Apprentice: Walking the Way of Christ

by Steve Chalke

Orwell feared we would be overcome by externally imposed oppression (in the form of ‘Big Brother,’ the all-seeing eye that watches everybody’s every move), but Huxley saw that people would come to choose their own self-imposed oppression through their addiction to technologies that destroy their ability to think. Orwell feared that the authorities would ban books, but Huxley worried that there would be no reason to ban books – no one would want to read them. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information, but Huxley worried about those who would provide us with so much information that we would be reduced to passivity. Orwell believed that truth would be concealed from us, but Huxley feared that truth would be lost in our self-made sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared that we would become a captive culture, but Huxley feared that we would become a trivial culture. Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us, but Huxley saw that what we love will ruin us; Western societies would dance themselves into oblivion, suffocated in their own trivia. In Orwell’s writing people are controlled by having pain inflicted on them. In Huxley’s picture of the future, they are controlled by self-induced pleasure.

Becoming an apprentice of Jesus Christ begins by discovering that discipline is the friend of freedom, not its enemy. Astonishing as it may at first seem, discipline is actually the pathway to the fulfilment of our deep longings and desires.

the word discipline often gets muddled, confused with the concepts of ‘punishment’ and ‘restriction’ rather than being associated with training and freedom.

discipline is the pathway to freedom.

‘The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.’11 Deep desires motivate us to seek answers. In our most desperate moments, we are called to look outside of ourselves.

We may, from time to time, use words to express the true longings of our heart. But when we pray, it is always better to have a heart without words than to have words without a heart.

He concluded with these words: I have often asked myself why human beings have any rights at all. I have always come to the conclusion that human rights, human freedoms, and human dignity have their deepest roots somewhere outside the perceptible world. These values . . . make sense only in the perspective of the infinite and the eternal . . . Allow me to conclude my remarks on the state and its probable role in future with the assertion that, while the state is a human creation, human beings are the creation of God.

According to Genesis, we are neither physical bodies with a spiritual side, nor spiritual beings somehow trapped in physical bodies. In our very formation, we represent the full integration of the physical with the spiritual. Therefore, when we stand before another person, whoever they are – however destitute, disabled, diseased or degraded – we stand before a vehicle of the divine.

And, while we are all spiritual beings, we must not forget that we are also consumers: a problematic combination!

A simple man believes anything, but a prudent man gives thought to his steps. Proverbs 14:15

John Kavanaugh, a brilliant ethicist, went to live for three months in Mother Teresa’s ‘House of the Dying’ in Calcutta on a personal pilgrimage to find guidance and a clear vision for the rest of his life. On his very first morning, Mother Teresa asked Kavanaugh, as she asked everyone, ‘What can I do for you?’ He requested that she pray for him. So she asked him what, specifically, he would like her to pray about. Without hesitation, Kavanaugh, who had travelled thousands of miles on his quest, replied, ‘Please pray that I get clarity for the future.’ ‘No!’ retorted Mother Teresa emphatically, ‘I will not do that . . . Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.’ ‘But you always seem to have clarity,’ Kavanaugh spluttered, a little taken aback. With a twinkle in her eye, Mother Teresa laughed. ‘I have never had clarity; but what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.’8

An apprentice dropped his gold ring inside his house. But the house was dark and there was a great amount of furniture which he needed to move in order to continue his search. So, lacking the determination his task required, he went outside and began to look around the courtyard. His teacher passed by and asked him what he was looking for. ‘I have lost my gold ring,’ said the apprentice. ‘Where did you lose it?’ asked his teacher. ‘In my bedroom,’ said the apprentice. ‘Then why are you looking for it out here?’ ‘There’s more room out here,’ the apprentice replied. ‘It makes my task easier.’

Two men, deep in conversation, walked down a bustling city street. One is at home, the other is visiting from the countryside. Passing a tree, the visitor suddenly stopped. ‘Can you hear that?’ he asked as pedestrians squeezed and bumped past them. ‘Hear what?’ his friend replied. ‘The cricket singing. It must be in the tree.’ He leant with one ear leaning towards the tree to tune into the source of the song. ‘There’s no cricket, it’s in your head!’ the city worker exclaimed, as a woman walked by shouting into her phone. ‘And, even if there were, you’d never be able to hear it over the noise of all these people and this traffic.’ The visitor’s friend laughed and walked on. But, as he did so, the visitor pulled a small coin from his pocket and let it drop to the ground. The coin hit the pavement and quietly rolled to a rest. Intuitively his friend twisted his head round, glancing over his shoulder at the ground to search for the coin. At the same moment, perhaps twenty other pedestrians surreptitiously scanned the ground as they walked by. With a smile, the visitor looked at his friend and said, ‘You’re listening to the wrong tune.’

The very nature of faith implies uncertainty. Without room for doubt, faith could not exist. Our only remaining option would be blind acceptance of incontrovertible fact. Søren Kierkegaard wrote: If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.2

Choosing to follow Christ as his apprentice means engaging with our doubts, rather than ignoring them.

What people don’t realise is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it’s a cross. It’s much harder to believe than not to believe. If you feel you can’t believe, you must at least do this: keep an open mind. Keep it open toward faith, keep wanting it, keep asking for it, and leave the rest to God.4

We like certainty. We like things to be beyond doubt – black and white, on or off, right or wrong. We dislike ambiguity. We prefer things to be cut and dried and guaranteed. We don’t want to spend our days agonizing over life’s difficult questions. Yet, ironically, one of the few things we can be absolutely certain of is that God doesn’t supply that kind of certainty.

There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.

He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever.

Our beliefs should not come from a rejection of reason, but rather from the honest outcome of an ongoing debate in which we use our reason to probe our faith.

philosopher Francis Bacon said: ‘If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts. But if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.’10 Questions are crucial to examining, testing and ultimately strengthening our faith.

If we insist on clinging to the misguided notion that, somehow, mature faith in God must represent a state of absolute certainty and stability, beyond the reach of all questioning and doubt, then we have moved it beyond the reach of the vast majority of humanity.

If we are to live out Jesus’ teaching as his apprentices, it is vital that, along with questioning our faith, we are also honest enough to question our institutions, our social systems, our judgments, our assumptions and our preconceptions.

The earnest apprentice approached his teacher in search of the truth. ‘If what you seek is truth, there is one thing you must have above all else,’ began his teacher. ‘I know,’ said the apprentice. ‘I must have an overwhelming passion to acquire it.’ ‘No,’ smiled the teacher, ‘what you must have is an unremitting readiness to admit you may be wrong.’15

The Catholic mystic Anthony de Mello told a haunting story, hinting at the potential dangers of rigid beliefs: The devil once went for a walk with a friend. They saw a man ahead of them stoop down and pick up something from the ground. ‘What did that man find?’ asked the friend. ‘A piece of truth,’ said the devil. ‘Doesn’t that disturb you?’ asked the friend. ‘No,’ said the devil. ‘I shall let him make a belief out of it.’

God exists as a ‘tri-unity’ of persons in constant internal relationship. God is a society within himself. However, though God is three in one, he always acts as one and lives in absolute unity, without competition or individualism.

through our individualism, we learn to affirm ourselves over, against and at the expense of one another and God.

As apprentices, learning to walk the way of Christ slowly brings about a process of ‘de-individualisation’ and, as a result, true ‘personalisation’.

C. S. Lewis wrote, ‘There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable.’17

To commit ourselves to others is dangerous. Love never comes with a guarantee of success – it is, of its very essence, a venture of faith.

For, in the end, it turns out that we can only truly love others when we have learnt to love ourselves as well. When we are truly at peace with ourselves, we can give ourselves to others and discover that we are able to give without losing anything.

It turns out it is the person who lacks self-esteem who finds it hardest to serve others, to put others’ interests first. Self-centred behaviour is a symptom of insecurity – the hallmark of a lack of confidence. Bravado is the blustering of self-doubt. The ability to serve is born not of weakness, but of strength. Service is a discipline. Far from turning us into pushovers who disregard our self-worth and then invite others to do the same, learning the art and discipline of serving can transform and empower us, helping us to recognise not only our worth but also the value of everyone else around us.

Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths . . . Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been specially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race or even their species, and not upon others. I know about this moaning because I have done my share.4

The more passionately we love life, the more intensively we experience the joy of life. The more passionately we love life, the more we also experience the pain of life.

he reminds us of what he has learnt through the troubles he has faced – that even these cannot separate us from the love of Christ.

A controlling and aggressive ‘superior’ would therefore backhand slap a servant with his right hand – striking them across their right cheek. So, when Jesus taught his oppressed hearers to turn the other cheek (so that their left cheek faced their aggressor), he was suggesting that instead of taking the insult they had suffered lying down, they should assert themselves. To that end, notice that he does not suggest that they present their aggressor with the same cheek (the right cheek) again. By following Jesus’ advice and presenting their left cheek, a servant would make it impossible for the master to hit them again with the back of the right hand. Even though the servant’s left cheek would now offer a perfect target for another blow, it meant the aggressor only had one option. Unable to use his ‘unclean’ left hand, he would have to use his right forehand or fist to strike his victim. Doing this presented a cultural problem. Only equals fought in this way. If the master wanted to continue to hit the servant, he could do so only by acknowledging his servant as an equal. And that was precisely Jesus’ point.

Though forgiving can be seen as an occasional noble act, its true benefits are discovered as it becomes a continuous attitude of life.

‘When you can look into the eyes of any man or woman and recognise them as your brother or sister, only then has dawn come,’ replied the teacher.

The Lord God has told us what is right and what he demands: ‘See that justice is done, let mercy be your first concern, and humbly obey your God.’ MICAH 6:8 CEV

The farm geese would lift their heads from the feeding trough and look up into the skies and listen to the call of their wild cousins. For the first time in their lives, they would become animated and begin running, as best they could, around their enclosure. They would attempt, with all the energy they could muster, to fly. But their gluttonous diet and life of luxury meant that they had grown far too fat to become airborne. And then, just as quickly as the commotion had started, the wild geese would be gone. The fattened farm geese would watch them briefly, put their heads back down, and return to their grain, slowly eating themselves to death. The symbol for the Holy Spirit – the Spirit of Christ – adopted by the ancient Celtic Church was that of a wild goose. Christ’s apprentices are called to raise their heads from their feeding troughs, spread wings of faith and live out a spirituality centred on their love for God and for others.

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships so that you may live deep within your heart. May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom, and peace. May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger and war so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy. And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in the world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done to bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor. Amen.17