Dale Cresap's blog

If you were asked about your spirituality, what would you say? Would you respond with the name of a faith tradition or a denomination? Would you recite a list of doctrinal positions? Would you describe practices such as church attendance, bible study, and prayer? What other possibilities are there? Is your spirituality what you profess or what you live? The Bible declares that the son who worked in his father’s vineyard after saying he would not did the will of his father rather than the one who said he would but didn’t. Are you letting your light shine to glorify me?

You know that you are saved by grace through faith, not by works lest any man should boast. But is that the end of the story? By this reasoning in some circles good works have a bad name. Do these concepts really work in opposition to each other? Rather than thinking faith or works you should think faith and works. James makes this clear. Faith without works is dead. How strong is a faith that leads to no changes in behavior? He proposes a profound challenge: show me your faith without your works and I will show you my faith by my works. Can you raise any objection to that?  

Do you think you have me all figured out? Your church may have concise answers to all the questions of the eternal realm, but can the divine mystery be reduced to a list of assertions? Is it something that you can fully comprehend? If I inhabit the heavens and my ways are higher than yours it should make you suspicious that anything you can fully comprehend is an insufficient description of me. You live in an age of rational explanations and find assurance and acceptance for addressing reality this way but there is a reality that does not entirely yield to this approach.

Do you value every learning experience? If you love learning you will seek it everywhere it is offered and will have encountered a wide variety of teachers. What type of teachers do you like best? Those who have studied their subject or those who have lived it? Who is better able to communicate enthusiasm and passion? Even in the academic world experience matters. What about instruction in your faith? Do you look only for academic credentials? If there is more to teaching than line upon line and precept upon precept, what would it be? What type of teacher are you?

Are you afraid of your shadow? This is a childhood taunt and is not a problem for adults, but could there be a way in which it is a problem through life? Do you have weaknesses, bad habits, insecurities, and fears that have a negative influence on you that you try to keep hidden, from others, and even from yourself? This could be considered as your shadow, and how you respond to it shows whether you are afraid of it or not. Everyone has one and they work as hard to keep theirs hidden as you do. Can you face your shadow and deal with it directly?

Do you take your dreams seriously? What is your basis for deciding one way or the other? Have you noticed that there are many dreams in the Bible, and in every case they are considered to be full of real meaning? This principle holds up from Pharaoh to the wife of Pontius Pilate. Neither of these were covenant people in the way you understand it, and further they were separated by gender, time, language, and culture. They could hardly have been more different. Do you wonder how they knew their dreams had meaning? You won’t get the right answers by asking the wrong questions.

Is your faith making you better or worse? Do you find this question disturbing, and think that your faith can only make you better? Yet have you ever met anyone who used their faith to justify a narrow, exclusive, judgmental approach toward others and could only see righteousness and justification in themselves? Seeking to justify yourself is a bad practice in any situation and attaching it to a faith practice only makes it worse. Do you refer to my word as a sword, dividing soul and spirit? Do you use it as a weapon against others or a scalpel on yourself?

Do you make a distinction between universal truth and particular truth? You meet people who have particular interests such as their hobbies, and they are quite knowledgeable about them but you may have no interest in those subjects. Yet there is also universal truth that applies to everyone, questions of eternity and being, identity and meaning and purpose. Some people studiously avoid pursuing these questions and claim no spirituality or beliefs but they cannot escape them because everyone is affected by them.

Is prayer your first resort or your last resort? For some, prayer is only considered after every other possibility has been exhausted. For others, prayer is where they start, but they go no further. Both approaches are wrong. Can you think of prayer as an integral part of a combined effort, as a means of guidance in the steps you take to act? In this approach, prayer is involved from start to finish, but it doesn’t stand alone. It provides direction for you to follow. Try this and see how it works.

Are you holy? Is it easier to think of yourself this way if you consider yourself in an individualistic and isolated way? Yet that is not the way you live. For you live in a community and the more you identify with common humanity the more substance there will be to your righteousness. How are those who regard themselves as holy in their isolation seen by those who observe them? Aren’t they regarded as alienated and therefore less holy rather than more so? When you interact with people your fears, insecurities, and vulnerability will collide with theirs.