The Spiritual Disciplines as a Means to an End

If the spiritual disciplines are indeed time-tested strategies for bringing one’s entire personality into cooperation with the will of God, it’s clear that they’re means to an end, the end being a Christlike disposition. In this sense, the ideal would be to practice a given spiritual discipline until it’s no longer necessary. For instance, Dallas Willard once said, “I fast so that I can be content even when I don’t get what I want.” It’s conceivable that you’ll reach a point in your spiritual maturity where this kind of patience flows naturally from your character. For that to happen, however, you need a vision and you need a plan. The spiritual disciplines are the gritty elements of the plan. They’ve got more in common with a weight room or a shop class than they do with a spiritual retreat center.

The most well-known of the disciplines are: prayer, solitude, Scripture reading, Scripture memorization, confession of sins, fasting, acts of mercy done in secret. These are the classics and when they’re undertaken in the right spirit—the intentional pursuit of Christlikeness—they can help to bring about the same kind of dramatic transformation in our character as we see in our physical bodies when we subject them to healthy disciplines. Once again, the body is the locus of your spiritual life, the conduit through which it flows. You can’t fast, pray, read, confess, profess, or serve without your body. Being the hands and feet of Christ means you’ll need your actual hands and feet. 

Stated simply, we all need to be practicing the spiritual disciplines if we want to become the kind of people who respond like Jesus in all of life’s circumstances. The glaringly obvious fact to point out here is that our Lord himself was a practitioner of the disciplines. If Jesus needed them, we definitely need them. Though I recommend keeping the classic disciplines in a regular rotation, as you go, you’ll find that there’s ample room for creativity. The reason for this is simple: You’ve got a peculiar personality and this means that certain disciplines can be modified to address your specific needs and shortcomings. Let me offer a personal example. If you know anything about me, it’ll likely come as no surprise that I’ve got a melancholic temperament. For the most part, this is a good thing. It’s part of what helps me to feel things deeply; it enriches my sense of life’s radiance and complexity. But it also means that I can be quite gloomy. Because of this disposition, celebration is often a discipline for me. I have to consciously choose to dwell on joyful and mirthful subjects. So, on the creative disciplines note, here are a few of mine: enjoying a lavish meal with friends, cooking something extravagant (I like to cook), playing music (no metal and absolutely no Joy Division on these days per my wife), and enjoying lighthearted art (I generally favor “confrontational” or “challenging” art: King Lear is my favorite). 

Now it’s your turn. For some of you, this will be familiar territory. You’ve already got a refined approach to the disciplines. For others, this may be an exciting twist, and opportunity to bring your entire personality to bear on your spiritual habits. What I’ve tried to stress in these posts is the centrality of your body in these undertakings. Why? Because we all know that in every other arena of life, an attitude of total passivity yields no lasting fruit. Taking a leaf from Dallas Willard who was in turn simply recovering the basic attitude of our Lord, I’m suggesting that the same principle holds true for the spiritual life. Do nothing and nothing will happen. Pursue Godliness and you’ll take the world by storm.