Category: Blog

One Day of Silence and Solitude | Part 3

It’s coming up now on 7:30. I’m hungry. Maybe I should fast from food and feast on the nourishment my soul is enjoying right now. The word “should” is my tip-off. Yielding to shoulds that compete with holy desire is legalism; it creates pressure and pride. And, the other side, yielding to desires on the naïve assumption that the new covenant has eliminated all wrong desire is dangerous. But pleasures of any sort not explicitly forbidden that can be enjoyed in the conscious presence of God are holy and good, and should, in the best sense of that word, be enjoyed. 

Dinner was good. I enjoyed the pleasure of eating. If I enjoyed cigars, I might light up right now. No, I guess I wouldn’t. Room 419 is a non-smoking room. And I don’t understand the appeal of cigars anyway, no more than I understand the appeal of a cold beer. Wine, yes. Cigars and beer, no. 

It’s a little past 9. I’m tired. A few closing reflections that I sense bubbling to the surface and off to bed. 

• Two thoughts from Augustine come to mind. Both were mentioned yesterday at the conference. God, Augustine wrote, “increases our desire, which in turn enlarges the capacity of our soul, making it able to receive what is to be given to us.” That happened today. Here’s what I now realize more clearly. As desire awakens, false satisfaction yields to true emptiness, and confident hope deepens. No legitimate desire exists without its object, without the source of its full satisfaction. God would have it no other way. 

Augustine also wrote that, in order for God to grant my true desire, I must be emptied of all satisfaction of lesser desires. “God means to fill you with what is good; so cast out what is bad. The vessel must be emptied of its contents and then be cleaned” before it can be “made fit for the new thing.” This one day of silence and solitude seemed to provide the courage I needed to face sins I often pass off as petty but which have sunk me into a deep ditch. But also, the courage has come to face those sins meaningfully, but not, in Alexander Whyte style, obsessively, and in- stead to look up to my Good Samaritan. That’s what brings the hope that spiritually forms. 

• I’m glad I didn’t listen to more of the Lewis conference. I’m sure the quality sustained. But my limited capacity couldn’t digest one more prime rib dinner. Today allowed me to slowly reflect on all that had so richly nourished my soul, one bite at a time. I think a lesson has been learned. Reading great books and listening to great thinkers can be overdone. Convictions can remain borrowed and never embraced. Silence and solitude gives the Spirit opportunity to transform already believed truth into personal, passionate conviction. 
• I will not return home tomorrow a new man. I became a new man 55 years ago when I trusted Christ. But I will return home more confident that the Spirit is growing me into that new man, that I am (often invisibly) becoming more of who I already am. Such is the mystery of sanctification. I’m more aware that Christ is not a piece of apparatus I can use for my satisfaction, but that He himself is my satisfaction; and that spiritual formation is a slow, often invisible process. In George MacDonald’s words, “With His holy influence, with His own presence (the one thing for which most earnestly we cry), He may be approaching our consciousness from behind, coming forward through regions of our darkness into our light, long before we begin to be aware that He is answering our request, has answered it, and is visiting His child.” 

My eyelids are growing heavy. I climb into bed with one thought dominant above all others: God, all three persons, is self-communicating. It is His nature to fill every space that has been emptied to receive Him. One day of silence and solitude has, I think, created a little more space. I look forward to another day. 

It’s now several weeks later. I just re-read what I wrote. As one discerning reviewer put it, “That’s the noisiest description of silence I’ve ever read.” I agree, sort of. I’ve experienced seasons of silence and solitude that have quieted my distracted mind and opened my closed heart and stilled my restless soul, seasons where the ineffable reality of God’s presence has lifted my into His unseen but, for a few dazzling moments, richly felt world of perfect love, satisfying community, and joy-filled encounter. 

That’s one kind of silence and solitude, comparable perhaps to an orgasm shared with one’s beloved spouse. There’s another kind, equally valuable and equally important and, I think, far more common. What I’ve just described is perhaps akin to the day before an evening of satisfying sex, a day spent in thoughtful, deliberate, reflective interaction with the seeking lover, a day that both arouses longing for what you know is coming and sustains you with enough hope to keep you faithful until another un- orchestrated, unpredictable, unmanageable taste of eternal reality – an orgasm of the soul – is given. Looking back, I think of my day in room 419 as foreplay. And that’s a good thing. 

One Day of Silence and Solitude | Part 2

One Day of Silence and Solitude | Part 1

I didn’t want to write this article. My inner world is too noisy. I depend on my distractions too much. How could I write about silence and solitude when I know so little about either? Then the Spirit spoke: “Spend a day with us, alone and quiet, and journal what happens. Let that be your article.” 

So that’s what I’ve done. I’ve written what follows, in journal style, to myself. But you’re welcome to listen in. 

______________________________________________________________________ 

It’s now 8:15, Saturday morning, June 30, 2007. I’m sitting at the desk in room 419 of the San Diego Marriott Mission Valley Hotel, a day and a half into my first ever C.S. Lewis Institute conference. 

I returned to my room yesterday afternoon by 5 o’clock after listening to five thoughtful, provocative presentations Thursday evening and all day Friday, exhausted, stirred, my mind swimming in deep waters and my heart drinking in huge gulps of the life-giving liquid. My soul was full but my stomach empty. So I had dinner then returned to my room and read 30 daily reading from Walter Hooper’s The Blessings of Heaven, a well selected anthology of 365 excerpts from the pen of Lewis. Without clearly deciding to, I skipped the evening session and fell fast asleep by 8:30. 

I awoke at 5:30 with no need for the alarm, and laid in bed long enough (about 15 minutes) to hear the Spirit (I sincerely believe it was Him) suggest the idea to my mind of skipping all today’s meetings and spending the whole day in silence and solitude. The quiet suggestion felt like a gentle command that I could freely and with delight obey. So I decided to do what I was told, with regret for missing more provocative teaching but with curiosity about what the Spirit had in mind. 

By 6:30, I had been writing for perhaps 40 minutes putting on paper whatever I was aware of within myself. The time ahead felt like an adventure into unfamiliar terrain. I’ve never before done what I’m setting out to do today. I’ve spent days with the Lord and many parts of days, but never with the Spirit – directed plan to journal whatever develops as I sit still in God’s presence for one entire day, and to journal throughout the day as whatever happens unfolds. I felt a little nervous. Will anything happen? Will I recognize whatever the Spirit is doing if it’s different from what I’m wanting? The choice is clear: obey or disobey. Jump in the water or turn on the TV. Obeying seems exhilarating, though in a quiet, dangerous sort of way. 

Time to begin; the clock announced 6:47. Resolutions came first. Whether I’d fast after breakfast, I wasn’t sure. Right then, a decision to skip lunch and dinner seemed manipulative, techniquey, something like my effort to get it right so God shows up and cooperates with my hopes. I decided to not turn on the television. The fact that Tiger Woods is not competing in the Buick Open this weekend and that Wimbledon finals (hopefully a Federer/Nadal rematch) are next weekend makes the decision easier. I was off to a slow start. Oh well. 

It’s now 8:15. I’m showered, dressed, breakfasted, during which I read 6 chapters in Daniel. No newspaper was another decision. Funny. My mind is fixed on the oatmeal, skim milk and fruit I just ate. I can discern a hint of pride. I would have preferred bacon and eggs. But no, I want to deny myself to make room for God, so I ate what was good for me, not what I wanted. Is the day starting? Will a day of silence and solitude slide into nit-picky obsessiveness about subtle imperfections? Lewis warned against that. But Calvin taught that we need to see our inner self in all its ugliness in order to see God in all His beauty. But didn’t he say it works the other way round, too? It would be a nice switch, at least for me, to see beauty first and then selfishness. I guess that’s not my call to make. 

I’ve been sitting quietly, wondering how to proceed. Do I just sit? Comfortably? Uncomfortably? I find myself reflecting on the Spirit’s selection of this day. Why now? It all seems rather planned. Silly thought. Of course it is. My mind drifts to a meeting with my ministry team several months ago. We all agreed I was running on near empty and was in critical need of re-fueling, soon and regularly. Plans were made. I felt hopeful, and grateful for my family and colleagues. A month later, I felt freely compelled to open myself to an audience with a level of authenticity I had never before reached. To 300 people at a spiritual formation conference, I disclosed five recently identified struggles in my life. One, I was living on borrowed convictions, resolutely reading spiritual giants hoping that their passionate beliefs would ignite the dying embers of mine. Two, I was deliberately too busy, working to avoid feelings of emptiness, to numb the ache of a dry soul. Three, I was defining myself by a reactive identity, depending on (and quietly demanding) affirmation in order to see myself as having something worthwhile to say. Four, my relational interactions were too often energized by contrived compassion, by a choice to care that wasn’t backed up by any felt passion to care. And five, I felt myself in a precarious place, terrified of easily threatened self- sufficiency. The lack of nearness to God left me on my own, and worried that my resources would be exposed as pathetically inadequate. I didn’t see that possibility as an inevitable mercy. 

Looking back on it now, as I sit in room 419, I think I was facing, as one theologian whose name I forget put it, “the shock of possible non-being.” That terror is awakening new levels of desire for God, and new levels of repentance for turning to other sources for the experience of being, for a legitimate sense of personhood. 

A trickle of excitement is dripping into me: Maybe the Spirit is responding to my renewed appetite to know the Father, to be more like Jesus. I was stirred yesterday and the evening before in ways, perhaps, that only rich community can provide. But I sense – could it be? – that I’m being invited now to meet my Father in ways that can only (or at least can best) happen in silence and solitude. 

Immediately, the fear of disappointment looms. I disguise it as cynicism. It shows itself in jadedness, indifference, lethargy. I feel like taking a nap, like sulking in comfort. Larry, shake yourself. Remember what you believe. I do believe in a self- communicating God who will stop at nothing to give me Himself. He just seems to go the long way around. I must surrender my expectations, all of them, of what it would feel like for Him to reveal Himself. I must give up my timetable and follow His. And that, if history proves anything, means waiting. 

The digital clock by the bed tells me it’s 9:38. I’ve done nothing so far but think and write. My current Bible time has been given to Daniel. I’ve brought with me a wonderful little commentary whose author seems more concerned to hear God speak to his soul than to help him figure out dates. I want to read and just think for a while. 

The time flew. It’s now nearly 11. I’m getting the idea that I’m to think about how to live near God in a world that’s far from him. Daniel’s resolve to not defile himself with the king’s food hit a chord. The other commentary I bought, the one that seems more intent on pushing one eschatological view than drawing me nearer God, thinks Daniel was refusing to eat food already dedicated to idols. Perhaps. But I wonder if Daniel felt the need to draw the line somewhere, and God’s written concern to never profane sacredness made Daniel choose the matter of food as a way of expressing a heart that belonged to Jerusalem, not Babylon. Where have I drawn a line? Have I become insensitive to subtle ways in which I let myself be squeezed into the world’s mold? I bought 2 new shirts last week. Why? I already have plenty. Am I obsessively nit-picking again? Or is the Spirit leading me closer? 

I was struck, too, when Daniel said to Nebuchadnezzar “As you were lying there, O king, your mind turned to things to come…” I never stopped there before. Nebuchadnezzar was worried, the way I sometimes fret over what may lie ahead. Reinhold Neibhur called it a “darkly conscious reality of the insecurity of his existence.” I guess it all depends on my goal. If my goal is a blessing-filled life till l die, a life protected from the big awful things, then living for that goal, depending on it for my soul’s well-being, will make me nervous. 

Neibhur went on to say, “Man is tempted by the basic insecurity of human existence to make himself doubly secure.” That’s exactly what Nebuchadnezzar did. After hearing that the statue in his dream with the gold head (which was him) would collapse, he builds a whole statue of gold, a real one, and requires everyone to bow before it. That’s when Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego got in trouble. Am I doing the same thing? Have I built a gold statue – my plans, my dreams, my hopes – and required others to cooperate? And if they don’t, into the fiery furnace with them. Is that my attitude? Who have I written off? I think I’m more like the proud king then the three faithful Jews. 

I thought, too, of how God kept after the great king until he fully repented of self- sufficiency, until he gave up self-protection as a way of life. God loved that man, a pagan king. Does He love Iran’s president? The leader of North Korea? The politicians in our country who I disdain? The former friends I’ve fallen out with, the ones I’m waiting on to repent? 

He treated Nebuchadnezzar severely – 7 years of living like an animal – but it was all to His loving purpose. How did Irenaeus put it? “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.” God, do what needs to be done to make me fully alive, so I can be an ingredient in the divine happiness. In this moment, I feel that prayer. 

It’s coming up on noon. When I’m thinking about all these thoughts from Scripture, I’m stirred, alive, excited. But within minutes, seconds, of putting down my Bible and pen, the passion dissipates, and I’m back to mundane emotions. I wish I had an Isaiah 6 experience or a burning bush revelation. Isaiah and Moses charted a direction for their whole lives based on those epiphanies. But I’m still in room 419, feeling very ordinary. I take some comfort from Peter who saw the Lord transfigured and soon after denied Him. Maybe the goal is not to feel differently, but simply to ask, What can I do right now that would bring pleasure to God? That feels like a shift from demand to surrender, from narcissism to worship. 

Search for the Center, Living the Examined Life

It was Harvard psychiatrist Armand Nicholi who observed that thinking people, although in agreement with Socrates that the unexamined life is not worth living, seem to believe that the examined life is too tough to live. Let this brief article represent a call to Christians everywhere, but especially to Christian counselors, to never be satisfied with ideas that obscure rather than engage life’s toughest questions. 

For some fortunate people, such as my mother-in-law, simple faith is real. It doesn’t paper over terrifying confusion. It simply sees no need to wrestle with it. Its realness is evidenced by the quality of life lived – sacrificial, serving, sincere, and straight-forward. I have no doubt she was given a standing ovation when she entered heaven’s doors. Her wisdom was deep in its innocence, not in a fought- for simplicity that survived complexity. She was good to be with and richly impactful in her own way. But she was not the kind of person to whom you would bring inner life troubles or struggles with irresistible temptations. 

Most of us, I suspect, unlike my saintly mother-in-law, live on the surface of life because we’re afraid to look beneath. We manage surface reality well enough with Christian platitudes that we mistake for embraced doctrine, with Christian principles that serve as recipes for arranging life to our liking, with Christian passions sustained more by gushes of spiritual hype than by fire-tested convictions. Those with the courage to rip away the comfortable veneer and face the fearsome mysteries in the center come up with world views ranging from Bolshevism to hedonism and religious philosophies stretching from liberal Christianity to radical Islam. Convinced evangelicals like myself too easily become cultural evangelicals who use truth to keep tough questions comfortably tucked away beneath a well managed and relatively satisfying life. The result is a Christian appearance with little of Christ’s power. 

When evangelical Christianity is reduced to a tidy formula that prefers the power of control over uncertain contingency and hides mystery beneath manipulation, an understanding of Christian counseling emerges that is not Christian at all. Technique nudges aside relationship, soul-to-soul connection is thought to be achieved with empathy skills, clinical interpretation masquerades as spiritual discernment, re-arranging the flesh to relieve symptoms obscures the absence of spiritual formation, and a proliferation of counseling models and methods leads either to muddled eclectism or prejudiced loyalty to one preferred therapeutic position. 

My call is this:

THINK! ASK QUESTIONS! WONDER! EXPLORE! SEARCH FOR THE CENTER!

If Christianity is true, it can handle the assault. If the God revealed in Jesus Christ exists, if He is the behind-the-scenes author of the Bible, then troubled, curious, sincere, desperate seekers who look deeply into their own souls, who long for quality relationships that never quite develop, who open their eyes wide enough to be overwhelmed by world conditions and human suffering will, as psychiatrist John White once put it, “be destroyed then remade by the Bible”. 

Paul told Timothy to continue in what he believed and was convinced of (II Timothy 3: 14). Ask whether what you believe about life and maturity is meaningfully rooted in the biblical story. Does our counseling encourage others to tell with their lives the story that God is telling in the Bible, the story that Jesus told with His life? 

Explore what you and your clients most deeply fear. Nothingness? Isolation? Death? Pointlessness? A life that is no more than another wave splashing on the shore of history then receding forever? Punishment? Hell? Consider whether what we label as psychological defenses in fact serve to keep at bay, not merely the wounds of childhood but far more the terrors of existence, and therefore get in the way of the search for the center, the search for core truth that could set us free to live the way our Creator designed us to live. I wonder if we know how far short we fall of that design. Only those who realize how far short they fall of relational glory are lifted high into relational grace. 

Search through the rubble of fear and short-falling for the center of desire. Examine what C.S. Lewis believed, that no desire exists without provision for its satisfaction. Be humbled by the awareness that you long for what you cannot manage, for what no blessing from God can fully satisfy. Embrace the truth that it is God Himself that you want and that as a Christian saved by grace you can know Him best by telling His story with your life, by relating to others in a way that reveals His glorious character and releases His love into their souls. 

Make it your driving ambition to discover the story He is telling. To do less is culpable laziness and proud indifference. To search for the center of His story’s plot indulges your deepest desire, to know Him, to know His ways, to know His love. 

Let your search lead you to ask the most important question a Christian can ask:

Am I asking God to help me tell my story as I want it told or am I trusting God to empower me to tell His story by how I relate to Him, to others, and to myself? 

To ask that question is to live the examined life. And living the examined life is what most qualifies you to offer counseling that is truly Christian. Knowing God and telling His story captures you with the beauty of God and releases you to enjoy what you were created to enjoy, God Himself and your calling to glorify Him by revealing Him, to become, as Lewis put it, “an ingredient in the divine happiness”. 

My call to myself and to you:

search for the center.