Spiritual "Means"

The means of spiritual growth are exceedingly slippery. They are necessary as an expression of devotion, but worthless as a guarantee of progress. Dallas Willard reminds us that effort and exertion are not prohibited in the spiritual life like earning is prohibited. I believe Willard has captured something important. The difference between earning and effort is illustrated by Paul Young's story of Mac and Sarayu working in the garden (of Mac's life) with Sarayu asking Mac to do this and the other small task while she does all of the truly difficult work. We are invited to participate, and we do, out of obedience and (the higher motivation of) love. But participating with a work of God in our lives is not for the purpose of earning anything, or even accomplishing anything. We work to demonstrate our determination to grow. The real work is done by God. As One who desires relationship with us because he is in his very essence relational, God will not do deep spade work within us with out our participation. Without it, God's work would be coercion and manipulation, which would destroy true relationship.

The problem I have seen with taking up the tools of spiritual growth is that they must be taken up for the purpose of devotion and love. And having bee taken up in that fashion, our focus must remain there. For if having once worked along side the Holy Spirit with what He sees that needs work, we become distracted by the intractable nature of the problem area, it becomes even more intractable. Or if we get distracted by the tool, even by marveling at its effectiveness, it immediately loses its power. Because of course its power is not in itself, it is in God's use of it. So while the tool may be in our hand in the sense that we "decided" to pray or meditation of celebrate a daily office, etc., the positive impact has little to do with the tool itself. The impact comes from the purpose of the tool directed toward loving God. If our focus slips to the tool itself it becomes nothing more than an empty ritual. It no longer is useful as a spiritual means to love God and express devotion to Him. It would be like the farmer taking all of his farming tools out of the field to put them in a farming museum. Farming museums may be a fine thing, but they don't produce any food.

This came home to me several days ago when I was working on Shelly new phone. I bought her the phone as an act of love and service to her. And I worked on getting it syncing to her computer and music player as a way to serve her. When it was ready and I started giving her a lesson nothing worked. I was a little embarrassed probably. When I couldn't resolve the problem quickly I became more and more frustrated, to the point of using language far more harsh than the situation called for. As my efforts continued to fail I became depressed. My spirit sagged into a pit and in the end I had to give up and leave the phone and computer not communicating after spending most of a July 4th afternoon in fruitless effort. By the time I walked away I had totally lost the perspective of serving Shelly and loving her via the service. I was focused totally on the means, the ends was buried under heaps of blackness and anger. The issue was finally resolved when I took the battery out of the phone to find the serial number for a telephone technician and suddenly everything started working as it should.

Later I realized that I do the same thing to God that I had done to Shelly. I can become so focused on a tool, especially when it is not working properly, that the purpose of the tool is completely lost. God, as would Shelly, would much rather have me, than my tool. How much time have God and I lost in my mistaken introspection of a spiritual discipline, like the 4th of July afternoon was lost for Shelly and me in my mistaken taking a means of loving her as an end unto itself?