Prodigal Magazine

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My life with Christ began as a child. Being raised in a conservative, Fundamentalist family, it began as an intellectual exercise disguised as a spiritual decision: to choose in my mind (they all said “my heart”, but I wasn’t sure there was a difference at age to follow Christ. I chose to do so.The following ten or so years was a progression in this intellectual development. Bible knowledge, from stories to concepts to doctrines, created a literal Believer who knew where everything was, what everything meant, and where everyone else was wrong. Throw in five years at a leading Fundamentalist liberal arts university on the West Coast, and you had the ultimate product: a 20th century Pharisee. With a degree, no less.

Something happened a little farther down the road. I met a converted Catholic who introduced me to those ten “lost” centuries of Christendom that all of my childhood training had overlooked. It seemed as though the death and resurrection of our Savior jumped suddenly to the years of Martin Luther, and we just went on in our Western traditions from there. However, apparently there was much to be missed.

Got some recommendations, some “guided” church visits, some new inside information on what are referred to as the sacraments. Encouraged to begin reading some of the early Christian fathers (as they were called); and, combined with some of the more modern counterparts, I began to have an interest – if not a deepening attraction – to those referred to as “the mystics”. The saints of the first real churches – Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine; those who kept new traditions alive and modernized in the present day: Thomas Merton.

I read Merton’s Seeds of Contemplation and was smitten. I had to know more. I had to read more. I had to see some of this for myself. Found a local monastery, booked it for a weekend (you can do that now online), and inadvertently started a new part of my Christian development.

Monks are interesting folks. They dedicate themselves to “contemplation”, prayer, and life in community with others. Sometimes this includes the outside world, sometimes it doesn’t. Their stories, as I came to learn them from my visits (which soon became annual events), involved spiritual battles and challenges that were far beyond my comprehension. What were these “principalities and powers”, these battles going on for my soul, these spiritual beings that were more or less “departed” from this cosmos that we still talked about and included in our worship? After all, my entire spiritual development from childhood was, actually, not spiritual in any sense of the word. Now I was getting a new perspective. This was all new stuff.

Taking hours, sometimes days, to just sit and “contemplate” the reality of Christ in these remote settings, of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and what that really meant, what fellowship and community meant to me and my fellow brothers and sisters (including those in the monastery with me), and then worshiping (six times daily) with these dear people brought things into a much different balance than anything that I was taught on Sunday School flannel boards in the past. There was truly a “spiritual” out there, and that spiritual was alive, and well, and thriving. And, it was a necessary part of Christian development. In me.

I am not sure if our modern-day TV preachers, particularly the Charismatic ones, are on to these truths. For sure, they pursue what are known as “sign gifts” from the Bible: prophecy, healing, and speaking in foreign tongues. All of that stuff that we more or less avoided and discounted in our local church back home. Whether or not that qualifies these personalities as true modern “mystics” I will leave for the reader to decide. To be sure, they often go beyond the intellectual and the fundamental. Which – to my background and training – can certainly be entertaining, even sometimes what I used to think was unbiblical. I just wonder now if it is more than that, if they are on to something. Maybe without knowing it, they are moving into the world of the monastery, the monk, and the mystic. Again. Full circle.

In any case, there is a whole other world out there for the Fundamentalist, for the seeking Believer, for the curious Christian. It started a long time ago, it continues today, and it is tucked in faraway and strange corners of our world. But it is the launching pad for a spiritual development that will amaze you, startle you, and definitely deepen you.

Now, occasionally visiting churches that were developed from these traditions (Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican), brings some of this home to me. It now makes sense – at least sometimes – as to what all of this ornate decoration and art and liturgy and trappings and music and incense is all about. It supports and encourages this odd, non-intellectual, life of the mystic. To be sure, our fellow modern-day Catholics probably don’t give it a passing glance as they are rushing to the Communion table or to the exits, but it is most certainly there for a reason.

Monasteries, and their inhabitants, are alive and well in the United States. Meaning that full-blown Christianity is also there – much to the surprise and delight of this old Baptist. Certainly alive and well in other parts of the world, as well. I would encourage those who believe and insist that there must be more to what is preached about in our local urban churches to step out – literally – and “taste and see that the Lord is good”.

By the way, my converted Catholic friend left his profession as a Los Angeles attorney some years ago. Last I heard, he was living in an Orthodox monastery in Greece, and was becoming fluent in the local language. Both in the modern vernacular, and the original New Testament version.

Thank you, Brother Tim.