Practicing the Way: Be with Jesus. Become like him. Do as he did.

by John Mark Comer

saint. Whoever you are and

noise pollution

The genius of Jesus’ ethical teaching was that you cannot keep the law by trying not to break the law. You cannot become more loving by trying to become more loving, no matter how much self-effort you bring to the table. You have to be transformed in your inner person,

This is why information alone does not produce transformation. Because knowing something is not the same as doing something, which is still not the same as becoming the kind of person who does something naturally as a by-product of a transformed

But at its worst, this is laziness, pure and simple, because it’s far easier to go to church once a week chasing a spiritual high and angle for a download from heaven than to do the daily, unglamorous work of discipleship. This approach can be just another search for a quick fix, a shortcut, what the psychologist John Welwood called “spiritual bypassing”—trying to skip over our pain and just have Jesus “fix” us. Cue the rise of conference junkies chasing the next spiritual high or people who show up at church every time the doors are open but refuse to go to therapy. Jesus is in the business of healing souls. But while the four Gospels have dozens of stories of Jesus instantly healing people’s bodies (after which, by the way, he almost always gave them instructions to go and do something as a next step), he doesn’t seem to do the same with people’s characters. There is not a single instance in which he simply waved his hand to take away an ugly habit or personality trait in one of his apprentices. The opposite is true—we see their stubborn sinfulness live on for years. Jesus didn’t zap them; he just kept teaching, rebuking, and loving

To reiterate, all three of these strategies highlight something key: the centrality of our will, the key role of Scripture, and our need for encounter.

The doctrine of original sin means…that we are born into an environment where it is easy to do evil and hard to do good; easy to hurt others, and hard to heal their wounds; easy to arouse men’s suspicions, and hard to win their trust. It means that we are each of us conditioned by the solidarity of the human race in its accumulated

One reason for this is that Western Christians (Protestant and Catholic, but especially Protestant) have predominantly thought about sin through the guilt/innocence paradigm—what theologians call a “forensic” (that is, legal) view of sin. The basic idea is that God is a morally serious God; he is not only loving and compassionate but also holy and just. We are guilty before his law of justice, and our only hope is Christ’s pardon. And the good news is that Christ is both “just and the justifier.”[36] This is a biblical view, but it’s not the biblical view. It’s just the one that has been emphasized in the West for the last few centuries. Many people don’t realize there are all sorts of other paradigms (called “atonement theories”) to understand sin in the library of Scripture: Guilt/Innocence Honor/Shame Power/Fear Clean/Defiled Belong/Lost Shalom/Chaos Hope/Despair

highly likely that any working model of spiritual formation will bear all sorts of resemblance to AA,[43] with its three elements of (1) radical self-awareness, honesty, and confession, (2) total surrender to God’s power, and (3) a loving, tight-knit community to both love you and hold you accountable to becoming your true self. Take away any one of these

We are formed by at least three basic forces.

stories

animals. Our central nervous system is wired by God to search for meaning, to make what neurologists call “mental maps” of reality. In the same way that we have mental maps for how to get from our homes to work or the grocery store or our favorite coffee spot, we have mental maps for all of life—sex, relationships, money, work, God, etc. Stories about what the good life is and how to find it. The stories we come to believe give shape to a thousand daily decisions, they give shape to what we do (or don’t do) and who we become. As my friend Pete Hughes of King’s Cross Church in London likes to say, “The story you live in is the story you live out.”[45] Let’s take money, for example: If you believe the popular Western story that more money equals more happiness, that the good life is about accomplishment and accumulation, it will form you into a certain kind of person—driven, greedy, envious, discontent, distracted from God, never satisfied, and maybe even dishonest and cruel. On the other hand, if you believe Jesus’ view of money, that all the good things in our lives are God’s gifts, but that wealth makes it harder, not easier, for most of us to enter the kingdom; that freedom from our latent desire for more is found through giving, not getting; and that following

simplicity, generosity, and hospitality will help us live “freely and lightly…”[46] If you believe that story, it will form you too—into a very different, more Jesus-y kind of person.

#2 Our habits

The things we do, do something to us; they get into the core of our being and shape our loves and longings.

#3 Our relationships

Here’s the simple point I’ve been driving to for pages: You are right now, currently, as we speak, being formed by a complex web of ideas, cultural narratives, reoccurring thoughts, habits, daily rhythms, spending patterns, relationships, family ties,

Therefore: All Christian formation is counter-formation.