Eugene Peterson on The Long Road of Discipleship

Peterson, in his classic, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction makes some powerful observations about the tendency to take short cuts to spiritual growth. We tend to think that we can microwave change, but we cannot. We must become disciples and pilgrims with God. We must take time to learn from Him and not just expect our growth in the Lord to be easy. It is through many trials and much suffering the we come to see God and understand His ways, which are infinitely higher than ours. It is impossible to reduce God or the movement of His Spirit to a 20 minute sermon once a week and some religious niceties. After what we have been through with Caelan over the past few weeks, I am grateful for how God revealed Himself to us and showed great mercy, but I am also aware of how shallow my faith can be at times. It seems that God is using every event in our lives, even the very painful and scary ones, to conform us to the image of Christ. How we reject that and want an easier way! Here are Peterson's thoughts:

One aspect of world that I have been able to identify as harmful to Christians is the assumption that anything worthwhile can be acquired at once. We assume that if something can be done at all, it can be done quickly and efficiently. Our attention spans have been conditioned by thirty-second commercials. Our sense of reality has been flattened by thirty-page abridgments.

It is not difficult in such a world to get a person interested in the message of the gospel; it is terrifically difficult to sustain the interest. Millions of people in our culture make decisions for Christ, but there is a dreadful attrition rate. Many claim to have been born again, but the evidence for mature Christian discipleship is slim. In our kind of culture anything, even news about God, can be sold if it is packaged freshly; but when it loses its novely, it goes on the garbage heap. There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm fo rthe patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness.

Religion in our time has been captured by the tourist mindset. Religion is understood as a visit to an attractive site to be made when we have adequate leisure. For some it is a weekly jaunt to church; for others, occasional visits to special services. Some, with a bent for religious entertainment and sacred diversion, plan their lives around special events like retreats, rallies, and conferences. We go to see a new personality, to hear a new truth, to get a new expererience and so somehow expand our otherwise humdrum lives. The religious life is defined as the latest and the newest: Zen, faith healing, human potential, parapsychology, successful living, choreography in the chancel, Armageddon. We'll try anything - until something else comes along.

I don't know what it has been like for pastors in other cultures and previous centuries, but I am quite sure that for a pastor in Western Culture at the dawn of the twenty first century, the aspect of the world that makes the work of leading Christians in the way of faith most difficult is what Gore Vidal has analyzed as "today's passion for the immediate and the casual." Everyone is in a hurry. The persons whom I lead in worship, among whom I counsel, visit, pray, preach and teach, want shortcuts. They want me to help them fill out the form that will get them instant credit (in eternity). They are impatient for results. They have adopted the lifestyle of a tourist and only want the high points. But a pastor is not a tour guide. I have no interest in telling apocryphal religious stories at and around dubiously identified sacred sites. The Christian life cannot mature under such conditions and in such ways.

I know that Peterson is right. It seems that I often just use God as an escape from pain. If He can just give me a good life and keep me from suffering, then I will follow Him. I often do not want God for who He is and I don't want to experience life as it comes. My faith seems to be in everything being okay, rather than in the God Who Saves. It is only through the long process of discipleship that I am truly conformed to the image of Christ. May we all enter into that process.

Comments

[Debbie Kaufman]

Good thoughts Alan. Where is the passage in scripture that tells us we go through suffering to enable us to comfort others who are or will be going through suffering? It escapes me at the moment, but this passage is one that comes to mind when I go through things that I don't think I can bear another moment. I have also learned that we are who we are many times because of the sufferings in our lives. Eugene Petersen and you have articulated this well. God bless you Alan as you have blessed so many others.

[Alan Cross]

Debbie, that passage is found in 2 Corinthians 1.