of empty self syndrome. The first was admitting the problem which I discussed in part 1 of this thread. The second is to choose to be different from the trend of the culture, even in our own evangelical subculture. In elaborating on this point, Moreland uses a phrase that I particularly like; eschewing intellectual flabbiness. One means proposed for doing this is to engage in discussions with people with whom you disagree. While it can be frustrating, the net result should be that you will be challenged to refine your own beliefs and your reasons for holding them, and be motivated to learn how better to argue your positions. The goal here is stretching your own intellect, not necessarily changing someone else’s view. A side effect of this, however, may be that unbelievers who are accustomed to Christians that merely parrot what they’ve heard from the pulpit are surprised to hear someone actually applying reason to their faith and its objects. This can lower intellectual barriers that may have kept the Gospel from being effectively communicated to these people.
A third requirement for casting out the empty self is changing our routines. The object of this step is to take note of times during the day that we are typically low in energy and, rather than allowing ourselves to sink into passivity, like collapsing on the couch and turning on the television, using those times to exercise our bodies. This seems paradoxical, to do something that requires energy when we feel like we have no energy, but strangely it works. I put it to the test Friday evening. When I came home from work I felt completely drained of energy and felt gravity pulling me inexorably toward the couch. Before lethargy took me completely, I put on my running shoes and went out for a three-mile run. I don’t know where the energy came from, but the run felt great and the result was, when I got back and cooled off, I felt rejuvenated and was able to spend the rest of the evening playing with my son and finishing a book.
Moreland specifically suggests using the energy we gain from exercise to refocus and read a challenging book.
Fourth, develop patience and endurance which are required for the hard work of stretching ourselves intellectually. It takes effort and time to work through a complex idea, particularly when we are encountering it for the first time. If we have not developed these attributes we will quickly weary and likely move on to a less challenging activity. Self-denial is an integral part of developing these traits, as we learn to ignore our natural tendency to distraction and become better able to focus our thoughts.
Dr. Moreland recommends two specific resources; Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline and Dallas Willard’s The Spirit of the Disciplines. Both of these volumes aid the reader to practice the spiritual disciplines, such as fasting, solitude and others, which Moreland encourages as the ideal means toward growing in patience and endurance.
If the term, spiritual disciplines is unfamiliar to you, don’t feel bad; I daresay it’s not something you’ll hear about in even most evangelical churches these days. To some degree that may be because of our aversion to anything that might suggest that salvation is a product of any effort of our own, i.e. works salvation, but in reality these disciplines are nothing more than processes by which we work off some of our dead flesh and strengthen our spiritual muscles. Our neglect of them is why, in my opinion, our Christianity is often little more than skin-deep.
The fifth step is self-explanatory; develop a good vocabulary. As I am inordinately fond of saying, “Words mean stuff.” The more words you know, the better able to express yourself precisely you will be and the more you will be able to glean from books and articles that challenge you. Make a point of noting words you come across that you aren’t familiar with and, if you haven’t a resource with which to look them up right then, keep a list and look them up later.
Finally, set some intellectual goals. The most important part of this step, I believe, is the idea of accountability. Moreland describes an ongoing relationship with a study partner with whom he establishes a reading program. They each read the same books and/or magazines and meet weekly to discuss them. If, like me, you tend to flounder in your reading, or just jump from book to book without finishing many of them, this seems like an ideal way to keep your reading goals on track and make it a more profitable exercise at the same time.
These steps are perhaps less specific than we might like. The reason, I suspect, is that there aren’t any quick fixes to the problem of the empty self. It requires determination and effort to alter, radically in many cases, our overly passive lifestyles.
I’d like to point out, in case there’s any confusion, that the oft-used term passivity in this discussion refers largely to intellectual passivity. Thus, there’s no contradiction in citing our hurried and busy lifestyles as part of the problem while claiming that we are too passive. We are carried along by our daily frenzy of activities with very little required of our minds.
On a final note, the empty self is not, obviously, merely a Christian phenomenon. The cultural influences that have turned us into vegetables have acted equally on Americans of all religious persuasions. Dr. Moreland wrote his book largely from the concern that the academia was overwhelmingly secular and the Christian intellectual was an endangered species relative to days gone by when, as he quotes an unnamed historian, “the church could still out-think her critics.”
The difference for us is that our Biblical worldview compels us to love God not only with our hearts and our souls, but with the minds that he has given us. I believe that not just the university, but our local churches suffer from a lack of intellectually challenging material that goes beyond the familiar phrases and the latest Christian fads. Theology, for example, is often viewed as a “turn-off” in our trend toward “seeker-friendly” churches and so our people continue on a milk diet when we need to be maturing to spiritual food.
These steps, summarized here from J. P. Moreland’s book Love Your God with All Your Mind, can help to banish our empty selves and replace them with selves who are alive and growing in every facet of our being as God means us to be.
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