Happy 5th Week in Ordinary Time! Over the past few issues, we’ve been exploring assumptions that are easy to fall into as modern day Christians - assumptions that contain hints of truth but with slight subtleties that can lead us off track. As we examine these assumptions, we’re building the foundation for a communal Rule of Life. Just in case you missed the previous editions of this series, you can get caught up here:
The Gatekeeper of Love
Recently, I was listening to a talk by the writer and scholar Dr. Todd Hall on relational spirituality where he made a simple but profound claim that human beings have two primary ways of knowing:
Explicit knowledge, meaning the things we understand in our minds
Implicit knowledge, meaning the things we understand in our hearts or by experience
It’s probably not a stretch to say that many Christians (and non-Christians as well,) possess the explicit knowledge that God loves them but have yet to know that truth implicitly. Many of us understand that God loves us, and yet we aren’t able to live with that truth at the very core of our being. We still go about our days striving to earn love, both in our relationships with others and in our relationship with God.
In other words, when it comes to the love of God, we often experience a gap between the head and the heart. I believe that one common obstacle in that gap is legalism.
There are many ways to define legalism, but for our purposes let’s think of it this way:
Legalism is the belief that God will only show me His love if I live perfectly.
Legalism is a tricky one because it often manifests itself externally as virtue. In reality however, it is a very narrow view of God and His merciful love. A legalistic perspective constrains the Holy Spirit to only moving in conduits free of impurity and approved by the right authorities.
In the New Testament, Jesus tells us that the law is dependent on love of God and love of neighbour. Legalism is corrosive to the soul because love is construed as the result of obeying the law, instead of the foundation on which the law is built. Rather than serve as love’s gatekeeper, the law is meant to clarify how we can practice love in relationship with God and with our neighbours.
Underlying legalism is a twisted, heinous lie: love is something that must be earned, and once I earn it, I need to fight to keep it. There’s no peace, and no security. If we believe this lie, we will never let the knowledge of God’s love become an implicit belief.
To become people of love, we need our head knowledge to move into our hearts. We need to see perfection as the fruit of love doing its work in our lives, rather than perfection resulting in greater love.
Of all the ways to open our hearts to God’s love, one of the most ancient is the practice of contemplation. Unlike many other forms of prayer, contemplation has little in the way of “technique;” it’s simply time spent sitting in silence, allowing God to generously lavish His love on us.
A life marked by contemplation is one that results in perfection. It’s one of the best ways to move our explicit knowledge of God’s love into our hearts, and to sidestep the dangers of legalism without also giving up what Jesus taught on morality. Rather than striving and white-knuckling our way through life, we allow God’s love do its transformative work on our soul over time.
Putting it Into Practice
Because contemplation is a more passive practice, it can feel extremely difficult in a world marked by constant activity. Our best advice for you if you don’t already spend time in contemplative prayer is this:
Start with just 5 minutes of uninterrupted silence with God.
You don’t need to fill that space with anything - just set your attention on God and receiving His love. Inevitably, you will get distracted, and that’s okay. Just continue to turn your attention back to Him. If the time runs out and you’ve spent very little time focused on God, that’s okay. Try again tomorrow.
I’ve worked this silent time into my prayer for several years now. While I’d be hard pressed to point to any one experience of contemplation that was life changing, it’s certainly had a profound impact on me over time. It’s been through contemplative prayer that I’ve learned how to receive God’s love, even when I show up to prayer painfully aware of my faults and failings.
Contemplation is a slow work, but commitment to it over time is both deeply transformative and deeply healing.
Deeper Dive
This provocatively titled but extremely powerful article: Anti Masturbationism - A False Religion
Poustinia by Catherine Doherty - One of the best books on contemplation I’ve ever read
A short and simple walkthrough of contemplative prayer from the Catechism
Benediction
Our good word for this week is an ancient prayer from the Christian tradition called the Jesus Prayer. These simple words have served as the backdrop for contemplation in the lives of many saints. The Jesus Prayer is a breath prayer, meaning that part of it is prayed on the inhale, and the second part on the exhale. If you find yourself struggling to practice contemplative prayer, consider stilling your heart using these words:
Inhale: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God
Exhale: Have mercy on me a sinner
Thanks for reading! Next week we’ll look at how to move from emotionalism to the charismatic.
God Bless,
James
*Astute readers will recognize that in the past, we’ve listed “radical traditionalism” instead of legalism. On reflection, we felt that legalism more accurately described the assumption we are trying to correct.
I really needed this today. Looking forward to reading one of the books you suggested.