By Reverend Theodore W. Cooley
The Christianity that is popular today seems to teach an extremely “triumphal” interpretation of the gospel. As I listen to radio and watch television, I find that this super-positive Christianity is more culturally widespread than the healings and the prayers for new Cadillacs that I have known in the past.
An emphasis on physical and social success, Madison Avenue style, appears to overwhelm the churches in this country, reaching beyond the electronic expressions of religion.
Super-positive Christianity contrasts with Both the biblical and the traditional witnesses of the church. Jesus extended a sharp call, “Sell all that you have and come, be my disciples.” Throughout the centuries, a large number of his followers have accepted this call, from the time of the Fathers of the Desert before. A.D. 350. Not all Christians feel the spiritual need, or have the opportunity, as they did, to retreat physically into the desert. Yet spiritual retreat has been important to all ages of the church, and it is a need for us today, even though not all Christians need go into the desert.
Having spiritually gone into the wilderness, the Christian is called to return to the world, to society, as Jesus did, with a new understanding of God’s presence in life. This understanding includes a sense of separation and detachment from the positive, success-oriented world.
Such detachment has characterized the spiritually sensitive person, even one as “successful” as the late Dag Hammarskjold of the United Nations. His spiritual diary, published after his death, revealed an unknown and profoundly devout person. Inn the Disciples of Christ heritage, the act of Barton W. Stone and his compatriots in the “Last Will and Testament” should be seen as more than naive frontier optimism. These men were giving lip status, position and power to enter the unknown, wherever God might lead them. In terms of their day and time, they were entering a spiritual desert.
Rather than acknowledge our spiritual need before God and enter the desert, in this century we have embarked on an obsession with “spiritual technology.” We insist on the Lord carrying a double-mantled lantern in one hand as he leads us by the other. This is in direct contradiction to both the New Testament and the experience of the saints of devotional life throughout the centuries.
From these saints we learn the way of the negative “via negative” (Latin) that goes beyond the prideful positive to acknowledge the incompleteness of our lives in the flesh. Instead of advising God how he should fulfill our prayer requests, via negative calls us to a time of listening to God in prayer, or, perhaps, the simple silence of the worship pf Christ.
Accepting the negative way, we can acknowledge our insufficiency and allow God to take us into the darkness of his life, purging us of our attachment to this world so that the joy of his presence may become the purpose of our existence. We can know Christ’s presence by the negation of possessions, family, selves, and finally, pride. In this way we can accept the real self, warts and sin included and accept God’s love for us in the midst of our imperfections.
If we are already sincerely trying to walk with the Lord, our present uneasiness with ourselves and the world may be nothing more than an invitation to step out into spiritual growth with Christ. Such an invitation is guided by the Bible and assisted by the great devotional guides which haven tested over the centuries, such as On the Imitation of Christ, by Thomas a Kempis. Competent guidance is a must, and is available, although some searching may be necessary.
When the positive “Super-Christian” approach no longer meets the spiritual needs of our lives, then God is present to call us into his darkness, into the negative way, that—with many who have before us—we may begin the additional growth toward spiritual maturity that God desires in our lives.
Published by THE DISCIPLE, 2 March 1980, and copyrighted by them.