The Table Video

There is a gap in our theological and pastoral training between understanding the content of the faith and the praxis of spiritual formation, a gap that needs to be bridged by an understanding of the process of how we grow in Christ. Spiritual Theology is the theological discipline that attempts to fill that gap by integrating (1) the Scriptural teaching on sanctification and growth with (2) observations and reflections (an empirical study) of the actual Spirit’s work in the believer’s spirit and experience. Here is where spiritual formation and Christian psychology come together to understand the process of growth for the church. John Coe (Biola University) comments on why spiritual formation and psychology need one another.

Transcript:

Well, it’s good to be here. You know, I wanna, this is a little bit more of a scholarly conference, so we’re gonna be reading papers, so I wanna make sure that you have a paper. It should be in the packet. Does anybody not have a paper? Just raise your hand. Just wanna make sure. And so, Dave, you can pass that around. So does anybody need a paper? Yeah, go ahead. [attendee coughs] I just want to, I wanna thank the Center for Christian Thought for having put this on.

As I looked at all of the papers that have come together, it really is an amazing array of and people interested in spiritual formation, psychology, theology. I run a section at the Evangelical Theological Society, and I wish some of those kinds of papers would be part of our ETS, and so, I, there’s so much good here that is taking place today. Well, let’s begin.

The title is Spiritual Theology as Pastoral Theology for the Church: Why Theology and Psychology Need One Another. A pastor once confided to me, this was in a D.Min. class. That’s not a demon class. That’s a [audience chuckles] Doctor of Ministry class, and here’s what he said. Something like, “You know, I know how to preach. “I know how to teach. “I know how to administrate a church, “but when people actually come up “with their spiritual problems and say “that they don’t pray enough or they don’t love God enough “or that they’re struggling with anger, “and then, I quote to them the Scriptures that well, “they pray more, love God, put off anger, “they usually don’t say something like, “‘Oh gosh, I never thought of that before.’ [audience chuckles] “Or, ‘Oh my gosh, “‘I’m transformed by those words!’

“What more they say is, ‘I know that, Pastor. “‘So what’s wrong with me?’ “The truth is I don’t know what to say to them from there. “I’m stuck.” And so, I don’t think the problem is unique to this pastor. Those of us who preach would love to see transformation just by the speaking of the Word, “Put off anger,” and the individual would say, “Oh my gosh, it is off!” I think that’s a fantasy.

So in this paper, I wanna bring up the great need in the church for a robust methodology that would take seriously the study of spiritual growth, contemporary evangelical theological education, and that’s what I’m gonna be focusing on particularly but as it relates to the academy of psychology and beyond. So this contemporary evangelical theological education has focused on doctrine and technical, historical textual studies, but sometimes to the neglect of an in-depth understanding of sanctification, and even when there does exist this doctrine of sanctification, what still often is missing is how the truth of that doctrine becomes a reality in the believer’s life.

That is, what is missing is an in-depth understanding of the process of growth in the Spirit, and so, it seems to me in my travels now that there is a gap in our theological and pastoral training between the content of the faith, what we learned at seminary, systematic theology, Biblical studies, and then the praxis of well, go and pray. Go and put off anger, and there seems to be this gap in understanding the process. Well, how does that work?

How can we make this bridge from our theology and our Biblical doctrine to now how this works in real life? And so, I want to reclaim, for at least my tradition in evangelical education and the church, a robust understanding of spiritual theology as pastoral theology. So spiritual theology is gonna be that theological discipline that attempts to fill this gap by understanding this process of growth, and it’ll do that through a kind of integration process.

They’re gonna understand the Scriptural teaching on sanctification and growth, so everything that we can learn from the Scriptures and the history of the church about growth, but then, and this is the peculiar task, to bring in observations and reflections and experience, which is a kind of empirical study, of exactly how does the Spirit work in our life and grow us in this life of faith. In some ways, I had no acquaintance with this methodology in my theological training.

There were just parts and bits and pieces, and then, even the 27 years I’ve been at Rosemead, there are parts and bits and pieces of this, too, but I think here is where theology and Christian psychology have the potential of really coming together to understand the process of growth for the church, and though I am presenting here an academic model, it would be a mistake to think that this is only for professionals.

Spiritual theology is implicitly the task for all believers who desire just to integrate the truth of the Word of God and the ministry of the Spirit and to ask the question, “How does this really work in my life? “How do I walk in the Spirit? “How do I put off anger? “What is that process?” And so, on this model of spiritual theology, certainly the Scriptures are going to be the central datum for understanding this content of transformation, but what I really wanna emphasize here is that this textual study, which, so often, it fills our seminary training, needs to be combined with this empirical study of how does this really work in life. After all, it’s a real question regarding how do I put off anger? How do I become filled with the Spirit? Am I filled with the Spirit?

Any thinking person in a pew when they’re hearing the Scriptures being taught are going to have these questions, and so, when I say empirical, I don’t mean the dogma of empiricism where the only knowledge that we have is through the senses. I just mean empirical of the God-given use of observation, reason, and experience and reflection to understand deeply this life in the Spirit, and so, the way I probably think of this is the empirical element in spiritual theology will probably focus on two fundamental dimensions.

First, because spiritual growth involves the ministry of the Spirit in the believer’s life, something that actually takes place in space and time and reality, then, if we’re going to have a full understanding of the ministry of the Spirit, we cannot limit this study merely to a textual study. It’s not just gonna be from the Biblical text. We’re also gonna have to go into the lives of Christians and the church and ask, “Now how does the Spirit actually work? “How does transformation take place?” I was told in seminary that this Holy Spirit is the agent of change, and we’re cooperative participants.

Well then, I wanna understand in real life, then how does that work? How does the Spirit work in my life? How can I cooperate with that? This is what I would call pneumadynamics, or dynamics of the ministry of the Spirit, but secondly, the Spirit does the work of transformation in the person, [attendee coughs] and so, we’re going to wanna study the dynamic processes of what it is to be a person, of psychopathology, the dynamics of change. This is psychodynamics.

So it turns out these empirical tasks of observation, reflecting are the work of both the spiritual theologian and the Christian psychologist, at least potentially, and philosophers and people who are interested in understanding the person. This could make for a grand discussion. In general, I think that spiritual theology, as I talk about it here, has been ignored in parts of theological and even psychological training in the Christian community as well as sometimes it’s ignored even in contemporary discussions on spirituality.

The absence of this in theological education, I think, is part due to the belief A, that this is the task of someone other than the theologian, or for some, it will be, in my mind, the incorrect assumption that an adequate understanding of the process of growth can be gleaned solely from a study of the Scripture. Now, let me just say in my world of the Evangelical Theological Society now, I remember giving a paper on spiritual theology.

There were about a hundred theologians in the room, and as I was talking about spiritual theology and the need to do this and how maybe we aren’t doing it in some of our evangelical seminaries, I thought this was going to raise controversy. I thought this would raise, you know, unrest and wanting to discuss and dialogue about, but all I was hearing was people saying, “Amen, this is wonderful. “This is good.” [attendee coughs]

Well after that time, I went to lunch with one of these systematic theologians back East, and I said to him, “You know, I thought there would be more “pushback about this,” and then, he said something that really hit me. Said, “You know, John, nobody “is going to disagree with this process. “Everybody says, ‘Well this is what we should be doing.'” He said, “The thing is, John, “none of us want to do it.” And I, what? He said, “John, don’t you know that we were trained “in a specialty field “and that’s what we feel comfortable doing?”

I understand that entirely, and then, of course, there are some seminaries who are entirely, they do disagree with this because they’re going to think, “No, we should not look outside the Biblical text “for wisdom and understanding.” And I would say this about training in Christian psychology, that it has rightly focused on studying human psychodynamics, understanding of the person, psychopathology, but here’s what I’ve noticed now being at what I think is an excellent school of psychology, that it often has ignored the dynamics of the ministry of the Spirit, and I think that’s because psychology’s naturalistic and reductionistic methodology in doing science has precluded the study of spiritual realities and especially the ministry of the Spirit.

Even psychology of religion has fallen into this. Now, integration has tried to retrieve this, but even there, I see, being at a, again, at a school of psychology, that integration is something we kind of almost sneak past APA, to study the ministry of the Spirit that has not been the central heart of the school of psychology. I often think if we could get behind the veil of 19th century psychology, if we had created this discipline, if this had come out of our soul, I think psychology would look differently because we all do say, at least in the believer’s life, the Holy Spirit is the agent of change, and so, the studying of the dynamics of the Spirit should be as powerful as it is studying psychodynamics, but again, I’ll have to say, as I look at this conference, it is just exciting to see how much work is being taken place, and I wish I could retrieve that to our Theological Society, and so, the result, I think, is sometimes a hole or a gap in our theological and even our Christian psychological training.

So here’s the definition of spiritual theology. This is what I’m interested to doing. So spiritual theology is that part of theology with its own unique data, its own methodology. It’s a first-order discipline, and here’s what it wants to do. One, it wants to take a study of the truths of Scripture with number two, and this is its unique quality, a study of the ministry of the Spirit and spiritual growth in the experience of human beings, and this part will be a broadly empirical study of observation and reflection and integrating relevant disciplines for this, and the purpose is to get at the nature of the supernatural life in Christ.

That is, we wanna know what is the difference between just good moral character formation and now formation and life in the Spirit? What’s the difference between what Paul says about putting off anger and what Aristotle’s going to say? So I wanna get at the heart of what this life in Christ is and what is different versus a life in the flesh that the unbeliever can engage in moral training as well, and then, we wanna understand the process of growth. How does growth really take place? How does the Spirit transform us? What is going on in children?

How, when we’re educating and trying to train the soul of four-year-olds, what’s the different ways the Spirit will work in that person versus someone who’s 40 years old? Well, those are questions that were lurking in the back of my mind in my theological training, but nobody was explicitly addressing, saying, “This is what we want to do. “We wanna train pastors to begin to understand this “and help people,” and then, we wanna formulate directives for spiritual growth. What is the best ways to cooperate with life in the Spirit?

Different ways, different seasons in our own life, there are ways that are gonna be better directives of how to open to the Spirit in putting off anger at one time than another time or developing a life of prayer, and so, we wanna think through that, and so, if you look at that little model there, the spiritual theologian, I don’t have a bald head yet, but it’ll come, I’m sure. [audience chuckles]

The spiritual theologian’s task is to look at the Scripture, but of course, there are other individuals who are spending their whole life studying Ephesians, and that’s fine for the specialist, and so, I’m going to study those who give themselves entirely to understanding the text, and I will give myself to the text as well, but my peculiar task is to be going into the life of the church, the life of the ministry of the Spirit to try to understand how does He do that transformation, and I suppose the first test case is my own life.

How is the Spirit of God working in my life? What are the dynamics, the psychological dynamics, that are hindering growth? And so, the task is to begin to do this, [metal clanking] this integrative enterprise, and then, looking at the history of the church and the relevant creation disciplines. The lives of the saints, the history of the church, psychology, philosophy, sociology. Nobody can do this all, but this can open up horizon for this, and so, I think of the spiritual theologian as a person with God in heart, Scripture in hand, going into the life of the church, going into the life of my own life, and asking the questions, “Lord, how do You really transform us? “I’m commanded by Paul to put off sensuality. “God, what does that look like? “How does this work? “How do I open myself to You and others in this process?”

And so, this methodology blends the work of the spiritual theologian and particularly the Christian psychologist in a robust way, and I say, though the work of spiritual theology can be captured as an academic discipline, it also has a general application to life of every believer. Every believer, to some degree, is doing spiritual theology just when they ask the question, “Lord, how does this work in my life?” Now, what I have in my mind is, next, is a theological concern over spiritual theology.

I don’t think this will be the concern of many here, so I won’t spend much time on it, but I have, in the back of my head, some of my theological mentors who would say, “John, why do we need to do this? “Isn’t this contrary “to the Reformation doctrine of Sola Scriptura? “Why do we need to go outside the text? “Why do we need to engage in, “is there really any wisdom out there?” And so, just a few points on justification for doing spiritual theology.

The first thing I’ll say is just spiritual theology is, in my mind, entirely consistent with the original intent of Sola Scriptura. Sola Scriptura was not meant to say that the Scripture alone provides all of the wisdom for this process. Rather, Sola Scriptura was just to affirm this, that Scripture alone and not some magisterium or council is gonna provide the constitute of tenets of the faith, those tenets that bring the coherence of our faith, and it also provided a boundary condition on practice so that no spiritual practice should be required of a believer that is not explicitly found in the Scriptures, but this did not at all preclude the possibility of finding wisdom outside the Scripture nor did it at all preclude the possibility of having to look at real life and saying, “Well, how does this work?”

And so, number two, I want to tell my theologian friends, but I would say this to psychologists, that all theology, all psychology, all truth has some spiritual relevance, that truth is related to our life, so how does this truth open my heart more to loving God, more to loving neighbor? And number three, spiritual theology, in the most general sense, is necessary if we’re to understand how the Scriptures actually apply to our lives.

So everybody is going to be doing spiritual theology. It just depends on how well because everybody is gonna be asking the question, “How does this work?” If the preacher is teaching on the ministry of the Spirit, somebody out in the pews, a thinking person, is gonna say, “Lord, how does that actually work in my life? “Am I filled with the Spirit? “How do I get filled? “How does this work?” These are pastoral questions, and number four, spiritual theology is necessary if we’re to more fully understand the full ministry of the Spirit.

The Spirit of God does not just work in the text. The Spirit of God is actually working in space and time in our lives. How does He work? How do I understand times where God seems close? How do I understand times where God seems distant? What’s going on there? That’s an empirical question that now, the spiritual theologian wants to take on and that’ll have now implications for looking at the Biblical text and working that together, and then, number five, I wanna say to my own people in the seminary who are interpreting the text that spiritual theology is necessary if we are to understand deeply even the meaning of the Biblical text because here, to understand the meaning of a text, you have to understand meaning in reference.

So this would take us into a little bit of hermeneutics, but if I have no understanding of the referent in real life of what it is to put off anger or what it is, especially those texts having to do with the ministry of the Spirit, being filled with the Spirit, walking in the Spirit, living by the Spirit, being led by the Spirit. Those are things that are going on in real life, and so, unless I enter in to understand something of the referent of that text, the meaning will almost be vacuous, and I will have to say when I left seminary, I could exegete those texts, but if somebody actually wanted more information, “Well, John, can you tell me more about this?”

I, that was when I was stymied. So six, spiritual theology, in the most basic sense, is necessary if we are to understand how to live in dependence on the Spirit. To just be open to the Spirit is doing spiritual theology. It’s going through the day saying, “God, I want to do this with You. “I wanna be open to Your ministry.” So we’re doing a kind of spiritual theology just in that, and then, number seven, we won’t talk about this here, but I’ve argued elsewhere that spiritual theology has a wonderful Biblical model in the Old Testament wisdom literature.

The Old Testament sage, God in heart, Scripture in hand, going into the world of things and discovering the cause-effect and sow-and-reap structure that are built into nature by which we can understand wisdom, and then, number eight, I think spiritual theology ultimately will serve preaching in the church by making that bridge, teaching pastors which can then be coming to our congregations through discipleship, through preaching, through spiritual direction, counseling, where we’re understanding ha, here is the text, and here is what we’re asked to do. What is the bridge now to understanding this process so we can help people enter into a meaning way?

So skip down to Examples of Doing Spiritual Theology and turn to page five in your notes. I’ll skip a little. There are gonna be many examples, of course. Doing this, this whole, if I look at all the papers, there are so many examples here, but I’ll just talk about one, and this is regarding the process of growth. Spiritual theology has been especially helpful in exploring the developmental processes of growth.

Whereas the Scriptures address the subject sometimes cursorily, like in 1 John 2, “I write to you, young children. “I write to you, young men. “I write to you when you’re older,” but theologians and pastors and writers of the church had given much attention to this developmental process, individuals like Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, the Dutch, Second Reformation of the 17th century, Voetius, and Hornebeck.

Spiritual theology has been very helpful, I think, in providing thoughtful reflections on the developmental process of growth, especially related to experiences of consolation, desolation, and what are called Dark Night of the Soul phenomena. Now much has been written on this, but due to space, I’m just gonna be brief. So here is a piece of what I would call spiritual theology.

There are so many ways, so many pieces that we could talk about. So the ancient spiritual writers, they noticed an experience, in themselves and their committed disciples, different seasons of experience of God. Sometimes, they observed in the convert or the young believer they called the beginner that at some point, they often experienced a strong sense of a felt presence of God, and then, they would notice that same believer at a later time when they’re more mature sometimes would experience this sense of dryness and a felt absence of the presence of God.

This was an empirical observation, and they came to call these times respectively consolation, or the felt presence of God, and desolation, or the felt absence of God, and so, they wanted to understand this phenomena. So you see that little chart, they would see oftentimes their disciples baptized, converted, but then, the beginner state was when this, the faith took in their life. It’s like, “I’m saved, I’m forgiven,” and then, they would notice this, often this increase, times of ascent of experiences of God, and then, they would notice a plateau, and then, they would notice later on a kind of coming down, a certain dryness, or even an absence, a felt absence of God.

Now this set of experiences puzzled the spiritual theologians or just these pastors, these bishops, these theologians for they assumed that the more characterologically mature a disciple was at some later time, they would experience more consolation than when they were less mature at an earlier time. The assumption was that characterological maturity would always correlate with spiritual feelings. That makes sense. The more mature you get, the more you’d experience God. The more you experience God, the more mature it would be. Up, up, up spirituality.

I mean, how many of you would like up, up, up spirituality? Absolutely, and so, here, as they observed and reflected on these phenomena, in the light of a theology, so here, they’re doing spiritual theology. They’ll, someone later on is gonna say, “Oh, that’s what they’re, “we’ll call that spiritual theology.” I think, for the history of the church, they just thought this was what it was to live Christianly. This was what it was to do theology, and so, here are some of the hypotheses they would present.

Number one, at least in the beginning of the spiritual life, the felt presence of God, consolation, or the felt absence of God, desolation, is not necessarily correlated to character maturity. That’s an empirical observation. Number two, this phenomena is contrary to what they would expect. They thought there would be a pure correlation between maturity and experience. So number three, however, Biblically, we know that the Spirit is always present relationally as people. We’re one Spirit with Him. We’re partakers of the divine nature. So that was a puzzle to them. How can it be that an individual, the Spirit is always there.

This person has grown in faith, so how could it be that they would feel an absence of God where an earlier time, they felt the presence of God? So number four, here’s one of their first hypotheses. Since God is always present, then the felt presence or the felt absence of Him, consolation and desolation, at least at some times, and perhaps in the beginning of the spiritual life, are more gifts from God than the causal results of our action. They’re more the results of different ways that the Spirit actually might be working in the soul to grow us at different stages. That’s a hypothesis. They reasoned further, five, this is another hypothesis, each experience of consolation and desolation may have a different purpose in the will of God.

Consolation for the beginner is often, they thought, a filling of the Spirit ahead of our character. It’s a gift of love to us because characterologically, we’re still rather full of ourself, and so, here the Spirit comes with a sense of “spiritual pleasure,” John of the Cross would say, to encourage our faith, to reinforce the doing of spiritual disciplines. So what about desolation? What could God be doing? What could possibly be the purposes? How could that be a gift from God?

They say desolation may be a sign of God realizing that a person is ready to see themselves in truth. He’s ready to meet them, to meet the Spirit in a deep teaching way for the purpose of transformation, and so, this may be a sign of God now withdrawing this infant consolation or what some call the breast of spiritual pleasure because what He wants to do is He wants to reveal one’s character.

He wants to reveal the truth of what’s going on in a person, and so now, spiritual disciplines are no longer so encouraging. Spiritual disciplines during this time of life rather act as a mirror to present the reality of one’s heart, one true motivations. They present the reality of times there are coldness in our heart, and we shouldn’t be shocked by that, right? ‘Cause a believer, though I’m a new creature at the core, I still struggle with this old man residue, this flesh residue, and so, desolation will open those pockets, and the Spirit thinks, “I think you’re ready.”

This is not a withdrawing of the presence of the Spirit, although there was controversy in the history of the church, what is this going on? But part of the ancient Catholic tradition was this isn’t a withdrawing of the Spirit. It’s rather the Spirit drawing near in truth apart from a feeling, apart from this feeling of consolation, to show the person the true state of the character, of how the person is not filled with the Spirit in parts of the heart and how God wants to ultimately meet us in love if we’re willing to go to those places.

They came to call this a kind of wound of love if we’re willing to actually experience the core of our stuff with Him. We discover my gosh, He’s there, and the Spirit thinks we’re ready to see that. So the spiritual writers, they associate it with a number of observations in the Scripture. They associate it with putting off the old man, that the Spirit is now assisting one another in doing this. It’s associated with certain developmental hints in the Scripture. We won’t have time to do that. It’s associated with especially the lament psalms.

The lament psalms were teaching us. The church saw it as a way to teach us how to pray during times of dryness, how to stay connected and attached to God and to continue to come and “God, what is going on? “God, how long? “What is taking place?” And it became associated with Paul’s thorns in the flesh as spiritual thorns that opened us to his weakness. This approach to consolation was also understood as consistent with the logic of theology. Because of original sin, we were born in a state of living apart from God.

Nevertheless, God takes converts and beginners and gives them experiences of consolation ahead of their character to better attach them to God through disciplines, and then, when God knows the time is right, consolation is those times when the Spirit now wants to take us on a new journey, a new journey of growth into the truth of ourself to discover oh my gosh, I need You so much. I want you to notice here that in each of these cases, the kernel insight for these, this developmental model, was initiated by observation, reflection, and experience. God, what is going on in life?

This was then brought into dialogue with the truth. What is going on in this consolation and desolation, especially in light of the fact that God is always here, in light of original sin, the need to put off this? And so emerged a set of spiritual theological hypotheses. I wanna make just a comment now, down at the bottom of the page, about suggestions for how this might affect training, and I’ll just say this very briefly. I think it would be very wise and advantageous for the church or seminaries to develop departments of spiritual theology, hire and train spiritual theologians where their task is given.

I have no problem with someone giving their life to a textual study of Ephesians. That’s a good thing, but we need individuals who are gonna give their lives to this process of spiritual theology, to encourage pastors in understanding this, and I think it would also be advantageous for Christian schools of psychology to also teach spiritual theology or to just see even the training of the Christian psychologist as to include much of an understanding of the dynamics of the ministry of the Spirit.

Now, I know there are all kinds of issues there given the nature of scientific methodology, and I have questions about that and I’ve written about that, but I also have, I know there are issues about APA as well, but I want individuals to think about this, and so, go to the last page, Conclusion. The evangelical church in general with its pastors and leaders, I want to encourage to embrace a robust spiritual theology or whatever we call it. It’s that with God in heart, Scripture in hand, what is the process of spiritual growth, and to begin this discussion with as many who are interested in how this is. I think all agree that praxis is not to be separated from theory.

However, I’ve argued here that I think much of Christian praxis is already theoretically disconnected from theology. I see this even in spiritual formation literature where there’s a long discussion of praxis, not much understanding of how does this really integrate with my life in Christ, but especially, I think of my theologians who leave the seminary, who understand the text, but when confronted with the questions, how do I grow, they don’t know what to say. That seems to be a great part of what seminary to be is.

So to be certain, I’m not arguing that a person needs to be schooled in spiritual theology to be holy and spiritually mature. However, I would say you find me a mature Christian, and I will find evidence and signs that they are implicitly doing spiritual theology. They’re implicitly, every day, coming to God and trying to understand how the Spirit, how the ministry of the Word, how it actually is functioning in their life. They are looking at their life.

They’re reflecting upon this deeply. This is what I think the seminary is about. I think the pastor, because he’s teaching people, has the responsibility to now really be trained in this because he’s the one who’ll have to talk about this and help people with their issues, and so, I say, “God, give us grace to embrace this task “for growth in the kingdom of God.” Well, we have a few minutes, maybe seven, eight minutes for some questions, and so, whatever’s on your mind.

Woman: What about when, how does God see our free will? Like, does it align with psychology and, or the spiritual theology of our free will? How does that work?

Wow, that’s rather huge, but [audience laughs] yeah, okay, so Sun-Yun Tan, that’s what you’ll talk about, yeah, like I said. Yeah, I think that, you know, here in, as we are trying to approach understanding of our growth, that is a major question, is that we have this capacity to say, “Look, I read the Scriptures,” and I say, “Oh my gosh, it talks about loving God “with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength, “and now, the question confronts my freedom. “Lord, what would that be? “Do I even want to do this?”

So I think, in spiritual theology, we want students that ask, before they just say, “Oh, well, okay. “Well, let’s just do that,” or “I’m doing that,” I want them to first ask the existential question, “God, do I even care about that right now?” So I think whenever we, you know, are in life, open to the Word, open to God, it does confront our freedom, and that begins in my mind, that existential journey of “God, what’s really going on in my life? “Why don’t I wanna do this?”

Or “God, I want to do this, “but why is it that I do it so poorly? “Lord, I want to love You more. “I want to pray more, but I don’t.” What’s taking place, well now, now, we have a deep story, I think, to understand what the ancients would call incontinence or weakness of the will. Why is it that I know the good desire, the good, choose the good, don’t do the good?

Well, there must be some dynamics going on inside, and I think this is a major frustration for many believers and pastors to me. I want, I think they should be trained to be able to articulate the text, but then, I think they should be able to be trained to articulate hearts so that when individuals hear the preaching of the Word, they go, “Oh my gosh, there’s the text! “Oh my gosh, there’s my heart!” And now, we’re ready for a journey and more close encounters with others to help us grow. So that’s how I hear that question, so okay.

Man: So can you address one of the, whoa.

Oh.

Uh [chuckles].

The power.

One of the objections to doing some of this work, I find, is that sometimes, people have this implicit God-of-the-gaps sense that if you can explain a process psychologically or, God forbid, even biologically, therefore, that’s not the Spirit.

Yeah.

And so, how do you address that sort of implicit assumption that we often get in the congregation, that “No, no, no, that’s just the Spirit, “don’t try to explain it”?

Yeah, well, and I think that’s associated with perhaps our kind of infantile view of how the Spirit works, is that we think the Spirit only works when He shows up in what the ancients would say is kind of sensorial or almost sensual spirituality, this, when my senses are iridated, that “Oh my gosh, God’s here,” but no, the Spirit’s always here.

He’s here when I’m in the pits. When I don’t know where God is, He’s there. So He’s there in all these processes, with my body, with, you know, with my brain, with anything that’s going on that has to do with the person. Here’s where I think we need to really think deeply how it is the Spirit at work in all of these ’cause there’s really not a dislocation between this, right?

The psychology and the spirituality of a person. It’s the whole person, but we have to break things up to be specialists, but we have to always keep in mind everything is spiritually implicated ’cause the Spirit’s working in all of these areas. I think, do we have enough time for a question, or are we, should we be done?

Man: Yeah, time for one more.

Okay, one more. [metal clanking] Another question.

Woman: How would you, how would you address the issue of a 66-year-old woman who was a childhood sexual abuse victim? [attendee gasps] And she, she had a relationship with God for a while, and she tried to commit suicide at later on in life in her 50s, and then, she walked away from the church, and when I interviewed her, she started, she got really choked up. When she said that she wanted her relationship with God restored but didn’t know how to get there.

John: Yeah.

Woman: And she, she was angry at God because He never let her have what she wanted, including wanting to kill herself.

Yeah, wow. You know, I would say this, that someone in that situation, and again, I’m one who is more, as a spiritual theologian, I train preachers, where, at our Institute for Spiritual Formation, we have others who train spiritual directors in how to be with someone closely or at Rosemead Clinical Psychology, but as I just kind of look at that from a big, kind of gentle perspective, I would say that person, it probably would be wrong for a pastor or a spiritual theologian to say, “Go into your prayer closet and find God.”

That person probably, incarnationally, needs somebody like you. He’s going to sit with them because there is so much pain that has collected in the heart now that it kind of overwhelms any conversation they would probably have with God, and so, I think somebody is gonna have to gently kind of be with them, almost like unpacking the suitcases of their heart, slowly, gently, because that person is going to need continual connection with probably an incarnational other to ever wanna go into places that now, maybe there’s deep shame, deep self-hatred, hatred towards others, and so, somebody now is gonna gently unpack that and incarnationally model.

The tell all’s ultimately is going to be is how they will be able to take that conversation they’ve had with someone and now bring that into prayer, but I think that’s where they’re gonna have to begin, yeah. Okay, thank you. [metal clanking]