Growing Spiritually in Seminary

Almost everybody has heard the old adage about people losing their faith in seminary. Being surrounded by seminarians on a daily basis, I sense this fear in a large contingent of students as well. Students no longer feel as if they are growing in their relationship to God even though their lives are devoted to studying God. We continue to engage God the same way we did before we began in-depth study. I think this is where seminarians run into trouble – they no longer know how to relate to God with their new knowledge they have obtained. Thus, they continue to wonder why they are unable to connect with God through reading the Bible because their minds are inundated with questions from Biblical Interpretation class. So, as a solution, many students try to compartmentalize academic reading and devotional reading. Essentially, the dichotomy is between mind and heart. But why do we need to separate the two? Is our new knowledge of God a hindrance to the relationship?

In contrast to this common perception of separating the mind and heart, I propose that for seminarians to continue to mature in their faith during seminary, they need to fuse the two together. The new knowledge should allow one’s relationship with God to be more rooted and thus able to move beyond the elementary stages of a relationship. In human relationships, you do not hear people complain that all the knowledge they have gained about the other person has made it more difficult to relate to them. Rather, these are building blocks for the relationship to develop even further. People that have been married for 25 years hold much more knowledge about the other person than when they first started dating. This knowledge affects how people interact with one another. A couple married that long probably acts quite differently than when they were first married. Knowledge serves as a catalyst to relate to the other person in a different way, a way that leads them into a closer union.

But we don’t see it this way with God. We are unwilling to change how we relate and connect to God because some of those steps may be difficult. We often have not been taught how to relate to God except through Bible reading, daily prayer, and journaling. What happens when those run their course? In human relationships we adapt. Seminarians need to learn how to adapt – they need to seek to employ their knowledge to deepen their relationship with God rather than hinder it. They need to change their repertoire of spiritual disciplines, ones that can utilize knowledge rather than suppress and compartmentalize it.

It is not knowledge that is getting in the way of our relationship with God but rather the compartmentalization and neglect of it.

Word Asphyxiation

I will attempt to sum up the life of a seminarian in three words: books and papers. While that may be a gross oversimplification of what seminary is about, I do think it captures the essence of what my life is like as a seminary student (although I am tempted to add Greek translations and grammar). Everyday, I spend at least 4 hours reading. At least. And, on average, I have been writing 3 papers a week. Some of these are long (8-10 pages), others are short (3-4 pages). This may sound miserable to some of you, but to me, this is a good life. My job is essentially to read really smart people’s writings, then try to sound as smart as they do in my own writings. The latter is where the struggle exists.

Because I spend my life surrounded by words, they have almost become a part of me. I breathe them. I eat them. I dream about them. I wake up to them. A word is never just a word to me – there exists pages upon pages of scholarly work recounting the story behind this word. Simple Greek phrases draw the attention of upwards of 10 pages in English. My life is about words and how they fit together. This cause a problem. My whole life, much of my devotional life or my spirituality has been built around reading the Bible. But now I read the Bible all the time for school and even translate it. And after spending all day studying it and writing about it, I find it difficult to open it up again in the evening to read it some more. Essentially, I am drowning in words so much so that adding more words through Bible reading as a spiritual discipline, only compound the asphyxiation. And so I pray. Or participate in the divine office. Or I run. Or be quiet. Or still. Anything but surround myself with more words. Anything but take in more words than I can swallow. Once again, I am reminded of the evolution of one’s spirituality. As one’s life unfolds and changes, the way one connects with God or finds rest in God also changes. This may be an uncomfortable transition for some. Or it may be naturally. Spirituality develops and adapts as we grow up, as we mature, as we move towards completion in Christ.

Hear the Cry of Your Children

A little prayer I’ve been working on to use in worship.

Almighty God,

We pray for those who are sick, those who are ill, those who are physically injured,

Hear the cry of your children.

We pray for those without food, without a home, without a family, without love,

Hear the cry of your children.

We pray for those whose despair is overwhelming, who have lost all hope, who have forgotten what it is like to taste your salvation,

Hear the cry of your children.

We pray for those who can’t seem to catch a break, who have the burdens piling up with no end in sight,

Hear the cry of your children.

We pray for those who are oppressed, who are broken, who are suffering, who have lost their humanity,

Hear the cry of your children.

We pray for those who find themselves in exile, for those who search but do not find, for those who knock only to find a door shut in their face,

Hear the cry of your children.

We pray for those who have trouble getting up in the morning, for those that despise life, for those who have addictions that are strangling them,

Hear the cry of your children.

We pray for those who know hatred better than hospitality, war better than peace, revenge better than grace,

Hear the cry of your children.

 

The world is broken. The world is a mess. The world is not what you created it to be.

May the cries of your children be heard by us.

May the cries pierce our ears even with our radios blaring, our iPods on shuffle, and the TV on.

May the cries encroach upon our lives, overcoming the fences and walls and windows that we construct to keep those cries and those people out.

May the cries of hunger pangs nauseate us as we stop for our third latte of the day, our fourth Pepsi or Diet Coke, or our fifth Snickers bar.

May the cries of brokenness shatter the perfect facades we put up to impress our family, our friends, our neighbors, our bosses, and our pastors.

May the cries of oppression infiltrate us, the perpetrators sustaining the very systems guilty of that oppression.

May the cries of your children not be foreign to us, the body of Christ.

May we be the body of Christ broken for the world.

May we be the blood of Christ shed for the world. 

Lord, have mercy.

Christ, have mercy.

Lord, have mercy.

Hear the cries of your children, O God, this day and forevermore.

Amen.