The Like of God
A First Step in Spiritual Formation
Hi all, and welcome to our newest subscribers. Thanks for coming along as we journey into deep discipleship.
We’re continuing to explore what being an apprentice of Jesus means and how a lack of formative discipleship harms individuals and cultures. However, we’re also starting to uncover the compassion, power, and transformative impact of a “deep person.”
Let’s Review (skip down below if you are up to speed)
Because we’re months into our discussion now, I’m starting each week’s post with a summary of what we’ve covered. If you want a complete picture, jump back to this post and catch up in order as you see fit. If you’re content with bullet points, sally forth.
Theologian and philosopher Dallas Willard described modern Christianity as “The Great Omission”—we talk a lot about making disciples but often struggle to do so.
His concern was that a disciple (an apprentice of Jesus) is someone who is intentionally engaged in a lifelong journey of becoming more like Him - that, over time, we increasingly think, act, relate, and love like Jesus. However, he saw little evidence that modern Christian institutions consider themselves to be primarily character-forming communities. Nor does the average person find their churches, Bible studies, or even seminaries to be comprehensively spiritually formative.
The costs of non-discipleship are extraordinarily high. Individually, we suffer from a quiet sense of disconnection from God, others, and ourselves. We wonder if this is all there is to the Christian life. Communally, this lack of depth results in ongoing social and national harm. This is why solving "The Great Omission" is essential to the Kingdom and human flourishing. The world really is in desperate need of deep people.
That has led us to explore the question, “How are deep people formed?” And the answer, as it turns out, is more complex than we might think.
We are best formed when we are part of small, intentional ecosystems that embed five key elements into their practices: time, habits, community, intimacy, and instruction. Jesus modeled these, and we also find these elements in virtually every intentional formative human community today, except many Christian groups. Modern Christianity tends towards instruction-centric events versus five-element communities.
Because people are wonderfully complex, we’ve found that deep discipleship engages both the conscious and unconscious parts of the human person. And this is where things get weird.
The unconscious layers of our hearts (our “operating systems”) include at least two vital forces: ideas and desires. Ideas are the assumptions, principles, and conclusions that power us, though we aren’t usually aware of their presence. Every culture and individual functions from sets of ideas. These idea systems are known by various other names: paradigms, frameworks, presuppositions, etc.
Because ideas generally function underneath the surface of our consciousness, they’re often different from our belief systems. This is why we might rightfully claim God loves us unconditionally and yet operate from an idea that drives us to perform for God to earn His favor. We might intellectually know that we are beautiful and made in God’s image, yet our hearts may function from the idea that we are ugly, worthless, and tainted. This often results in self-destructive thought patterns and behaviors - even while we sit in church.
What makes ideas so fascinating is that they aren’t intellectual conclusions. They’re experienced realities. The ideas that power us generally settle into our hearts early in our lives as part of our stories, relationships, and experiences. That’s why exploring our hearts and stories is so vital to deep discipleship. Becoming aware of the unconscious forces in our hearts is a primary step in our soul’s transformation.
However, one of the primary problems in modern Christianity is that self-knowledge and exploration are often ignored or condemned. We call this The Discipleship Dilemma. Becoming more like Jesus means experiencing Him and knowing Him more while intentionally knowing ourselves more. But if we don't have permission or guidance to take that journey carefully and gently, we may find ourselves stuck in our discipleship adventure.
Are We Still Talking About This?
We’re seeking genuine, ongoing spiritual formation from the inside out. This isn’t self-help, self-worship, or “tweaking the edges” of our character or personality quirks.
If it seems like I’m spending a lot of time examining and exploring The Discipleship Dilemma, well… I am. The journey with Jesus into our hearts, into our profoundly ingrained thought patterns and habits, into our stories, is so often pushed to the side or derided that I’m attempting to make the case for it from several different angles.
This week, I’m studying a book that strongly advocates self-forgetfulness. Followers of Jesus should turn themselves outward in service and support of others. And indeed, we should.
However, self-forgetfulness implies at least two conditions (which the book ignores). First, we need to know the self we intend to forget, and the process of knowing ourselves usually involves a journey inward before we journey outward.
The Discipleship Dilemma may well explain why many people encounter Jesus but struggle to move along the inner journey of becoming more like Him over time.
Author David Benner asks, “But if an encounter with divine love is really so transformational, how is it that so many of us have survived such encounters relatively unchanged?”
He then answers his own question, “The single most important thing I have learned in over thirty years of study of how love produces healing is that love is transformational only when it is received in vulnerability.
It is not the fact that being loved unconditionally that is life-changing. It is the risky experience of allowing myself to be loved unconditionally. Paradoxically, no one can change until they first accept themselves as they are. Self-deceptions and an absence of real vulnerability block any meaningful transformation.”
The phrase “accept themselves as they are” may raise red flags in some corners of Christianity. I’ve seen the memes: “Jesus doesn't see us as we are, but as we could be.” “Jesus may love me where I am, but He doesn’t want me to stay here.”
I don't think Benner uses the word “accept” to condone harmful patterns. He isn’t endorsing the modern rallying cry of “You do You!” This isn’t an inner search for the purpose of demanding that whatever we find there is good and true. Some of it is, some of it isn’t.
I think he’s endorsing the opposite. To do the hard work of exploring our hearts means we willingly and courageously acknowledge those parts of ourselves that are both light and dark. We peek into our hearts with God and a trusted friend using our Eight Indicators (thought patterns, behaviors, emotions, health, relationships, words, and how we use time and money) and deal authentically with whatever we find.
And (this is so crucial) we accept God’s unconditional love regardless of what we discover. As Benner notes, “Daring to accept myself and receive love for who I am in my nakedness and vulnerability is the indispensable precondition for genuine transformation.”
I know, I know. “But isn’t the journey about moving forward, sinning less, and loving more?” Yes, it is. Just don’t miss the central point: any attempt to be formed without first embracing - without experiencing - God’s loving gaze and fondness for us in our present state will end in frustration and disillusionment.
Why? Because if we don’t allow ourselves to experience God’s delight in us now, in whatever condition we find our hearts, any effort we make to change will be driven by our performance.
Benner writes, “This is my false self - the self of my own making. This self can never be transformed, because it is never willing to receive love in vulnerability.”
Performance Anxiety
Performance-driven faith is one of the insidious drivers of The Discipleship Dilemma, and if you look carefully, you’ll find it all over modern Christianity.
A few years ago, I was invited to a conference hosted by a large Christian organization. They had developed their own brand of evangelism, including the requisite scripts and training program. Staff were strongly encouraged to track how often they shared the Gospel, though it had to be the organization’s version. Sharing personal testimonies, using other evangelistic approaches, and failing to “close the deal” (asking someone to utter the rather odd modern-day “sinner’s prayer”) were disallowed.
At the end of the training session, the speaker passionately cried out, “If you get to heaven one day and have only led one or two people to the Lord, do you think Jesus will tell you, ‘Well done thou good and faithful servant’?”
I was mortified, though as I glanced around the room, I seemed to be in the minority. Amid approving head nods, several of the younger people’s faces displayed fear - fear that their failure to sell Jesus effectively may result in God’s disapproval.
This legalist, fear-based approach to the faith drives a performance culture that aligns with the darker side of Western values. We count “decisions for Jesus,” baptisms, and attendance and worry that if our numbers go down, so will our donations and public approval.
A friend drove for Uber for a while, and he told me the story of one of his clients. A passionate Christian woman got in his car's back seat, and they started a conversation. Upon sharing that he has struggled on and off with depression, she forcefully replied, “Oh, don't think like that! Depression has no place in the life of a Christian!”
I’m not sure how Charles Spurgeon or Mother Teresa would respond to that.
The Like of God
Here’s the problem with a performance-driven Christian culture: we only win God’s fondness if we look, act, and perform a certain way. Not sharing an evangelism script five times a week? Not good enough. Depressed? Not good enough. Skip church once in a while? Not good enough. Struggle with anger? Not good enough. And on and on.
If we spend too much time in this type of idea system, the last thing we’ll want to do is mine our hearts and deal authentically with ourselves and God. The last thing we’ll do is ask Jesus to meet us in the place where so many of our failures and disappointments lie.
We’re not good enough. That’s a given. But it’s also why God’s love is so different, so odd, so counter to what many of us experience as “love” from friends, co-workers, families, and communities. And it's why genuine love from people is often so shocking and transformative.
This mining expedition into our hearts is hard enough. It takes courage, compassion, gentleness, kindness, transparency, and care. But if we fear that God will meet us there with a stern glance and a wagging finger, why bother?
That’s why experiencing and accepting God’s radical delight and fondness for us in our current state is essential to this inner journey.
God not only loves you. He likes you.
The First Step
There are many upside-down aspects of our king’s kingdom. One of them is that we become more like Jesus primarily through experiencing Jesus. That begs the question, “How do we experience Jesus?”
Theologians and philosophers have been exploring and debating that for centuries. One thing is for certain - allowing our inner selves to be seen, to be known, to be desired, to be held by God is a significant first step. And that requires a sometimes uncomfortable vulnerability to receive something and Someone that has nothing to do with our performance.
Then, we can begin exploring and better understanding our hearts as we seek to give to ourselves and others what has been so graciously and generously given to us.
Duc In Altum!
Brian
This Week on the Soil & Roots Podcast
As children, we take trusting God and others for granted. Then we grow up, and that trust is shattered in a million different ways. We cope with breaches of trust by intellectualizing and trying to take control, usually without even realizing it. It only makes sense - we want to protect our hearts from further hurt and harm.
In this autobiographical episode, I share some of my story and how returning to a childlike trust always involves turning inward for a while. It involves some deconstruction—the breaking down of parts of ourselves that we once thought were good but are obstacles to freedom and authenticity in the Kingdom.
Listen here:
Grab the Book!
If you’re interested in exploring deep discipleship and Christian spiritual formation, the Soil & Roots book is a wonderful primer. Check it out, and make sure to leave a review! Available in softcover and Kindle.
Why Is There No Option for a Paid Subscription?
I write on behalf of Soil & Roots, a Christian non-profit organization that encourages deep discipleship through its content and supports small formative communities called Greenhouses. Donations fund our efforts, and Substack doesn’t provide a donation option. To support Soil & Roots’ writings and work, visit our website and make your monthly, tax-deductible contribution there. Thanks!
Where Else Can I Find You?
Website (lots of info on Greenhouses, plus our blog and podcast library)
Spotify (complete podcast library)
Facebook (great community of folks venturing into deep disciples plus the obligatory memes)
YouTube (complete podcast library, including original audio episodes)
Instagram (I don’t really get the appeal of IG, but there you go)
Email me at fish@soilandroots.org or leave a comment on Substack.