Psalm 112

"taking great delight in his commands"

We're getting close to the great Torah psalm, Psalm 119. But I'm jumping on this line from Psalm 112 to get a head start.

Who takes delight, let alone great delight, in commands, rules, and laws? Not us!

Back when Saturday morning cartoons was a thing, I always noticed this trope in children's cereal commercials. The scene is in an elementary school, a classroom or cafeteria. The color palette is dark and grey. Some hectoring and domineering teacher is terrorizing the children. And then, Tony the Tiger appears! The colors explode. The kids start going crazy, dancing and breaking all the rules. The grim teacher is ignored or put in their place. 

Basically, we use rebellion and rule-breaking to sell sugar-coated cornflakes to children. And it works because, as Western individualists, we all want to be James Dean. From pre-ripped jeans to "Come and Take It" bumper stickers, we style ourselves as rebels.

Everywhere you look, rule-following is denigrated. Being obedient is a blight. 

Given all this, it's almost impossible for us to imagine the grace of law. In the Hebrew imagination life without God's commands would descend into chaos. There is a strong link between God's ordering commands over the tohu wa-bohu, the formless waste and void, and the moral instructions of the Torah. Without God's law, social and moral life would revert back into the tohu wa-bohu. Consequently, by inserting order into the formless chaos of our lives God's word become salvific. Commands are mercy. Instruction is healing. Law is grace. 

That's a hard message for us to hear, we rebels without a cause.

Does God Have Emotions?: Part 1, Beware Releasing God's Hate Into the World

Does God have emotions?

This question seems to have an obvious answer. Of course God has emotions. Scripture, especially the Old Testament, is full of descriptions of God having emotional reactions toward human persons. God can be happy and pleased with us, and God can become grieved, indignant, and angry.

The question of God having emotions seems pretty straightforward. And yet, it's a lot more complicated than may seem.

This issue came to mind reading John Mark Comer's book God Has a Name. In the book Comer makes an impassioned case for God experiencing emotions. And he does so to support the view that God is a relational God. By "relational" we mean reactive and responsive to us. More strongly stated, God is affected by us. By contrast, if God was unaffected by us, the argument goes, God wouldn't be in a real relationship with us. 

The debate brewing here--Can you see those storm clouds on the horizon?--is between descriptions of God from what is called "classical theism" versus views of God often described as "relational." More than the issue of emotions is debated here. The other big issue concerns if God changes his mind in response to human actions and prayer. God changing his mind is another example of God being affected by us in a responsive, relational way. For example, along with describing God as having emotions, Comer also describes God as changing his mind in response to our prayers. These two topics--God's emotions and God changing his mind--often go together. And again, it's easy to see why. The Bible describes God changing his mind. Often because humans make a request or repent. But for this post, I'm going to keep my focus on God's emotions and leave the issue of God changing his mind to the side.

We can appreciate the psychological appeal and power of Comer's arguments. If God didn't have emotions and if God never changed his mind then God wouldn't appear very responsive or relational. God would appear distant and impassive. And that's exactly the word classical theism uses to describe God's "emotions"--impassive. God is impassive, meaning "not subject to passions." But an impassive God seems cold and emotionally removed, not the relational God John Mark Comer so passionately (no pun intended) describes and defends. 

So, we get the point. If you had to choose between an emotional God and an impassive God most would go with the emotional God. No pastor wants to preach a sermon about God's impassivity. That word "impassive" just doesn't have the warm, fuzzy feelings we'd like to associate with God. "Impassive" makes God seem chilly and remote. And yet, there is a problem. You knew there would be.

Here's the biggest problem, from my perspective. Once you allow God to have emotions we open up the possibility of God having negative emotions, emotions like anger and wrath. And again, there is Biblical support for God having these negative emotions. God can even hate human persons. That's the dark consequence of Comer's move, releasing God's hate into the world. 

This is the irony and inconsistency of "relational" views of God. By ironic I mean that relational views of God are typically motivated by the attempt to remove or delimit God's wrath, anger, and hatred. Most relational views of God preach that God is wholly and consistently loving. And yet, by arguing for God's emotionality they release into the world God's negative emotions, the very emotions they are wanting to deny. That's the irony, how their attempt to deny something about God creates its very possibility. 

The inconsistency of the relational views of God is illustrated by Comer himself. For example, after arguing for God's emotionality Comer goes on to describe how, because God desires a "real relationship" with us, that we should dare to be raw, bold, honest, and angry in our prayer life with God. But for a lot of us, such boldness feels risky. We feel we must pull our punches and to talk to God with respect and reverence. We fear that addressing God in anger and with accusation will elicit his disapproval and indignation. As Comer writes, "There are prayers in the Scriptures--in the books Moses wrote and especially in Psalms--where I cringe, half expecting lightning to strike the person dead. But it doesn't. In fact, God seems to love that kind of raw, uncut prayer, skirting the line between blasphemy and faith. He's not nearly as scared of honesty as we are." Notice the curious move here, how Comer makes blasphemy-adjacent prayer safe by taking God's emotions off the table. God isn't upset or triggered by our honesty or our rage. In fact, as Comer says, God welcomes it! And I totally agree. But notice Comer's inconsistency. He's arguing for a real and honest relationship with God in prayer by premising it upon God's impassability. We can rage in prayer because God is impassive toward our rage. God isn't going to strike us dead with lightning. That is, God's emotions toward us, His eternal Love, is unaffected by our rage. God isn't triggered or shocked. Despite the accusations we throw at God, God's love toward us is unchanging. And it is this unchanging and impassive posture toward our rage that makes honestly expressing our feelings in prayer both welcome and safe. As Comer describes, you don't need to cringe away in fear because God isn't going to strike you dead with lightning. Yell at God all you want, skirt the line between blasphemy and faith, God is not going to be emotionally provoked. God isn't emotional in that way. 

So you see both the irony and the inconsistency. Relational views of God release God's hate into the world, that angry God who strikes people dead with lightening bolts, the very thing relational views seek to avoid. In fact, relational views of God, in proclaiming God's unchanging love toward us, are the most vociferous and dogmatic apostles of God's impassivity. Especially in contrast to the emotional volatility of the God proclaimed by the fire and brimstone preachers. 

And beyond the irony, there is the inconsistency, how relational views encourage us to express honest feelings toward God but preach that what makes those expressions safe is God's impassivity toward our anger, doubt, and accusation. 

There is a better way to talk about God's emotions, which I'll describe in the next post.

Opening the Door: The Limits of Positive Psychology and the Source of Mental Health

In this seminal book A Secular Age, Charles Taylor describes what he calls "the immanent frame." The immanent frame has been much described and commented upon. But to recap, the immanent frame is our modern bias toward describing and inhabiting the world without reference to the transcendent. The immanent frame is a secular, scientistic, technological, reductionistic, and materialist stance toward existence. Some describe the immanent frame as living in a house without windows that open outward to the beyond.

In The Shape of Joy I describe how the research of positive psychology has operated, as an empirical science, within the immanent frame. This has created a bit of a paradox for the discipline. Specifically, as positive psychology has progressed the research has repeatedly shown that a relationship with transcendence is good for your mental and relational health. And yet, living as it is in a house without windows, positive psychology cannot describe or specify the nature or ontological status of transcendence. Positive psychology knows something outside the house is good for you, but the house lacks windows. What lies beyond the immanent frame is a mystery to empirical science. 

One of the places you observe the constricting effects of the immanent frame upon positive psychology concerns what psychologists describe as "cosmic mattering" or "existential significance."  Cosmic mattering refers to the conviction that our lives possess intrinsic value, dignity, and worth. As I describe it in The Shape of Joy, existential significance means you matter no matter what. And, as positive psychology has shown, cosmic mattering is the most significant predictor of meaning in life, which is integral to mental health.

Notice, however, the borders of the immanent frame. Empirical science can observe a correlation between cosmic mattering and mental health. This correlation is observed within the empirical house. And yet, the variable being described--cosmic/existential mattering--exists outside of the house. This transcendent "beyondness" is captured by the words "cosmic" and "existential." Whatever is bestowing psychological resiliency can only be experienced by escaping the immanent frame, stepping beyond the borders of the factual and empirical. And yet, positive psychology cannot take this step given its delimited ontological commitments, as an empirical science, to the immanent frame. This creates an awkward silence at the very heart of positive psychology. Cosmic mattering, we know, is associated with mental health. But is cosmic mattering real? Is it true? Or is it, like Freud argued, a massive delusion? Is our mental health based upon a lie? Positive psychology cannot say. As an empirical science, positive psychology does not traffic in ontological realities that exist beyond the immanent frame. Which means, as I conclude in The Shape of Joy, that psychology can never reveal the ultimate sources of our mental health. 

True, psychology knows that the secret to joy lies outside the house of the immanent frame. But it cannot open the door.

Identity and the Crucifixion of the Ego

Over the last few weeks I've seen sharing here reflections about the relationship between humility and mental health. The point I've made, a key observation in the story I tell in The Shape of Joy, concerns how a capacity for humility flows out of something deeper. Insecure people can't be humble. Nor can you tell insecure people to "be humble." Humility isn't a capacity that can be forced upon people who lack a deep inner grounding. Secure people, by contrast, can be humble. Grounded and stable they can look away from themselves. Nor do they need to engage in activities that draw attention to or bolster the ego. Self-aggrandizement isn't a temptation because it isn't a need.

I was recently reminded of a conversation I had over ten years ago with my friend Josh Graves when I visited his church in Nashville. We were talking about my book The Slavery of Death. Josh asked me this question: ā€œWhat’s the one thing you want people to know deep in their bones about death and the Christian faith?ā€

This was my response:
If I had one thing to say to that demographic I’d start with Henri Nouwen’s question:

ā€œWho am I when nobody pays attention, says thanks, or recognizes my work?ā€

The answer most of us would give, shaped as we are by the culture, is this: you’re a nobody. If you’re not someone who ā€œstands outā€ you’re a nobody. Brene Brown calls this the ā€œshame-based fear of being ordinary.ā€ Nobody wants to be ordinary. We want to be extraordinary.

And why is that? Because of existential anxiety. We want our lives to matter, to be noteworthy and significant in the face of death. We don’t want to fade away, we want to leave a dent in the universe. So we grasp at anything that makes us stand out from the crowd, that allows us to make and leave a mark. And so we get caught up in the neurotic social comparison game–online, at work, and in our social relationships. The main symptom of this ā€œshame-based fear of being ordinaryā€ is envy and jealousy fused with a feeling of inferiority and inadequacy.

The trouble with this, and here is the pastoral turn, is that everywhere we see Jesus asking us to ā€œtake the last place.ā€ To be a servant. To be the littlest, least, and last. But that is impossible if our egos are being driven by a neurotic and shamed-based anxiety. Because the reality of Good Friday is that if you become like Jesus–if you carry his cross–nobody will pay attention, no one will say thank you, no one will recognize your work. That’s crucifixion. Of the ego, of the self, of our aspirations to be ā€œa somebody.ā€
These reflections deepen the point I've been making about humility and identity. The way of Jesus, it's cruciform nature, requires a secure and grounded identity. For if you lack this security you'll never be able to endure the shame-based fear of being ordinary when you are asked to "take on the form of a servant" as Jesus did. So it's not just humility that's at stake here, it is our capacity to sacrificially love as Jesus loved. Put simply, the way of Jesus demands shame-resiliency, and shame-resiliency flows out of a stable and grounded identity. 

How, then, to find grounding and stability for your identity? Both The Slavery of Death and The Shape of Joy share the same answer. The two books are linked. The Slavery of Death was my first discussion of what David Kelsey calls an "eccentric identity," and The Shape of Joy traces the research in positive psychology to make that same point, what I call "the outward turn." The theological approach in The Slavery of Death converges upon the psychological treatment in The Shape of Joy

"It Should Not Be So Among You": Reflections on Hierarchy, Power, and Spiritual Warfare

Last week's reflections about Bob Sutton's book The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't reminded me of a paper I delivered at the 2013 Christian Scholar's Conference in a session about Christian anarchism. 

My paper was originally titled "On Anarchism and Assholes: Social Psychological Reflections on Anarchism and The Principalities and Powers," but the powers that be didn't like the edgy title and changed it to "It Should Not Be So Among You: Social Psychological Reflections on Anarchism and The Principalities and Powers." 

Taking its cue from The No Asshole Rule, my paper shared a spiritual and psychological reflection upon Sutton's observation that "power breeds nastiness." Some of these reflections eventually found their way into Reviving Old Scratch. What follows are the main beats of my CSC paper, slightly edited:

Power Breeds Nastiness
Recall the two tests Bob Sutton proposes to identify an asshole in the workplace:
Test One:
After talking to the alleged asshole, does the "target" feel oppressed, humiliated, de-energized, or belittled by the person? In particular, does the target feel worse about him or herself?

Test Two:
Does the alleged asshole aim his or her venom at people who are less powerful rather than at those people who are more powerful?
These rules capture how humans are easily corrupted by hierarchy and asymmetries in power. Even the smallest power differentials can have deleterious social impacts. For example, in The No Asshole Rule Sutton cites research by Deborah Gruenfeld who has studied the ruinous toll of hierarchy upon human character. In one study described by Sutton, Gruenfeld observed groups of three undergraduates asked to discuss a controversial topic. One of the three students was randomly appointed to evaluate the recommendations of the other two (placing them in a slightly higher power role). Later in the experiment the students were brought a plate of five cookies (intentionally an odd number!). Gruenfeld found that the "high status" students were more likely to take a second cookie, chew with their mouths open, and get crumbs on their faces and the table. As Sutton observes about Gruenfeld's study: "This silly study scares me because it shows how having just a slight power edge causes regular people to grab the cookies for themselves and act like rude pigs. Just think about the effects in thousands of interactions every year..." 

It's observations like those from Gruenfeld's research that causes Sutton to conclude that "power breeds nastiness." This is something well-known to psychologists. Our minds quickly go to two of the most famous studies in social psychology, the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram Obedience Study. Conducted in 1971 by Philip Zimbardo, the Stanford Prison Experiment was famously called off because the guards of the simulated prison, previously well-adjusted young college students, became abusive and sadistic when given power over the prisoners. And where the Stanford Prison Experiment illustrates the effects of power upon the minds of those wielding it, the Milgram Obedience Study illustrates the toxic effects of power upon those in subordinate positions, those lower down the power hierarchy. As many are aware, the Milgram Obedience Study revealed that the majority of people taken from the general population would give potentially lethal shocks to another human being, even over their cries of pain, if asked to do so by an authority figure.

In sum, power differentials corrupt both those with the power and those without it. This entire dynamic Philip Zimbardo has dubbed ā€œthe Lucifer effect.ā€

Resisting the Principalities and Powers 
Having mentioned the Devil, let us shift away from power and hierarchy to talk a bit about spiritual warfare and the theology behind what the New Testament authors call ā€œthe principalities and powers.ā€

We all know the famous text from Ephesians 6. From the King James Version:
Ephesians 6.11-12
Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
The root of the word anarchy is the Greek word arche, along with the prefix an- meaning ā€œnot.ā€ Arche is often translated in the New Testament as ā€œpower,ā€ ā€œrule,ā€ or ā€œauthority.ā€ Etymologically, then, anarchy means ā€œagainst power, rule, or authority.ā€

Importantly for our purposes, arche is the word we encounter in Ephesians 6, the second part of the pair ā€œprincipalities and powersā€ (archai kai exousiai) which occurs ten times in the New Testament (Lk. 12.11, 20.20; 1 Cor. 15.24; Col. 1.16, 2.10, 2.15; Eph. 1.21, 3.10, 6.12; Titus 3.1). And given that Christians are encouraged in Ephesians 6 to wage a battle ā€œagainstā€ the archai—against the powers—spiritual warfare can be described as anarchist, as a battle not against flesh and blood but against the arche, against the principalities and powers.

For most of its history, anarchism has focused upon resisting the powers of the state, even in its Christian manifestations. Anarchist resistance to ā€œwickedness in high placesā€ tends to be externally and politically focused, how the church and the Christian relates to the State in its cultural, political, and economic manifestations. This is, no doubt, a foundational aspect of Christian anarchism: resistance to the power of the State when that power is oppressive, exploitative, unjust and violent. 

But as a psychologist I’d like to focus less upon these external and political acts of anarchist resistance to focus on our internal struggle, the spiritual and psychological dynamics of how we live, embedded as we are, within power structures. I’d like to meditate on Bob Sutton’s conclusion that ā€œpower breeds nastiness.ā€ I want to reflect on how spiritual warfare requires us to resist the corrupting allure of power that turns us into people we never intended to become.

In focusing on the inner dynamics of this spiritual struggle I’m taking a cue from the seminal work of the late Walter Wink. 

One of Wink’s crucial observations is that the ancients and the Biblical authors did not discriminate between spiritual and political powers, that the two were intimately intertwined. Thus, in many of the NT texts where the principalities and powers are enumerated, political officials—rulers, judges, magistrates—are mentioned right alongside spiritual—angelic and demonic—powers. Wink’s observation is that in the ancient imagination every political power had a corresponding spiritual power, and that every spiritual power had a corresponding political power.

In this view, spiritual warfare is simultaneously a political and spiritual struggle. Every political battle on earth was also fought as a battle in heaven. And while this view may seem strange, it makes more sense if you contemplate how the ancients saw their Pharaohs, kings, and Caesars as divine beings, gods, and sons of god. At the very least, rulers were divinely appointed and sanctioned. 

Following theologians like Bultmann, Wink argues that the dualism of the ancients, where spiritual powers are believed to exist above or over physical powers below on earth, is difficult to maintain for many modern believers. Wink suggests that we retain the dualism—the tight association between political and spiritual powers—but trade the Up/Down spatial metaphor of the ancients for an Inside/Outside metaphor. That is, power structures have an inner spirituality that animates and vivifies the external, organizational, and institutionalized expressions of power. Here is Wink describing this:
What I propose is viewing the spiritual Powers not as separate heavenly or ethereal entities but as the inner aspect of material or tangible manifestations of power...the "principalities and powers" are the inner or spiritual essence, or gestalt, of an institution or state or system; that the "demons" are the psychic or spiritual powers emanated by organizations or individuals or subaspects of individuals whose energies are bent on overpowering others; that "gods" are the very real archetypal or ideological structures that determine or govern reality and its mirror, the human brain...and that "Satan" is the actual power that congeals around collective idolatry, injustice, or inhumanity, a power that increases or decreases according to the degree of collective refusal to choose higher values. (Naming the Powers, pp. 104-105)
No doubt there are many Christians who would argue that the principalities and powers involve more than this, but I’d like to use Wink’s analysis as his focus on the ā€œinner aspectā€ of power relations is particularly amenable to psychological analysis. In fact, I would argue that Bob Sutton’s The No Asshole Rule, the Stanford Prison Experiment, and the Milgram Obedience Study are very much about a demonic spirituality that is created by power relations, a spirituality with obvious psychological and moral force. To me, this seems to be a remarkable convergence between modern social science and the Biblical witness.

So, let’s push further in this direction.

Power, the Demonic, and Spiritual Warfare
My argument is that the corrupting influence of power relations shouldn't be reduced to how power is externally exerted with, for example, one group or person bossing or ordering around another group or person. Though, to be clear, coercion is a large part of what has to be addressed in resisting the principalities and powers. My interests here, as a psychologist, are drawn to how the inner spirituality, the animating ethos, of a power structure—that of a nation, economy, culture, organization or institution—becomes internalized by individuals. How the spirituality of the principalities and powers becomes the spirituality of the individual. When this happens, when the animating ethos of a power becomes my animating ethos, the spirit of the principality and power takes up resistance in my heart and mind. I become possessed, owned and enslaved by this spirit. And while Philip Zimbardo likely didn’t have demonic possession in mind when he described ā€œthe Lucifer effect,ā€ his reference to the diabolical seems particularly apt and Biblical.

Exorcism, in this account, thus involves being able to name and recognize the spirituality of the power at work around us—in the nation, in the organization, in the economy, and even in the local church—and how that spirituality has taken up residence in our own lives, exerting a negative moral force upon us. This act of naming and recognition is a process of ā€œdiscerning the spirits.ā€ And once the spirituality of the power is named, in the world and in our own hearts, we create the capacity to externalize this spirituality, to ā€œcast it outā€ and ā€œexorciseā€ its demonic influence. Here is Wink describing this dynamic of naming and externalizing demonic influences:
Discernment does not entail esoteric knowledge, but rather the gift of seeing reality as it really is. Nothing is more rare, or more revolutionary, than an accurate description of reality. The struggle for a precise "naming" of the Powers that assail us is itself an essential part of social struggle.

The seer does not, however, simply read off the spirituality of the empire or an institution from its observed behavior. The situation is more complex. The demonic spirit of the outer structure has already been internalized by the seer, along with everyone else. That is how the empire wins compliance. The seer's gift is not to be immune to invasion by the empire's spirituality, but to be able to discern that internalized spirituality, name it, and externalize it. This drives the demonic out of concealment. What is hidden is now revealed. The seer is enabled to hear her own voice chanting the slogans of the Powers, is shown that they are a lie, and is empowered to expel them. The seer locates the source of the chanting outside, and is set free from them. (Engaging the Powers, p. 89)
What all this points to is how resistance to the principalities and powers is not limited to political resistance or activism. Resisting the powers is also, and perhaps even primarily so, an internal, spiritual, and psychological struggle. Resisting the powers involves recognizing, naming, and expunging the spirituality of the powers from our hearts and minds. This resistance is the work of the exorcist, the liberation of ourselves and others from the Lucifer effect. 

How, then, are we to be set free from this spirituality that demonically possesses us?

I can’t begin an exhaustive analysis here, but perhaps we can conclude by taking a cue from Jesus:
Matthew 20.25-28 (NLT)
But Jesus called them together and said, ā€œYou know that the rulers in this world lord it over their people, and officials flaunt their authority over those under them. But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must become your slave. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.ā€
ā€œBut among you it will be different.ā€ How so?

In the kingdom of God, Jesus says, there is no ā€œlording over,ā€ no use of coercive power. In the words of Mark Van Steenwyk, the Kingdom of God is an unKingdom. Similarly, John Caputo calls the Kingdom of God ā€œa sacred anarchy.ā€ And why is this? Because relations within the Kingdom of God are not mediated by power but by ā€œno rule,ā€ by weakness. Here is Caputo describing the sacred anarchy of the Kingdom of God:
The kingdom of God is a domain in which weakness ā€œreigns,ā€ where speaking of a ā€œkingdomā€ is always an irony that mocks sheer strength…The kingdom of God obtains whenever powerlessness exerts its force, whenever the high and mighty are displaced by the least among us. (The Weakness of God, p. 14)
God chose the ā€œoutsiders,ā€ the people deprived of power, wealth, education, high birth, high culture. Theirs is a ā€œroyaltyā€ of outcasts, so that, from the point of view of the aion, the age or the world, the word kingdom is being used ironically, almost mockingly, to refer to these pockets of the despised...For this is a kingdom of the low-down and lowborn, the ā€œexcluded,ā€ the very people who are precisely the victims of the world’s power. (The Weakness of God, p. 46)
As Lord of his kingdom, Jesus exerts a paradoxical power. As tells his disciples in Luke 22.27:
I am among you as the one who serves.
Those who lead shall wash feet. Among us, power looks like a man hanging on a cross. Jesus looked upon those who lord over others and declared unto us:

"It should not be so among you."

Psalm 111

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom"

A very famous line. Though not untroubled by modern concerns. The critical word, obviously, is "fear." 

Let me confess that it can be a bit wearying to constantly rehabilitate the Bible in response to the Oedipal anxieties of progressive Christians. And yet, it is understandable. If a person was raised to fear God, and this fear has curdled into internalized shame and guilt, it needs to be dealt with. But the fear of God as experienced in conservative and high-control sectors of evangelicalism isn't the same fear that is being described by the Psalms. 

As we all know, or should know, by "fear" the ancient Hebrews meant something like reverent awe. True, that awe is tinged by anxiety. Not for fear of getting zapped. Just the simple animal response of being in the presence of an unimaginably huge power or facing a vast mystery. 

Why is this experience of awe the beginning of wisdom? 

In The Shape of Joy I describe how awe creates what psychologists call a "small self." When we encounter a reality greater than our own we resize our egos. Our tendencies toward self-absorption expand the territory of the self, the imprint of self-regard upon the inventory of my cares and concerns. The ego grows large and outsized. As the ego inflates, the concerns of others and the world are displaced, shoved aside by the expanding territory of the self. 

In the encounter with a reality larger and other than my own, my growing self-preoccupation is checked. The boundaries of my ego are pulled back so that I might accommodate myself and find my place within a greater whole. This is why I'd prefer to call the "small self" the "relational self." 

In The Shape of Joy this discussion about awe and the small self is connected to a conversation about humility. This connection with humility is what Psalm 111 sets before us. Humility is the first step toward wisdom, a proper understanding of how the self relates to and fits within the Real. Humility isn't about self-denigration, it is, rather, a recognition of our glad dependance upon God. 

Living within this glad dependence, the fear of the Lord, is the beginning of wisdom.

The No Asshole Rule

Yesterday I reflected upon "stress tests" related to the virtue of humility. One of those tests concerned how we treat people of lower status. Humble people treat persons of lower status with respect, concern, and care. People lacking in humility treat persons of lower status with dismissive superiority. 

Pondering this, I was reminded of a post of mine from 2007, one of the first viral pieces I ever wrote, about Robert Sutton's book No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't. In that 2007 post I shared how I used Sutton's book to lead a Bible class at my church. Sutton read the post and went on to mention my Bible class in the updated edition of the book. Bob and I shared some cordial emails about my inclusion in the revised edition and he shared an advanced copy of the book with me. 
 
In 2004, Sutton was a Stanford business professor. When asked that year by Harvard Business Review to contribute to its annual edition of "Breakthrough Ideas" Sutton submitted what he called "the no asshole rule" as a guide for leadership, hiring practices, and corporate culture. Upon publishing the rule, Sutton received requests from around the world asking for more detail and sharing stories of about the toll assholes exact in the workplace. He also received confirmation that companies who had implemented some version of the rule experienced boosts in their corporate culture along with their bottom lines. All this inspired Sutton to write The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't. The book became a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Businessweek bestseller, and has been translated into over twenty languages. 

But the most noteworthy thing to know about The No Asshole Rule is that it is the only leadership book I have ever read. 

What is "the no asshole rule" and why did it come to mind in light of yesterday's post about stress tests of humility? Again, a stress test for humility is how we treat people of lower status. And that is precisely the topic of Sutton's book. The No Asshole Rule is a meditation on the pernicious effects of hierarchy upon social relations, with a particular eye on how corporate hierarchies create nastiness and abuse in the workplace. For example, how do you identify an asshole? Sutton proposes two tests:

Test One:
After talking to the alleged asshole, does the "target" feel oppressed, humiliated, de-energized, or belittled by the person? In particular, does the target feel worse about him or herself?

Test Two:
Does the alleged asshole aim his or her venom at people who are less powerful rather than at those people who are more powerful? 

Test Two is what came to mind in light of yesterday's post, how we treat people of lower status. As should be obvious, the hierarchical corporate org-chart means that workplace settings are suffused with humility stress tests, as you're constantly dealing with people above or below you in regards to status and power. And it's failures of virtue within this status hierarchy that can make workplaces so oppressive and abusive. Sutton’s "no asshole rule" urges organizations to attend to the toxic relational dynamics that emerge at the intersections of power and status differentials in the workplace.

In many ways, organizational hierarchies are a massive and chronic stress test for the virtue of humility. As Sutton summarizes, "Power breeds nastiness." Consequently, our virtue is tested and revealed within these hierarchies. As Sutton shares, "The difference between how a person treats the powerless versus the powerful is as good a measure of human character as I know."

The Stress Tests of Humility

As I've shared in this space, the virtue of humility plays a featured role in the story I tell in The Shape of Joy about mental health and well-being. 

One of the more interesting conversations in the research literature concerns if humility is primarily an egoic or relational virtue. Most people, when they think about and describe humility, consider it to be an ego-focused virtue, an internal stance we take toward ourselves by way of self-perception, self-focus, and self-absorption. As I describe in The Shape of Joy, humble people have an accurate (rather than distorted) perception of themselves, are hypo-egoic (self-forgetful), and are other-focused (rather than self-focused). 

But humility can also be described as a interpersonal capacity, what is called "relational humility." This view is also called the "social oil" theory. Humility, as a relational capacity, is a social lubricant that reduces interpersonal frictions, irritants, and conflicts. Relationally humble people get along well with others, and this is humility's social magic. 

Relational humility has implications for measurement and assessment. The ratings of others are privileged over self-report. If you want to know if I'm relationally humble you need to ask my family, my church, my friends, my co-workers, and my students. 

The other implication for measurement and assessment is observing relational humility in situations where the virtue comes under stress. In the humility research psychologists have described the following locations as "stress tests" of humility:
  • Seeking control, influence, or power within a group
  • Interpersonal conflict
  • Receiving praise or winning an award
  • Sharing credit with others for accomplishments
  • Receiving unfavorable or critical feedback
  • Admitting and discussing one’s failures
  • Taking ownership and responsibility for mistakes and hurtful behavior
  • Apologizing to others
  • Learning from others, being taught
  • Interacting with those of lower status
You might think of other situations where humility is put to the test. The point here is that these are the relational locations where humility either shines or fails. Our behavior in these moments becomes either oil or sand in the relational gears of life. Humble people share power, resolve conflicts, accept praise with modesty, spread credit, welcome critical feedback, admit failures, own their mistakes, quickly apologize, willingly learn from others, and treat people of lower status with dignity, care, and respect. Humble people pass the relational stress tests. People lacking in humility, by contrast, grasp at power, exacerbate conflict, bask in the limelight, hoard credit, get defensive facing criticism, hide their failures, avoid responsibility, fail to apologize, aren't teachable, and treat those of lower status with dismissive superiority. 

True, at the root of these relational capacities are some egoic virtues. As I recently wrote about, humble people are amazingly healthy and grounded people. Humble people are practically saints, which has caused me to think, as I describe in The Shape of Joy, that there is more than "humility" going on here. Regardless, the point is clear that the truest tests of humility aren't egoic but relational. 

To wrap up, what I, personally, like about the stress tests of humility is how they provide me with an inventory of locations where I can do some good self-examination. Instead of asking myself "Am I humble?" I can reflect upon how I behave, and have behaved, in very specific situations in my life. When it comes to relational humility, do I pass the tests?

The Two Trees of the Human Predicament

Last fall I did a series entitled "A Theology of Everything" in a personal attempt to gather and harmonize some theological commitments concerning creation theology, theodicy, soteriology, and eschatology. None of it was particularly original. The goal for myself was smoothing out locations were I felt there were some frictions in my own suite of convictions.

One of the big points I made was that the human predicament is both moral and ontological. It's an important insight as this twinning is often missed. Or, at the very least, one side of our predicament is emphasized at the expense of the other. For example, soteriological visions like penal substitutionary atonement tend to reduce salvation to human guilt and forgiveness. This moralizes salvation, which leads inexorably to moral influence views of the atonement. Salvation becomes "being a good person." Full stop. Jesus "shows us how to be human." And that's all he does.

To be sure, salvation concerns human guilt. And salvation also concerns sanctification, becoming more and more conformed to the image of Jesus who is "the Human One." But what is left out of this picture are the ontological effects of the Fall. Our vulnerability to death and the groaning of creation. For the church fathers this ontological predicament was front and center.

And yet, some read the ontological concerns of the church fathers over against the juridical vision of salvation, to the point of denying any juridical content in either the Bible or patristic tradition. This is also a distortion. To be sure, the law and order imagination of modern Christians is very different from the covenantal imagination of Scripture. Still, the Torah contains the category of law and covenantal infidelity and infractions create hazards and consequences, the Deuteronomic curses among them, that demand cultic attention and atonement. To erase the categories of sin and mercy from our soteriological vision is to dump much of the Biblical imagination into the trashcan.

So, sin and death go hand in hand, the moral and the ontological are braided together. Salvation concerns the whole of it.

A clear and concise picture of the dual aspect of the Fall are the two trees in the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The Tree of Life concerns the ontological. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil concerns the moral. Sin enters the world when Adam and Eve eat of the the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This is the moral catastrophe of the Fall which introduces shame, guilt, and hiding from God. The moral fall has ontological effects. Adam and Eve are separated from the Tree of Life. This introduces death into our lives along with the groaning of creation. 

In short, the Fall involves two trees, the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. One tree symbolizes sin, the other tree symbolizes death. Salvation, therefore, involves both trees. The moral and the ontological are twinned. 

That Rock Was Christ

Out at the prison we were in the book of Numbers. 

(We're going straight through the Bible. We've done this once before and it took us almost ten years. But having reached the end we've gone back to the beginning and are doing it again.)

In Numbers 20 the Israelites come to the desert of Zin and find no water. They complain. Moses makes an appeal to God. The Lord tells Moses: "Take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink.ā€ After chiding the people for their lack of trust, Moses strikes the rock. Water flows forth and the people and animals drink.

In the New Testament Paul makes reference to this event. In 1 Corinthians 10 Paul writes:

For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.

What does Paul mean when he says the rock that gushed forth water in the desert of Zin "was Christ"? 

Scholars will point out that 1 Corinthians 10 is an example of Paul's typological reading of the Old Testament. Paul regularly looks back upon the stories of the Old Testament and finds symbolic correspondences with the new reality revealed in Christ. In the passage above from 1 Corinthians 10 the Israelite passage under the cloud and the Red Sea parallels Christian baptism. The mana they eat and the water they drink in the desert provide spiritual sustenance, the same way Christ, who is the Bread of Life and the Water of Life, provides us with spiritual sustenance. Another famous place where Paul deploys this typological reading is in Galatians 4 using Sarah and Hagar as symbolic types of Law and promise.

Paul's typological approach has been much commented on. And it provided a model for the church fathers who frequently applied typological readings to the Old Testament. In fact, Ambrose's typological reading of the Old Testament was one of the big factors that facilitated Augustine's conversion to Christianity. Augustine had been struggling with the Old Testament. Ambrose's typological interpretations of the Old Testament stories gave Augustine a way to read the Old Testament that satisfied is intellectual and moral doubts. Given all this, it's curious how unfashionable typological readings are today. Paul read Scripture this way. Ambrose, Augustine, and the church fathers read Scripture this way. But modern pastors, preachers, and teachers avoid typological readings. Modern readings of the Bible, as taught in most seminaries, are governed by (and I'd say terrorized by) historical-critical methods which are rooted in an Enlightenment epistemology. Word studies and historical analysis are the norm today, not searching for symbolic correspondences. 

You could argue, though, that people like Jordan Peterson are reintroducing typological approaches to Scripture. Peterson reads the Old Testaments stories as Jungian symbols and archetypes, windows into psychology and the human predicament. Which is a critical difference. The typological readings of Paul and the church fathers were Christological. The symbols pointed to Christ. Peterson's readings, by contrast, are psychological. Paul says, "This story is about Christ." Peterson says, "This story is about the hero archetype."

Having said all that, the point I made out at the prison took us in a different direction.

Specifically, yes, you could say that the rock of Numbers 20 was a symbol and foreshadowing of Christ. We can establish a typological correspondence. But what if we read the correspondence ontologically? That rock was--literally--Christ. 

There is Biblical warrant for this ontological claim. All things were created by Christ and in Christ all things hold together. This would include rocks. As Gerard Manley Hopkins put it, Christ plays in ten thousand places. Given this stronger ontological understanding, how was the rock in the desert of Zin Christ? Well, the rock saved them. The rock was a mediator of grace. The rock didn't just symbolize Christ, the rock was Christ because Christ is always saving and sustaining us. We can look back upon our lives and see how we've had many saving and sustaining encounters with Christ. Perhaps it wasn't a rock, but it was something. 

In his book Unapologetic Francis Spufford describes a moment of conflict, shame, and despair in his romantic relationship. Spufford was the guilty party, and he describes feeling stuck, relationally and emotionally. Mired in these feelings after a bitter argument he finds himself in a coffee shop. Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, the middle movement, the Adagio, begins to play. And the music saves him, becomes a mediator of grace. Here is Spufford describing it: 

If you don’t know it, it is a very patient piece of music. It too goes round and round, in its way, essentially playing the same tune again and again, on the clarinet alone and then with the orchestra, clarinet and then orchestra, lifting up the same unhurried lilt of solitary sound, and then backing it with a kind of messageless tenderness in deep waves, when the strings join in. It is not strained in anyway. It does not sound as if Mozart is doing something he can only just manage, and it does not sound as if the music is struggling to lift a weight it can only just manage. Yet at the same time, it is not music that denies anything. It offers a strong, absolutely calm rejoicing, but it does not pretend that there is no sorrow. On the contrary, it sounds as if it comes from a world where sorrow is perfectly ordinary, but still there is more to be said. I had heard it lots of times, but this time it felt to me like news. It said: everything you fear is true. And yet. And yet. Everything you have done wrong, you have really done wrong. And yet. And yet. The world is wider than you fear it is, wider than the repeating rigmarole that is in your mind, and it has this in it, as truly as it contains your unhappiness. Shut up and listen, and let yourself count, just a little bit, on a calm that you do not have to be able to make for yourself, because here it is, freely offered. You are still deceiving yourself, said the music, if you don’t allow for the possibility of this. There is more going on here than what you deserve, or don’t deserve. There is this, as well. And it played the tune again, with all the cares in the world.

The novelist Richard Powers has written that the Clarinet Concerto sounds the way mercy would sound, and that’s exactly how I experienced in 1997.

Let us say, "That music was Christ." Not symbolically, but actually. Christ plays in ten thousands places. And if that is so, we come to see, with dawning recognition, that Christ has been saving us our entire lives. 

Paul looked at a moment of grace in the story of Israel and declared, "That rock was Christ." 

In your story, as well, those rocks exist. 

Psalm 110

ā€œSit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstoolā€

Psalm 110.1 is one of the most quoted lines in the New Testament. The Davidic promise made in this psalm becomes a messianic expectation fulfilled in Jesus. Peter cites Psalm 110.1 in the very first proclamation of the gospel:
God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it. Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear. For David did not ascend to heaven, and yet he said,

ā€œā€˜The Lord said to my Lord:
ā€œSit at my right hand
until I make your enemies
a footstool for your feet.ā€ā€™

ā€œTherefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.ā€
Psalm 110 also sits behind descriptions of Christ's cosmic victory:
But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. (1 Cor. 15.20-25)
In his book Saved By Allegiance Alone Matthew Bates makes the point that Christians often fail to tell the whole of the gospel story. We leave the narrative incomplete. We never reach the final chapter. 

Specifically, we generally tell the story of the gospel by recounting the Incarnation, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus. These events--birth, life, death and resurrection--are the Good News.

Bates argues that this truncated telling of the gospel, ending with Easter, leaves out the final, climatic moment of the story. The culmination of the gospel is the Ascension, the moment envisioned by Psalm 110, Jesus being seated as Lord and King and coming to reign over his enemies. The entire point of the gospel story--as the culmination of Israel's story--is Jesus being enthroned as Ruler over the world and cosmos.

If we fail to finish the story, argues Bates, we never arrive at the definitive confession of the Christian faith, that Jesus is "Lord of all." And if we miss this, we miss the heart of the Christian life and community, confessing and swearing fealty and allegiance to the one, true king.

A Map and Brief History of Celtic Christianity

Preparing for the class on Celtic Christianity I recently taught in Ireland, I spent some time looking around online for a map and timeline that I could use to introduce my students to the history of Irish monasticism. I couldn't find any that worked for me, so I made my own.

Here's the map I made (PDF download here):
Some of the specific sites and events noted in the map are peculiar to the outings and visits we made as a part of the class. And other things have been left off. But most of the map gives you a nice timeline and visual about the rise and decline of what is called "Celtic Christianity." 

To start with some pre-Celtic history, we visited the burial mounds at the Hills of Tara and Newgrange, neolithic sites that pre-date the Celts in Ireland or, rather, the rise of Celtic culture in Ireland. 

The origin of the Celts in Ireland is a matter of scholarly dispute. The original Celts were from Gaul (modern-day France, Belgium, parts of western Germany, and northern Italy). The Celts of Ireland and Britain are connected to these European Celts for two reasons. First, the languages of Scotland, Cornwall, Wales, and Ireland are in the Celtic language group. Also, the artifacts of the Celts from the Isles show influences of the La TĆØne culture of the European Celts. For these two reasons, language and La TĆØne influence, we describe the peoples encountered by the Romans in the British Isles as "Celtic." These linguistic and cultural features show up in the British Isles between 800-100 BC. So, the neolithic sites of the Isles, like Stonehenge or the burial mounds at Newgrange, pre-date the Celts. 

There is some debate about this Celtic "arrival." Was it a migration or invasion of the Isles by the European Celts? Or was it a case of cultural transfusion and change? Historically, the migration/invasion hypothesis was favored. But recent genetic evidence has cast doubt on that theory, pushing scholars toward the cultural change hypothesis. And if that is true, then the peoples of the British Isles were not genetically "Celtic" but became, rather, culturally "Celtic." Either way, the British Isles are recognizably "Celtic" by about 100 BC.

Rome makes it first invasion in 55 BC and eventually comes to establish itself in Britain for a little over four centuries. The Roman impact on Britain remains to this day, from the Roman baths at Bath (shout out to all Jane Austen fans) to the fact that the Brits still drive upon roads laid by the Romans. 

Christianity follows those Roman roads to the Isles, making its way to Britain around 200 AD. The faith soon starts to spread. In 300 AD St. Alban dies as the first Christian martyr in Roman Briton. 

Roman and Christian influence never fully penetrates to the edges of Briton. Cornwall, Wales, and Scotland remain largely pre-Christian and Celtic. The Romans never invade Ireland, leaving its Celtic culture wholly untouched by Roman culture and the Christian faith.

The Romans leave in 410 AD. After the Roman departure, the Anglo-Saxons begin their migration into East and Southern Briton, effectively taking over the same areas once controlled by the Romans. The Anglo-Saxons arrive as pagans, but they are evangelized by the Christians they encounter. In the Northern parts of Briton, many of these Christians will be the Irish monastics who come from Ireland.
 
The dawn of Celtic Christianity happens when St. Patrick, around 400 AD, goes back to Ireland to begin his missionary work among the Celts. I say "goes back" because, as a young boy, Patrick had been abducted and taken as a slave to Ireland. Patrick's mission is wildly successful. Christianity spreads through Ireland, and Irish monasticism takes hold in places like Glendalough with St. Kevin, Clonmacnoise with St. CiarƔn, and Kildare with St. Brigid. As I noted above, the Irish monks become missionaries themselves. St. Columba establishes the monastery at Iona in 563 AD. In Iona the Book of Kells begins to be created. St. Aidan goes from Iona to Lindisfarne in 634 AD. St. Columbanus goes to France in 600 AD, establishing monasteries throughout Europe. As he travels, Columbanus brings with him the peculiar invention of the Irish monks, the illuminated codex. This impact of Columbanus upon medieval Europe, the monasteries he established with their illuminated manuscripts, is how, in the words of Thomas Cahill, the Irish "saved civilization" after the fall of Rome.

The decline of Celtic Christianity was slow and marked by three main historical events. The first was the Synod of Whitby in 664 AD. One of the aims of the Synod of Whitby was to bring the Irish monasteries under Roman Catholic control. Next, the Vikings began to raid the British Isles around 800 AD. Both Iona and Lindisfarne were eventually abandoned due to Viking plundering. Because of the Viking threat, the Book of Kells was taken away from Iona and brought to Ireland, where it remans to this day. Finally, the Norman invasion of Britain in 1066 AD and Ireland in 1169 AD brought significant Irish influence upon Western Christianity to a close. Given all this, "peak Celtic Christianity" lasted from St. Patrick to the Synod of Whitby, about 250 years. Though distinctive aspects of Celtic Christianity persisted in Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland for another 500 years. 

So that's the story, told in a single map I made for my students. For more about my take on Celtic Christianity check out Hunting Magic Eels and the chapter on "Celtic Enchantments."

Habits of the Heart: Part 3, Sanctifying Your Story

In the last post I described how acquiring emotional dispositions involves narrative. The stories we tell shape our meaning-making processes, how we construe the world and where we locate our concerns. Dispositions are formed through a top-down process that directs how we see the world and where we place our values. 

These observations can be sharpened through what is known in the psychological literature as sanctification theory. Sanctification theory, developed by Kenneth Pargament and Annette Mahoney, concerns how aspects of life—such as relationships, roles, activities, objects, or events—can be perceived as sacred and imbued with divine significance. My favorite example of sanctification theory comes from the volumes of Every Moment Holy published by Rabbit Room Press. 

A perusal of the contents of the volumes of Every Moment Holy reveals how the prayers are directed toward a host of mundane and daily activities, jobs, experiences, and chores:

  • For Domestic Days
  • For One Who Is Employed
  • For Those Who Employ Others
  • For Laundering
  • For the Preparation of a Meal
  • For the Washing of Windows
  • For Home Repairs
  • For Students & Scholars
  • For Waiters & Waitresses
  • For the Changing of Diapers
  • For Those Employed in Manual Labor
  • For One Who Cares for an Infirm Parent
  • For Mechanical Repairs
  • For Unseen Labors
  • For One Who Works the Nightshift
  • For Yard Work
  • For Getting Dressed
  • For Dropping Off a Child at School
  • For Those Anxious About Air Travel
  • For Nursing Mothers
  • Before Shopping
  • For the Paying of Bills
  • For Those Who Cannot Sleep
  • For the Ritual of Morning Coffee
  • For a Sick Day
  • Before Teaching
  • Before a Job Interview
Most of these activities don't feel very holy or sacred. These are moments in our lives were we experience fatigue, apathy, boredom, dread, anxiety, irritation, or dissatisfaction. But if we sanctify these moments, if we can connect them to sacred and divine concerns, we begin to infuse life with transcendent emotions. Boredom or anxiety is replaced with gratitude, hope, joy, wonder, and love. Consider, for example, the Liturgy for Changing Diapers (free download here):
Heavenly Father,
in such menial moments as this—
the changing of a diaper—
I would remember this truth:
My unseen labors are not lost,
for it is these repeated acts of small sacrifice that—
like bright, ragged patches—
are slowly being sewn into a quilt of
lovingkindness that swaddles this child.

I am not just changing a diaper.
By love and service
I am tending a budding heart that,
rooted early in such grace-filled devotion,
might one day be more readily-inclined
to bow to your compassionate conviction—
knowing itself then as both a receptacle
and a reservoir of heavenly grace.

So this little act of diapering—
though in form sometimes felt
as base drudgery—might be
better described as one of ten thousand acts
by which I am actively creating a culture of
compassionate service and selfless love to shape
the life of this family and this beloved child.

So take this unremarkable act of necessary
service, O Christ, and in your economy
let it be multiplied into
that greater outworking of worship and of faith,
a true investment in the incremental
advance of your kingdom across generations.

Open my eyes that I might see this act
for what it is from the fixed vantage of eternity, O Lord—
how the changing of a diaper might
sit upstream of the changing of a heart;
how the changing of a heart might
sit upstream of the changing of the world.

Amen.
This prayer is a profound and moving illustration of sanctification theory, how an unpleasant chore can become suffused with transcendent wonder, beauty, and grace. Following from the last post, notice how the prayer is engaged in shaping, in a top-down process, our concern-based construals. In the act of changing a diaper a perceptual stance is being adopted that brings sacred concerns into view and thereby imbues the mundane with divine significance. The act of changing diapers is re-narrated and this story allows holy affections to flow. 

Now, if sanctification can be done on a case by case basis, every moment becoming holy, step back and take a wider view. We can sanctify our entire life story. Given that our identities and self-conceptions are narrative in nature, we can sanctify that story. As I describe in The Shape of Joy, Pamela King calls this a "transcendent narrative identity." Acquiring a transcendent narrative identity involves telling a sacred story about your life, construing your life from a sacred perspective and locating your concerns in the divine. 

When we sanctify our lives our treasures are located in heaven and not on earth. And as Jesus said, wherever we place our treasure, there our heart will be also.

Habits of the Heart: Part 2, Story, Emotion, and Transcendence

The point I made in the last post is that spiritual formation must involve moving from emotions to dispositions. Rather than waiting on external, situational, and environmental events to bring about or elicit emotions of gratitude, hope, joy, wonder, or love we must work at becoming more grateful, hopeful, joyful, wonder-filled, and loving. Acquiring dispositional gratitude, for example, brings more thankfulness into our lives. Transformed into dispositions emotions become virtues. 

How does this happen?

It happens at the level of meaning-making, how we construe, interpret, and make sense of the world. Cognitively, dispositions are controlled in a top-down fashion. Dispositions, we might say, dictate our emotional responses to external events rather than our being reactive to and triggered by circumstance. 

For example, in The Shape of Joy I use Robert Robert's description of joy as a "concern-based construal." Joy can be a positive emotion, an experience of gladness and delight in response to some happy event. But dispositional joy, joy as a virtue, is more consistent, stable, and enduring. And most importantly, dispositional joy creates capacities for joy even in difficult circumstances. In The Shape of Joy I make a contrast between triggered joy (joy as emotion) versus transcendent joy (joy as disposition). This triggered-to-transcending shift happens, following Roberts, by noting how joy is a construal, a way of seeing and perceiving the world. Joy as a process of meaning-making. And continuing with Roberts, this meaning-making process is "concern-based," having to do with our cares, values, and investments. As I put it in The Shape of Joy, joy is seeing the world through what you care about.

Knowing this about joy we have two levers to pull. First, there is perceptual work, how we see and interpret the world. We can change or alter our perspective. We can reframe and reconsider. Second, we have control over our concerns, where we invest and place the weight of our lives. We can locate our concerns in places that provide deeper and more constant anchorage in the storms of life. As Jesus says: 

Don’t store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves don’t break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Summarizing, we can gain greater emotional autonomy through perspective-taking and the considered allocation of our concerns. How does that happen?

It happens at the level of narrative. Meaning-making is a storying-telling process, how we plot and narrate our lives. Our story is what dictates how we construe the world and our story expresses where we place our concerns. In telling our stories, we give shape to our emotions, forming them into dispositions. You can tell a story about your life that makes you more grateful. You can tell a story about your life that makes you more hopeful. You can tell a story about your life that makes you more loving. You can tell a story about your life that makes you more hopeful. And you can tell a story about your life that makes you more open to wonder and awe. 

To conclude, meaning-making is crucial to cultivating holy affections and virtuous emotional dispositions. Your story--how you construe the world and where you locate your concerns--creates capacities for emotional autonomy and transcendence.