We Do Have to Actually DO this Stuff
I'll get back to deep thoughts soon enough--goodness knows, I and so many of you love them so!--but I thought I'd interject something simple along the way.
A lot of what this blog is at the moment is what deep thinkers would call "meta-processing" about this take on faith that we're calling Stage 4 faith. Meta-processing is talking about something. So we're not actually, say, teaching Stage 4 faith, by and large, much less practicing it. We're analyzing the ins and outs of it. We'll leave the teaching of it, say, to church services or great conversations with friends.
But we can get a little lost in--or exasperated by--even the best meta-processing. My goodness, how much can we hash something out? When do we just live out the thing? And... touche.
We run a course for people exploring faith that we call SEEK. And a little while back, we realized we needed to add something to the last session which seemed too obvious to have needed to include up to that point: namely that, to get all the wonderful benefits we've been discussing over these ten weeks--and which many of you participants have been experiencing--you do actually have to DO this stuff.
It might seem obvious, but it's surprising how easy many of us find it to keep hanging out in faith settings, enjoying the company we're keeping, while all the time forgetting that we're not going to get the good stuff without, say, diligent two-way prayer, heartfelt and regular enjoyment of the Bible, regular risks of faith all because God seemed to direct us towards them, great partnership with others trying to follow God even as we love and enjoy the neighbors around us... Stuff like that.
And we often get sage nods: "Ahhh, the final tip from the masters--to get the good stuff, you do actually have to DO this stuff."
So, as an interjection in our totally fascinating ongoing conversation, from which I'm learning so much, just to say... we do actually have to DO this stuff to get the good stuff, whatever the many rewards of thinking about it.
Back with more deep thoughts shortly, with a mind-blowing guest column to follow.
