Christian discipleship is the process of becoming more human.
As a person who works at a Christian school, I’m always curious to see just how people will respond when they ask me what I do. Even beyond the elitism, dogmatism and narrow-minded stigma of Christian Education (as if that wasn’t enough) there is my rather unusual title that I always say with a bit of a grimace: Director of Spiritual Formation. It’s gotten to the point that, when asked, I usually begin with a disclaimer about my title before telling people what it is.
I think one of the reasons I’m reluctant to throw that title around is because nobody really knows what it means. What in the world is ‘spiritual formation’ and how in the world can anyone direct that process? I think most people probably have a rather unhealthy idea of what it means to be spiritually formed. It’s about spiritual things, heavenly things, notions and ideas that are outside the confines of this world and its problems. However, Jesus was very much concerned about the pain and problems of this world as well as being very much concerned about how we live in this world.
Jesus is often described as fully human and fully divine, but I also think the gospel writers are also trying to show that Jesus is truly human. What I mean is that Jesus’ life and ministry was not about escaping this world to fly off into the great heavenly beyond to sit on a cloud and sing for eternity, but it was about how to live as the true human God created you to be. This isn’t spiritual in the heavenly-leaving-earth-for-the-great-beyond sense, but rather a spirituality that takes seriously this world and interactions with other humans. It’s a process of becoming more human, and growing closer to God as we think about what it means to love those inside and outside of our communities.
Ultimately, I think spiritual formation is a process of seeing God at work in the reality of this world, and a process of seeing how our actions, and the way we spend our time in this world, form us as human beings.
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