Cause and Effect? Maybe not exactly...
Or: the story we tell ourselves about spiritual disciplines and how it might not be wrong, but it certainly isn't right.
Which came first: the chicken, or the egg?
This may not be the most important question, but it’s also one we implicitly ask a lot. Just think about yesterday – what happened?
My guess is that you narrated some kind of story with a beginning, middle, and end. It probably started when you opened your eyes and was made up of any memorable moments or interactions you had: meetings with friends, conversations with coworkers, or random things that felt “important” (whatever that means). At the end of the story, you likely went to bed (or, perhaps, you should have). But, if you assess that story for even a moment, you will discover that the story is roughly sequential: it moves from the beginning to the end, even if you interrupt yourself to insert a detail from earlier in the story that you missed.
We think linearly and sequentially by default, looking for what are called “causal connections,” or how one thing leads to another. Not everything is related causally, of course: some things correspond, and other times they aren’t connected at all. That my son woke up at 5:10 this morning had nothing to do with my cat jumping on my chest at 5:00, but they certainly happened in close proximity to one another.
All that said, we narrate linearly because we are geared to search for connections and patterns. We are looking for how things relate to one another so that we can understand them and, perhaps, influence how they work. We are really good at identifying patterns, even when they aren’t there – think about how we see patterns in clouds, for instance. Random occurrence isn’t something with which we are really all that comfortable.
All of this, I think, sets us up to talk about spiritual disciplines and, particularly, spiritual practices that can help us companion others and be companioned well.
How we know stuff: practice and knowledge
When it comes to thinking about spiritual disciplines (or what religious scholars call religious or spiritual practices), I think we tend to be even more ready to look for causal patterns. Said differently, we are way more uncomfortable with the idea of “random occurrence” in our spiritual lives. We look at a sinful decision, for instance, and connect it with something else that didn’t go our way because of it. Or we look at scripted prayers that must be said a particular way or else something will or will not happen the way it is supposed to.1
The problem, though, is that I don’t think spiritual disciplines actually work that way. I don’t think that we can coerce God to change the outcomes of our circumstances. That’s not to say I don’t believe in prayer – I pray every day; but, it is to say that we often are in a place of fighting God or fleeing our circumstances in prayer, rather than seeking to connect with God in prayer. Spiritual disciplines aren’t magic; they are acts that create space for connection with God.
If that’s what they do, it’s also important to think about how they work. We know that practices are rooted in belief: we generally have good reasons for doing the stuff we do. In fact, I have never met anyone who did things for no reason; if they were doing something I would deem irresponsible or wrong, they generally had a complex motive rooted in their story. Same thing for the good things we do, including spiritual disciplines: we do them because they have grown out of our experiences.
But that’s only half the story.
Dru Johnson has done significant work thinking through the way the Bible talks about thinking.2 In his work, Johnson has uncovered something fundamental: the Bible assumes that knowledge is learned by doing; we come to know stuff – especially important stuff – through practice.
In his volume Epistemology and Biblical Theology, Johnson argues that the Bible’s philosophy of knowledge is essentially that knowledge received by a community from someone with God’s authority and learned through embodiment. Practice, for the Bible, is not just about things we already know – it’s about how we learn stuff about God and the world around us.3 Practice doesn’t make perfect, but it does make possible: in this case, practice makes it possible to know God and the logic of his world.
Why does this matter?
Good question. It matters because spiritual disciplines and the beliefs that support them don’t emerge linearly; that is, there isn’t a clean correlative (or even causal) connection between a given practice and a belief. Instead, I tend to think that practices like spiritual disciplines are co-terminal with beliefs that make sense of them.
Like Dru Johnson, I see the Bible showing us that knowing is something that we acquire through participation. I might begin a practice because I see it in a book or hear about it from a friend, or even because I read it in the Bible and feel motivated to practice it. I might even have some kind of hint at a “why.” I might connect fasting with repentance for sin, for instance.
However, once I get into the practice, a new awareness of what is really happening may emerge. Taking the same example, as I am fasting, I may find that going without food isn’t adjusting my behavior at all, but rather bringing my attachment to what a given behavior does for me to my conscious awareness so that I can converse with the Lord about it. In this way, the practice of fasting teaches me knowledge: not just about myself, but also about who God is and how he desires to work with me.
We might not “fake it till we make it,” but we certainly practice it till we know it: knowledge (or belief) and practice develop simultaneously, correcting and reinforcing one another.
In the same way, practices and beliefs that orient how we companion others are co-terminal. As we put on practices, beliefs about other people and how God works with people will emerge; as we commit to those beliefs, practices that match them will (hopefully) emerge.
Practicing Companionship: A Theory of Practice
Over the course of the last 8 years, I have spent an inordinate amount of time walking with others in the spiritual life, thinking about walking with others, and teaching people how to walk with others. During that time, a set of practices and corresponding beliefs has emerged, and I have just begun articulating them as I have been teaching an undergraduate course at Ozark Christian College this Spring.
Over each of the next six weeks, my goal is to unpack these practice-belief pairings and link them to practical applications with a singular aim: I want to help you learn how to be a better companion to those in your life. This isn’t about getting ahead or getting anything from someone; instead, like I unpacked in my last post, this is about growing the relationships you and I have now into the kind of thick relationships that form us more and more into the kind of people God wants us to become.
Be on the lookout next week for the first article about trust and holding silence.
For now, what’s coming up for you? What’s helpful? What’s confusing? Leave a comment and we can get the conversation going!
If this sounds like magic, that’s because it is. As I think about how spiritual practices work (or don’t), I’m often shocked by how much magical thinking goes on. For a good exploration of this and how it relates to the human propensity to establish efficient means to desired ends (that is, to design efficient techniques), see chapter two of Jacques Ellul’s classic The Technological Society.
That is, the Bible’s epistemology.
See Dru Johnson, Epistemology and Biblical Theology: From the Pentateuch to Mark’s Gospel, (New York: Routledge, 2018). See also Dru Johnson, Knowledge by Ritual: A Biblical Prolegomenon to Sacramental Theology (University Park: Eisenbrauns, 2016).