Nine Things Your Child Needs to Thrive Spiritually, part nine: Spiritual Disciplines

I read recently about A.J. Jacobs, who spent an entire year "living by the Bible" - literally obeying every command in the Old and New Testament - 800, by his count. Jacobs is not a Christian, he's a Jewish agnostic, and an editor at Esquire magazine. He did it, he says, not out of any spiritual interest but in an attempt to "understand a worldview shared by millions of Americans" (the article is here).

While I think Jacobs begins from a fatally flawed premise - that the Christian life is tantamount to ritualistically observing every command in the Bible, even OT ceremonial laws - it's interesting to read what benefits he says he gained from the experience. And it makes you wonder, if a disciplined life could do this for a man of no faith, what could it do for a believer?

Of prayer, Jacobs says, "It's sort of like moral weight training: You're forced to think about other people. And it trains your mind to be less selfish and to be more thoughtful, so in that sense I got really into it...I became an extreme thanker. I was thanking the elevator for coming on time."

On the virtues of moral restraint: "We talk a lot in this country about freedom of choice, but here I was experiencing some of the benefits of freedom from choice...Because the Bible will tell you, should I give 10 percent to the needy? Yes. Should I read this magazine about Lindsay Lohan? No. Should I lie to make things easier with my wife? No. So it was almost a lovely, paradoxically liberating feeling to have freedom from choice."

I am horribly undisciplined. While I accomplish a lot in a week, it comes in spurts. As I write this, my workweek is long since over, but this post, which has been swirling around in my brain the last several days, is just now taking shape on paper. If not for the desire to get the newsletter out on time, who knows how long I'd put it off? I love being disciplined when I can pull it off. It's amazing how much you can get done when you have a schedule and stick to it. But somehow, my laziness and lack of attention and obsessiveness get the better of me and my plans for a streamlined-life-of-Mark lay in a heap.

Part of this is a function of the multiple "circles" we all operate in nowadays. How many do you have? A work circle? A family circle? A friends circle? A recreational sports circle? A hobby circle? A part-time or vocational circle? Each has its own sets of demands and relationships which, while infusing our lives with meaning and value, are at the same time sucking that life out of us. And the internet (and free cell phone minutes after 9:00) haven't helped things. I can virtually (and actually) be in touch with my family every day. I can keep in touch with friends and happenings on the other side of the country. I can read my hometown newspaper. And every time I reach out in these ways, I become more fractured, fragmented, dividing my mind and attention, racing to keep up. Who am I? A son? A pastor? A student? A teacher? Thank God I'm all of those - but sometimes I just want to slow down and be me.

In the same way, our kids live fragmented, hurried lives. Want some numbers? A 2005 study found kids ages 8-18 spent an average of 6.5 hours a day consuming media. About half of that is spent with television. (The study, by the Kaiser Family Foundation, is here. Also see this story on the amount of time some parents spend playing video games with their kids.) The news isn't all bad - the study also found nearly half pick up a book in a typical day and about a third read a newspaper. And, we know that of the half who go online every day, many are logging on to websites and reading to satisfy their curiosity, which isn't a bad thing at all. But the point is, our kids, like us, are pulled in many different directions, and at a frenetic pace.

The value of spiritual discipline is that it slows us down just enough to begin to perceive some definition in the blur of life. For instance, the practice of reflection is itself a spiritual discipline; it also happens to be critical to thought and brain development: kids need to have time to think about their thinking in order to develop a useful, workable model of how the world works. Otherwise, life's just a blur. No apparent cause and effect - things just happen. Any parent knows that a young brain has a poor conception of time - "next week" to a 3-year-old could just as well mean next month or next year, because their brains haven't developed the sophistication to understand relative time (tomorrow vs. next Wednesday). Until they gain this ability, they won't easily wrap their minds around the concept of "eternity", which in turn affects their appreciation of "eternal life", eternal forgiveness, the eternal nature of God, etc. So certainly as we age, we naturally develop the ability to comprehend God at greater and greater depths. But can we actually aid kids in developing the ability, younger? I think we can. When we introduce spiritual discipline into kids' lives, we are helping them organize their thinking about God. We're also creating a space for spiritual interaction. Kids need to know that God sometimes speaks in the still, small voice, and how to wait for that.

In his classic Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster identifies twelve disciplines. Notice how many require us to deliberately resist the pace of life we're accustomed to:

• meditation
• prayer
• fasting
• study
• simplicity
• solitude
• submission
• service
• confession
• worship
• guidance
• celebration

The American evangelical church has been somewhat wary of spiritual disciplines. They're regarded as "religion" or "ritual" or "works", or we want to leave "room for the Spirit to move" so beyond telling new believers that they should go to church, read their Bible and pray, we don't do much to specifically instruct people on how to have a spiritual life. That caution is not unwarranted - many of us can tell stories about growing up in ritualistic churches that were, for us, lifeless. But we've probably gone too far in denying the power of corporate and individual rituals in enabling us to commune with God. As long as kids don't hear us to say that these practices create grace, we're on solid ground. Ritual brings comfort and regularity to kids' spiritual lives, and they need that. The how can never replace the what: kids should understand that the acts of worshiping, praying, celebrating, studying, and so on, are what matter; how they're conducted is of secondary importance.

But we can't leave the development of a spiritual life to chance. It's a wonderful thing when a life takes off spiritually, fueled by curiosity and zeal for God - the "spiritual high" times. Have we all been there? But what about the drier times? We've all been there. It's then that communion with God actually involves work, and knowing what to do when your will says no can help you outlast spiritual drought. Disciplines give kids the tools to be fighters, rather than victims, in a modern world that's too busy or apathetic for God.