Day #27: Historic Prayers – Imagination, Spirituality, and the Rule of Life (Daniel Snoke)
James K. Smith says that, “love is the condition for knowledge.” Pursuit of knowledge without a heart that loves is meaningless. God wants you to love him, and the love he placed within your heart for his good world will ultimately lead you to his grace in deeper and meaningful ways… if we let it.
Some Protestants might find it surprising to know that creativity and imagination were important parts of historic Christian spirituality for a lot of church history. Today, most devotional material often isolates the internal experience of faith from the physical world. In fact, many Christians, without knowing it, fear that the physical stuff of life leads to idolatry and believe that true sincerity originates only from within our internal experiences. In this culture, our bodies have become distractions to true worship and our imaginations lead us to sinful practices. Even the popular term “devotions”, by which Protestants mean “daily time with God”, comes from the medieval practice of using private prayers during Mass to manage the inward affections of isolated individuals. Today, Christians are hyper-aware of their inward sincerity, but they often fail to recognize the power of imagination and physical expression to capture, disciple, and even sanctify their hearts.
God made us as physical beings that cannot exist without community, and as such, our faith cannot exist outside of the physical cultures we live in. There is no such thing as a pure faith that is unaffected by human culture. As the philosopher and theologian John Frame says,
“Sometimes we dream fondly of a ‘purely objective’ knowledge of God—a knowledge of God freed from the limitations of our senses, minds, experiences, preparation, and so forth. But nothing of this sort is possible, and God does not demand that of us. Rather, He condescends to dwell in and with us, as in a temple. He identifies Himself in and through our thoughts, ideas, and experiences. And that identification is clear; it is adequate for Christian certainty.”
We need a spirituality that recognizes God’s condescension to us and embraces the physical and imaginative world he has given us. Our faith will become vital when we stop siphoning off our physical imaginations from our spirituality and learn to submit our whole selves, heart, mind, body, and strength, to God’s revelation.
The term, lex orandi, lex credendi, or “the rule of prayer is the rule of belief” was a mantra of many throughout church history, including St. Augustine. Many have taken this to mean that what we pray forms what we believe, but the heart of the statement gets at something much deeper. It says that how we pray, when we pray, and who we pray with not only forms our beliefs, but molds our entire lives. Deeper still, the equation often works in reverse too; how we live, who we live with, and the patterns we set change our prayers. If we live aesthetically anemic lives, our prayers will be thankless and dull. If we live every day striving for utility, our prayers will struggle to go beyond supplication, and we will fail to see God as a gracious Father who pours out blessings on his children.
City Reformed abides by the Reformed “rule of faith”, in which Scripture is the sole basis for our faith, but for many, it can be hard to apply that rule to daily spirituality. Instead of placing our spiritual vitality solely on “daily devotions”, in which inward experiences are primary, many in the Christian faith also develop a “rule of life”. A rule of life is a pattern of habits that seek to align our lives with the purposes of God. They are a system of beliefs and practices that flow out of our faith and in turn, form our faith. The rule of life recognizes that spirituality is much more than inward sincerity and that a strong faith engages every part of who we are.
Christians have developed different patterns in every culture and time, but I have observed a kind of evangelical “rule” that often leaves out positive aesthetic experience and expression. The rule of life we typically hear about usually focuses on discipline and asceticism, and then we wonder why we struggle to pray longer than five minutes and for things beyond our immediate needs. Our rule of life should not just seek to shed sin and discipline ourselves into daily devotions, but it should also intentionally seek to submit our imaginations to God’s Word and seek to participate with him with our physical expressions.
As you consider developing a rule of life, let your love for the arts, creativity, and imagination lead your hearts to treasure God. Maybe for the first time, let your imagination be a lens you use to view God with. Do not fear your artistic instincts, rather, submit them to prayerful obedience to God’s Word and express your thankfulness as his humble servants. For some, you might need to exercise creative muscles for the first time. There are a lot of ways to develop a rule of life, but consider these principles:
- Sabbath Celebration: Sabbath is more than “not working”, it is a reminder of the Kingdom feast to come. In fact, the historical pattern of Lent did not count Sundays as part of it. For the historical church, Sabbath was a day for feasting and celebration, no matter what season of fasting the calendar gave. If you struggle to submit your daily routines to God, start by trying to submit one day a week to his blessed feast.
- Seek Beauty: We receive truth through God’s Word, but God also reveals his nature through beauty and aesthetic communication. Artists, craftsmen, writers, and musicians are uniquely gifted to communicate God’s reality to us through cultural means. Spend time in thankfulness and contemplation by visiting museums, listening to music undistracted, reading stories, and considering the aesthetics of your surroundings. Let the abundance of beauty inform and inhabit your prayers.