The Accidental Radical: A Conversation with Richard Foster, the Wisdom Chaser

October 12, 2011 By Timothy Dalrymple

I’m sorry to have posted sparsely this week. My newborn is facing some health complications — yet she seems, thankfully, to be pulling through. (You may also note that there are some changes to the blog, including the URL. We have a redirect established, but please take the time now to update your bookmarks or subscribe or connect with me through Facebook or Twitter. Thanks)

Richard Foster

This is the third, final — and, in my opinion, most profound — installment in my interview with Richard Foster.  You can see Part 1 and Part 2, and you can also see our Book Club conversation with Foster’s Sanctuary for the Soul, which includes a great video interview as well.

It strikes me as we’re speaking that the category of “wisdom” seems to be rarely discussed in Christian circles today. Why is that?

There are a number of factors. Let’s take the idea of Jesus as the great teacher of life. It’s been lost to us because of the battles of, say, the liberals and fundamentalists in the early part of the twentieth century when the liberal folks would say that Jesus is the good teacher. They didn’t mean by that that he was the master of life; they meant that he said some nice things. So fundamentalists distanced themselves from the idea of Jesus as teacher. As a result, the whole concept of Jesus as the Teacher of Life got lost to us. Instead of seeking out the wisdom of Christ, his insights into life and how to live, we sliced and diced the words of Jesus — as though, if we could figure that out, then we’d have mastered Jesus. But that’s far from wisdom.

There are a couple of books out now on Julian’s Showings. One is an imaginary biography of her life, because we don’t know anything about Julian. The other looks at the theological insights of Julian. Well, yes, but what about the life that Julian had and how those revelations of divine love informed her life? In my opinion, these books totally miss the point of this woman. We don’t value wisdom.

My son Nathan and I, for about a decade, climbed mountains together in Colorado – the 14,000 footers. In the beginning of that, I asked him to give me a trail name. I explained to him, on the Appalachian Trail, you take a trail name. He said he had to think about it. We hiked together for ten years, and finally he says, “I’ve got your trail name.”

“What is it?” I asked.  He answered: Wisdom Chaser. He published a book under that name: “Wisdom Chaser: Finding my Father at Fourteen-Thousand Feet.” In that decade, because I hike very slowly, it gave us lots of opportunities to speak and listen to each other. He would open up a lot of things that aren’t even in the book. But he shared a lot. The wisdom. The spacious intimacy that we learn to give to each other, so that he has space to grow and develop and be who he is.

And me too.

 

There is a lot of talk these days of making our faith, or our lives of faith, more “radical.” It sounds dynamic and exciting, even sensational or heroic. Yet the life of faith you’re describing sounds very humble, even quiet. Is there any fear that young believers (in particular) who pursue a “radical” faith could view themselves as the heroes of their own story? Is being “radical” the point? Isn’t radicalism something that follows of its own accord — if it follows at all — from the imitation of Christ?

I think you see it right. Think of the narcissism of our day, that is so imbibed into young people. When you said that people would see themselves as radical, that’s the Achilles heel of this. If you’re really radical, you’re not concerned that anybody sees you. So all of that kind of egotistic, narcissistic stuff, you begin to put that to death.

Let me tell you a story.

At one point in my life, I felt the Lord God had said that I should be quiet. So I stopped all writing. I stopped all speaking. And when I began that period, I didn’t know if I would ever write or speak again. I was teaching at a college, so I was busy. But I didn’t know if I would do this kind of thing. I actually thought I would not.

Part of the process that I had to go through for a period of time there was to let go of my need to be known or to be important. My publisher wasn’t especially happy that I had stopped. They were good about it, but I told them I wouldn’t do anything. I had to be hidden for a time. But there was this kind of interior crucifixion of all of that stuff. The period lasted about a year and a half. Then it seemed like that was done. I had gone through what I needed to go through.

When those crazy men and women went into the Egyptian Deserts, they weren’t trying to get noticed for anything. They were just trying to follow Jesus.

As for the concept of imitation, consider the Brethren of the Common Life. We don’t even know whether Thomas a Kempis wrote that book, The Imitation of Christ. And he didn’t care whether anyone knew that he was the author. In that community, they were learning to imitate Jesus as best they could. They made lots of mistakes, of course. But anonymity was part of the deal, to not be known, and to not make an impact. And of course they made the most profound impact.

You think of dear old Mother Teresa. She went over to Calcutta and disappeared from history for a long time. Then God raised her up and she had quite an influence. I remember meeting with Macolm Muggeridge, and him talking about his first meeting with Mother Teresa. The BBC called him up and said, “We have this kind of crazy nun here. Would you interview her?” He goes there and he’s absolutely blown away. He did that film, Something Beautiful for God.

Just talking with him, and his wife Kitty, about their encounter with Mother Teresa, was astonishing. Here’s this wrinkled up old nun who had one of the largest influences in our lifetimes. That’s radical. But now, there are ten thousand Mother Teresas that we’ve never heard of, who continue to just be obscure and that’s okay with them. That’s part of it.

Radical, radical, radical. Well, let’s be faithful. How about that? Isn’t faithfulness good enough? And like you say, the tradition, the imitatio tradition is one of the great spiritual traditions in the Christian faith. Up until a century ago, that book was the unrivaled book on the spiritual life.

There was a little group called the Brethren of the Common Life. The Imitation of Christ book came out of the experience of that group. It was just their common experience. It’s a little like Bonhoeffer’s Life Together. He wrote it, but he was describing the experience of that little group in Finkenwald. He had them meditate upon a passage of scripture, faculty and students alike, for half an hour every day, and for one week on the same passage. Monday through Friday, they’re all meditating on one passage for half an hour every day. The little book Life Together came out of their experience. Think of what an influence it’s had. And this is a little group of German seminarians.

And of course he’s teaching on the Sermon on the Mount, so that book — what we call The Cost of Discipleship – he was teaching during those years at the underground seminary the Nazis eventually closed out. That’s radical.

 

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Spiritual Life in the Age of Machines — Richard Foster Interview

October 4, 2011 By Timothy Dalrymple

Continuing my interview with Richard Foster…with his new book hitting the shelves, Sanctuary for the Soul:

Can we continue the contemplative spiritual disciplines in the modern world? Or does meditation have no place in a technological world?

Those who really give themselves to the technology are the ones to discover those little nudges toward Christ within them. But at the very same time, we must be wary of the addictive character of technology and its ability to scatter us so that we become fractured. The blogosphere and social networks can become so addictive. I think the writings of Jacques Ellul are most helpful when it comes to marking the dangers of technologies.

So we learn ways of making do. It’s not hard. Just fast from email for a week — and let the people who are trying to reach you go nuts. It will be good for them. You can put a little note that you won’t answer for a week because you’re fasting from it. That might be helpful. [Laughs.] Let them work with that for a little while.

But on the positive side of it: obviously, we’re all aware of social media and how there are positives and negatives. There are ways it helps people to build bridges across many thousands of miles, and ways in which it enables us to be aware of one another and help one another. And that kind of instant making-people-aware of situations and needs is good. Why not? People can become great friends over the internet.

But it mustn’t just stop with that. You actually have to meet a human being — touch them, see them, look into their eyes. You’re not going to get away from that. You mustn’t. But social media can help make that happen too.

Our oldest son and his family are on their way to Germany for several years. Today, we can be in touch in ways that we never could have before technology. We can Skype now. You can type out my words as we speak. I’m not on Facebook — I just made a choice not to join — but our children and grandchildren stay in touch through Facebook.

Perhaps you can use your electronic calendar or your cell phone to arrange five-minute appointments with God throughout the day. It beeps a little beep, and you get up and you take a five-minute prayer walk. It’s not hard to do. It’s not hard to do. People say solitude is so difficult to find today. It’s not. I for example don’t listen to the radio. I can choose not to listen to the radio. It’s the medium that is the most pervasive, but you can say no to it. You can.

Now, Car Talk, Click and Clack, God will listen to them. [Laughs]

You say it’s not hard — and yet people do find it difficult. Why would people find it hard to enter into contemplative prayer in the midst of the busyness of modern life?

It’s difficult in the sense that we have to make ten thousand choices as we move along, a few hundred each day, probably. Do we say yes to the Good and the True and Beautiful? Do we say yes to what is life-giving and no to what is death-giving? There will always be those decisions.

Consider that passage from Paul, “I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you submit your body as a living sacrifice.” But the problem with living sacrifices is that they’re always trying to crawl off the altar. That’s why they take a lifetime to be offered, and they have to be offered again and again. C.S. Lewis wrote that we make these decisions constantly, either moving us toward life or moving us toward death. And a lot of time we make conflicting decisions.

That’s until our lives become unified. It’s that old process of purgation, illumination, unity, ascent. When we come to that place, that place of unio — I don’t know that I know too much about it. But I do know some people who have, I would say, entered into that union. The ease of their lives is wonderful to watch. Their decisions don’t have that same struggle anymore. The hard thing for them would be to do the wrong thing. They have such ingrained habits of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, that doing right is the easy thing. A holy habit – theologia habitus – theology-producing habit, is a wonderful thing. Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle is maybe one of the finest books on Christian prayer ever written. When she leads up the mansions into the rooms seven, eight and nine, you realize she’s talking about something so unifying that life becomes easy. It’s why the moral philosophers would say that virtue is easy, because the ingrained habits of life have worked their way deep into your soul.

But it is hard, as you’re trying to come into it. And the big problem for us westerners is that once somebody gets a hold of wanting to know God. They try to grasp it and manipulate and master it [grimaces and flexes].

When you study a subject, you try to master it. But you can’t master life with God. You cannot master something in which the very point is to be mastered. Instead, you must learn to let go, to surrender, to walk with God. I used to struggle mightily, and I tried so hard to be the heroic Christian. I could give you a guided tour on how not to walk with God. Then when you take a step, you learn some things, you take another step, you trust, and when God arrives on the scene, it’s easy. It’s joy.

Thomas Kelly addresses this in his writing on devotion. He tried so hard to do it himself — and he couldn’t. Then he had great failure in his life when he was trying to get a second PhD from Harvard. He failed his orals, and that led him to a whole other dimension in his life. I’ve read his writings before that experience and after — and they’re totally different. He was so different afterwards.

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Richard Foster on Teaching the Spiritual Disciplines to Your Church and Your Children

September 30, 2011 By Timothy Dalrymple

Richard Foster

Recently I had the opportunity to sit down with Richard Foster — he has a new book out, Sanctuary for the Soul — and speak with him about contemplative prayer in the modern world.  Foster is a marvel of grace and humility and wisdom.  I couldn’t decide what to do with this material, since it was too long to publish as a single article.  But it’s rich, and worth reading.  So I’ll separate it into coherent segments and publish it over the next couple weeks.  Throughout the interview he flipped through his Bible and read the passages he discussed.

* * * * *

How can pastors help the men and women in their congregations to rediscover spiritual disciplines such as meditative prayer?

I would suggest that they begin with themselves. I would suggest that they come along on this for a couple of years by themselves. Enter the experience. Then they can bring others along with them. Look for people who are hungry for Life, and say, “Come with me.” And let’s see what we can learn together.

It’s not hard. You don’t have to develop a big program or anything. You just say, ‘This is what I’m learning. Would you like to learn it with me? We’ll meet together, learn to pray together…and we don’t look for a big anything. Let’s start with two or three people.” Take the first 4-5 years and see what happens with a small group. See if they can learn to still that frantic need to impress. That’s how a pastor begins: with themselves, with a few others, and it should very naturally flow out of that as time goes along. It will be tied to lots of experiences, lots of trials, tribulations. That’s all part of the deal.

It’s a quiet revolution. It’s not usually dramatic in any major way. We need to come to value that as a good thing. We learn the value of anonymity. This will not get you on any television show. It isn’t hard to get on television – just do something really stupid. And it’s no compliment. People who live and walk in faithfulness in this life will be basically unknown and unappreciated. And that’s just fine with them. So, pastors need to recognize the goodness of that – and not feel any great need to be important in the ecclesiastical affairs of life.

You know, the prophets are crucified, but only in Jerusalem. It’s very fine to be out in the little corners where nobody pays any attention to you.

Now, if something happens, and you become well known, there’s nothing wrong with that either. St. Anthony became known, but he didn’t try to. He hid from those who sought him out.

When we think of the spiritual disciplines, we too often think of adults going away to retreat centers in the mountains. What can parents do to help their children cultivate these skills and practices?

When our kids were little, I would often come in and set them down. We’d talk about how the day has gone and what’s up. After a while, I would say, “Let’s be still for a moment. Whatever it is…thank God for whatever has transpired. Let’s listen together.” Little children can do that. They can be quiet. Not for long, but they can be still for a moment. And become aware. Go for a hike in the woods and say, ‘The trees, nature, they’re always doing the will of the Father.’ So I would say to our son, let’s go and see the will of the Father. Let’s see what that teaches us.”

This isn’t some kind of big deal. It’s beautiful. Why not? Kids can do that. Our Renovare team now has developed a ministry among children. Paula Frost runs that. Our grandkids all love Paula. They always come to her conferences. She will take whatever we are working on, say the great streams of contemplative, holiness, evangelical, charismatic…she’ll teach that to the children in age-appropriate ways. They can do it. They can listen. They can pray.

One time, my son Nathan was ill. He was about four or five, and I went in to say his nighttime prayer. I said look, you don’t feel good. It’s like all these bad soldiers are inside you, beating you up. We’re going to pray that God will send a bunch of good soldiers in there to beat up the bad ones, help you get well. He got into it. But then he added, that the good soldiers would beat up all the bad soldiers by morning.

I didn’t say anything. The next morning, he comes running in, jumps in the bed. He says, “There are only two or three bad little soldiers left.” This was his way of saying he was feeling better. He wasn’t sitting there worried that there were a few left. He was just feeling better. Little kids learn how to pray. We learn to pray with the imagination, and sense that God is with us. And what the kids are learning is life with God. That’s what they’re learning. That’s more important than any of the other things. As we go along. And we walk with them through disappointments. If their friend dies, we ask how God is with us in this.

The first verse I ever memorized, myself personally as a young Christian, was not John 3:16. It was 1 Peter 1:7, “Let the trial of your ….though it be tried with fire, might be found with praise and honor and glory at the appearing of JC.” The reason that verse was the first I memorized as a young teenager was because my parents were dying, both of them. I had prayed that they might get well, and it wasn’t to be. I had to learn to live with that. To learn the presence of God with that, because those kinds of disappointments were going to come. If they haven’t to people, they will, but we better build a faith that’s strong enough to handle it.

And we have such a rosy-tinted view of life that a lot of people can’t survive it when things don’t go well. Today, it’s the quest for the holy grin [shows manic grin]. We need a much tougher, more rugged faith than that.

In the story of Bathsheba, Nathan tells David “you’re the man” who has dishonored God. The consequence could have been that the child he had conceived with Bathsheba would die. But David doesn’t take that. He goes in and fasts and prays for seven days. When the child dies, the servants were afraid to tell him. As they say, “He may do himself some harm.” That’s Hebrew understatement. They thought he would commit suicide. That was their faith. If the prayer works, great. If it doesn’t, then it’s disaster. “But when David realized that the child was dead, he washed himself, anointed himself, changed his clothes, went into the house of the Lord and worshiped.” That’s the faith of David. The child died, and David worships the Lord. That’s what we need to carry us through, because there’s a lot of loss and sadness and brokenness and we have to learn to walk with people through that.

That’s where meditative prayer is such a help, because it builds deep wells for these kinds of days.

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Narcissus's Camera

July 21, 2011 By Timothy Dalrymple

I’ve now written “Are Conservative Churches Getting Radical?” and “The Dangers of ‘Radical Faith’ (and What They Teach Us.”  I hope tomorrow to publish more positive suggestions on what radical discipleship might look like, especially in community (and in conversation with David Platt’s Radical Together), but presently I want to explain something in greater detail.

My concern, in the second part, was not that we might get carried away and make, you know, actual sacrifices in the course of following Christ.  By all means, let’s get carried away!  If we are following Christ genuinely, this will issue forth in profound exterior and interior sacrifices.  My concern was that foregrounding “radical,” or emphasizing the quest to be “radical,” can lead us in the wrong directions.  ”Radical” is neither the goal nor the criterion.  The person who seeks first the kingdom of God has little or no concern with being “radical,” but she will be perceived as radical by a world that truly cannot comprehend putting the kingdom of God first.

A part of the problem here is that “radical,” at least in its current usage, is a comparative term.  You are radical in comparison to what is normal.  You are radical when you are deemed extraordinary and extreme.  So the language of radicality can implicitly set up a dynamic in which we are comparing and approving of ourselves in relation to others, where the focus is on being dramatically different instead of being Christlike.

I had an opportunity last week to sit down with Richard Foster and get his thoughts on a wide variety of topics.  Since I was planning on writing this series, I mentioned my concern that some people (including myself) might pursue radical Christian living for the benefit of what I’ll call Narcissus’ Camera.  What I mean is this: we sometimes find ourselves going about our lives and seeing the world through our own eyes, but simultaneously observing our from the outside as it might be perceived or told by someone else.  So here I am feeding the homeless on Skid Row, but even while I’m working with the homeless I’m also observing myself, and approving of myself, working with the homeless.  A part of me is conscious of others and their needs, and a part of me is watching myself on video and admiring how I look.  I’m watching myself through a camera that hovers somewhere over my shoulder, and ultimately I’m hoping that others will, someday and somehow, see the instant replay.

I’m taking a bit of a risk here and assuming I’m not alone in this.  Perhaps I’m a uniquely narcissistic individual.  I do not take that possibility lightly.  But while I’m convinced that most people are better than I am in this respect (I know that I am highly prideful), I’m also convinced that my troubles are not unique to me (I am not uniquely prideful).  Foster seemed to think this is common, even “the Achilles’ Heel” of the striving for radicality.  He spoke of a time in his own life when he felt the praise of others, and the amount of fame he had achieved, were puffing him up.  Called “to let go of my need to be known or to be important,” he withdrew from writing and public speaking in search of “interior crucifixion” (he actually thought he would never return to writing) until he felt a year-and-a-half later that he had learned his lesson.

(Of course, the possibilities here are endless; Narcissus’ Camera can follow us into solitude, and we can gain satisfaction at the thought of playing the video for friends in later years.  Sometimes it’s the most prideful people (like myself) who learn how to conceal their pride best, but I give Foster the benefit of the doubt.)

Foster also spoke of Mother Teresa, who did not set out to be radical but to follow Jesus and serve Jesus in the least of these.  She disappeared from history for decades, and God eventually raised her up.  She had no desire to be known; in fact, it seems she would have preferred anonymity.  But, Foster said, “There are ten thousand Mother Teresas we’ve never heard of, men and women who continue to be obscure and do their work in secret — and that’s okay with them.  If you’re truly radical, you’re not concerned that anybody sees you.”

This is just a word of caution.  It should not dampen the zeal of a young person who wants to give her all for the kingdom of God.  It should direct it.  It should tell us something about Christian discipleship, its trajectory and its goal.  It’s not a bad thing, in my view, to be conscious of the ultimate Observer and to seek to do what would please Him, as long as this flows from gratitude and not a spiritual performance mentality.  And mixed motives are rarely a good reason to refrain from doing something good, but I do think we should be conscious of how our motives grow mixed when we let Narcissus’ Camera follow us along on our good-deed missions.

Narcissus’ Camera is a perilous piece of equipment.  It may take a lifetime to destroy it.  Or we may never in this life fully destroy it.  As we pursue Christ and a life that is faithful to him (since we cannot cease doing the deeds that are right until we can do them only for the right reasons), we should pray and examine ourselves, discipline our thoughts and seek accountability and community, understanding and wisdom, in the hope that we can disassemble the camera piece by piece.

The question I want to address tomorrow is this.  I believe that the church in America is absolutely in need of challenging and reform in order to address the idols of materialism, consumerism and comfort.  What exactly is the reform that the American church requires?  How exactly should that reform be framed?  What are the right terms and categories to explain it?

I think our discussion so far of “radical” Christian discipleship contains some clues.  If you haven’t already done so, especially since I typically write short series such as this one, please connect with me via Facebook, Twitter or subscribe by email or RSS, in order to follow along.  And I’m sincerely interested to hear your thoughts on the above questions.

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What Ever Happened to Wisdom?

July 11, 2011 By Timothy Dalrymple

Richard Foster

I planned to write a piece today on the institution of marriage, but I’m attending a conference of sorts (I’m not exactly sure what this is) and the hours slipped through my over-caffeinated fingers.  Instead I’ll offer an off-the-cuff reflection on the beauty and the precious rarity — especially in this age — of wisdom.

In the act of interviewing Richard Foster, author of Celebration of Discipline and the current Sanctuary of the Soul, I was reminded how strange and counter-cultural a thing wisdom has become.  Foster is the kind of guy who not only brings a well-marked Bible to an interview, but who opens it frequently and answers from scripture.  He’s the kind of guy who takes a year-and-a-half “fast” from writing and public speaking because he believes God wants him to become comfortable again with anonymity and stillness.  He’s the kind of guy who invites his son to give him a “trail name” (as is the custom when you hike the Appalachian Trail) and waited for ten years for his son to deliver on the promise.  The name his son gave him?  Wisdom-Chaser.

When I was a child, Solomon was among my favorite characters because he was said to be the wisest man in the world.  Then someone pointed out James 1:5, “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.”  From that day forward, I prayed for wisdom almost everyday, and sometimes multiple times daily.  In my childish way of thinking, God had promised a free giveaway.  If you want freedom, just ask for it, and God will give it.  So I asked as often as I could.  If someone had told me that wisdom comes, in large measure, through the things our flesh flees, perhaps I would have asked less eagerly.

One of the best pieces of advice my father ever gave me was, as I was about to depart for my freshman year at Stanford University, I should seek people of wisdom and not merely intelligence.  Intelligence is a capacity — or, more accurately, a collection of capacities.  We call a person intelligent when she is able to process vast amounts of information, penetrate it with analysis, bring clarity from confusion, or attain new insights or fashion new syntheses of knowledge.  Like most capacities, intelligence is value-neutral.  If you have the capacity of drive cars well, you can use that capacity to be a cop or a robber.  Intelligence, likewise, can be employed to manufacture biological weapons or it can be employed to develop cures, to create internet viruses or to fight against them.

As predicted, I found many at Stanford who possessed extraordinary intelligence, but quickly came to see that intelligent people were a dime a dozen.  I was surrounded by intelligent people, some of them breathtakingly intelligent, and yet they did and believed some of the most foolish things imaginable.  Wisdom is far rarer than intelligence, and far more valuable as well.  Wisdom is directional, or value-positive.  You can be immaculately intelligent and utterly deceived in your beliefs.  But wisdom implies that your beliefs, to the extent you are wise, reflect the truth.  Wisdom implies that you have gained some insight into the true, the good and the beautiful, that you have listened to Life and learned some of what it teaches.

Why do we speak so little of wisdom today?  Kierkegaard wrote that Christ shows us the Truth in the form of Life.  Christ shows us what it means to live with wisdom.  The American church, and the evangelical church in particular, by and large does an excellent job explaining why a person might receive the gospel and what he might do to begin growing in Christ.  Yet it does very little, appallingly little (I think), to help mature Christians grow into men and women of wisdom.  The world is longing for it.

Heck, I am longing for it.  I’m very fortunate to have found a church where there are men of wisdom who can provide me with guidance.  Even so, I found it so very refreshing to sit with another human being for an hour, to look him in the eye, to speak of meaningful things, and share in the bounty of wisdom that God has given him through his life.

So, look for men and women of wisdom.  They’re hard to find, because they make no effort to draw attention to themselves.  They’re not concerned that everyone learn what wise people they are.  But if you look for people of everyday faithfulness, people who have gone through the ups and downs and emerged with peace and clarity, people whose hearts and minds are thoroughly transformed by the gospel, you will find them.  They’re out there.

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