Thus Far

Monday, May 18, 2009

Spiritual thoughts from a training philosophy


While riding today it struck me how much the Christian life is like dressage. See, dressage is a systematic way of training the horse. It starts as soon as the horse is able to carry a rider comfortably and ends when the horse has reached the top of the "scale" or ladder, but even so, training is always becoming refined. Despite this systematic scale or ladder of training, everything rests on two basic principles: 1) the horse must move forward at the impulse of the rider's leg into the bridle, putting weight in the rider's hand, and 2) the horse must carry most of its weight on its haunches, and the shoulders/forehand must bear less weight than normal. (2) is the goal of training, (1) is the means to accomplish it.

With the demands of the world to accomplish and achieve, it is tempting to skip steps in training, to take short-cuts. Some are as bad as faking it entirely, completely omitting teaching the horse to move off of the leg, into the bridle.

After trying to ride today for 15 minutes without getting the horse truly moving forward, off my leg and having no weight in the bridle, I realized my error, went back down to the basics and started to think about how similar this is to the Christian life.

Paul reminds us in Hebrews 6 that we should desire and seek to become mature in our faith. Elsewhere he says we are to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. But how is this achieved? I am convinced there is only one means possible: The Way of the Cross. To those in the Roman Catholic and [Eastern] Orthodox traditions, this is a visible, material way marked by the "stations of the Cross" and the Via Delarosa throughout Jerusalem. I counter it is not a physical path or spiritual exercise, but a way of life essential to and at the core of Christian discipleship. From Christ's agony in the Garden to his arrest, trial, beating, mocking and cruxification, we are called to enter into his sufferings, his self-relinquishment and utter obedience to the Father. We cannot excape it. Christ comes to us, saying "Come, follow me," but his path leads straight to the Cross. If we die at the hands of the world, to perscutions, mockings and actual death from those who watch us follow Jesus, then so be it. But the ultimate death is that of self: to hand over our insistance on our own way, our own goodness, our own self-relience to the one who did the same. Like dressage, it is so easy to skip this step, to try to move on to the more advanced levels and steps, to fake it or disregard it. But I'm convinced only through the Way of the Cross, do we taste his resurrection and mature in the faith.

Paul describes the Way of the Cross as such: I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead (Phil. 3:10-11, emphasis mine).

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