But be doers of the word, and not
merely hearers who deceive themselves. - James 1:22
I was raised in a family that prized
education. Growing up, I viewed learning as an end unto itself, and
my parents encouraged me to explore a wide range of subjects. I
immersed myself in history, philosophy, vocal music and foreign
languages. Later, I sang opera, studied abroad in Mexico and learned
what it meant to be a historian. I graduated from college with a
solid liberal arts education, steeped in the intellectual heritage of
Western civilization.
While I am grateful for the training I
received in my youth, it had certain weaknesses. Though I received a
balanced and well-rounded education, I soon discovered that my
liberal arts degree had not prepared me for any career in particular.
If I wanted to become a historian, I would need to go back for a
doctorate. If I wanted to teach Spanish, I would need to get an
education degree. Most anything I could imagine doing would require
more study.
Though I received a stellar education
from grade school through seminary, I learned mostly theory rather
than application. My training consisted mostly of learning how to do
school rather than how to do
life. At the end of the day,
most of my practical knowledge came from outside the classroom.
My
experience of religious education is similar. As a child, I learned
Bible stories and heard sermons. Later, I was encouraged to read
devotional pamphlets and books about Quaker history and theology.
There was a Pendle Hill
Pamphlet for every occasion. In retrospect, I can see that my
formative religious experience mirrored closely the assumptions of
the schools and universities that I attended.
This
makes sense. In the Quaker
church, many of us have spent most of our lives immersed in the
wider educational system. Most of us have spent far more time in the
classroom than we have in Christian fellowship. It should not be
surprising that our assumptions about what constitutes knowledge,
expertise, and
experience bear great
similarity to those of the schools and universities we have attended.
At
worst, we have come to treat religion as yet another subject to
become proficient in. Far too often, our faith becomes abstracted
into a series of maxims - "there is that of God in everyone"
- or behavioral codes - "we do not speak in the first fifteen
minutes of meeting for worship" - that fit better into
standardized testing than into the off-script, rough-and-tumble of
everyday life. No wonder our faith is so often confined to an hour on
Sunday morning! No wonder we often act like one person "at
Meeting" and a different person at home, school or work: We have
become trapped in a religious system that is only relevant at "test
time."
How
can we develop faith that has relevance beyond the Sunday-morning
Quiz? How can our time together become occasions of mutual support
and practical equipping for the work of the Kingdom in daily life?
How might we as Friends adopt a more earthy, practical spirituality?
When our fellowships often resemble book clubs more than a radical
movement for peace and justice, how can we start applying the radical
message of Jesus?
10 comments:
I wonder at times whether people attend Meeting to be Spiritually moved or to be intellectually entertained. Food for thought has its place, of course. I sat through many a sermon designed for that purpose while a member of a traditional Christian denomination.
I think that any religious group maintains its own terminology and encourages its members to learn it. Liberals often believe that if everyone were able to as educated and knowledgeable as they are, then problems would cease to exist.
This is not always the case.
Rather, if everyone was able to be...
I grew up a Quaker in IMYM, when I got to college, I had to work during Meeting, so I attended the Buddhist student group. I have been told that they were probably Zen. It was basically the same thing, but with fewer books that were actively recommended and fewer pot-lucks.
I completely agree! Unfortunately, even many of those who like your question will, ironically, still try to answer it in theory instead of with action/experimentation. I think it will take some bold souls, who know they don't have all the answers (and know that all of the knowledge in heaven doesn't matter without obedience), to take some risks and just do SOMETHING, and allow their experiences to be their primary classroom. This would, hopefully, inspire others to follow.
In theory, doing what Jesus did and said to do seems like a good place to start. :-)
thank you Micah - this post resonates with some spiritual experiences / messages I've felt lately... about looking more deeply at who Friends are, corporately, in our actual meetings, now, and asking ourselves, together: why has God brought us here? US, these particular people, in this time and place. Here we are, Lord -- whatever you want from us -- here we are, Lord -
Or sometimes we just have to do the work that God has placed in our hands and not be too bothered by whether or not it has a Quaker label on it. At the end of the age the question will still be "what have you done for the least of these?" If ones Meeting is supportive it is a help, but the work still needs to be done.
I think you are living it out, Micah. And I wanted to tell you about friends of our who I would point to as people who absolutely live/lived out their faith in all they do/have done. You may even know members of the wider family - Tom and Jan Angell. They home-school their 8 children and they've all grown up so well, so faithful. They have a family blog:http://www.bentleyfarm.org/ that embodies all they do. Hope the New Year is full of good fruit from all the work you do. God bless.
We don't want to minimize the education part of life. The problem is when we replace life with education! Education without life is pointless. Life without education is needlessly more difficult than it has to be.
Good questions.
it's clearly time to witness to all of life as meeting for worship.
Authentic community anyone?
Assuming one could change the culture of a church or meeting, what happens to the people who really want a book club and are not comfortable with the other aspects? I don't think that is a trivial question.
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