The Path of Discipleship - Stewardship and the Mind

As I mentioned in a previous article, the split between the body and mind (or body and soul) that has defined the church’s understanding of human life is a false division that comes out of Greek philosophy.  More and more, neuroscience points to the connection between body and mind.  For instance, what people experience as feeling stress is the body reacting to the mind at work. You think about unpaid bills or an impossible to-do list, especially thinking about the possible consequences of failing to pay those bills or finish that list, and the body reacts by preparing for a “fight or flight” type response.  The heart rate increases.  The digestive system slows down.  Several hormones, such as cortisol, begin to course through the body.  Yet the threat is not real.  We are imagining what could happen and that is enough to put this physical process in motion.

                Nevertheless, I want to spend a little time writing about stewardship of the mind (or perhaps stewardship of the brain) as a separate category of stewardship.  On the one hand, many of the things that are good for the body are good for the brain.  Exercise, rest and a healthy diet help the brain function as a part of the body.  Stewardship of the body is a part of stewardship of the mind.

                We also know that the brain is far more complex and needs its own attention as a gift from God.  The brain is that wonderful creation that processes all of the information that our body encounters.  It is the container of our memories and the center of learning.  It is in many ways the center of our self.  It can also be the source of many problems.  What we call worry is a recurring thought, replaying itself in our synapses.  In various mental illnesses, the brain misfires and misbehaves.  Then there are the issues we associate with aging, where connections come more slowly or even begin to break down.  Names escape us and memories are fleeting.

                Each mind is unique, a part of what makes you a unique individual.  We process the world differently.  We respond to stimuli differently.  For instance, most people have some kind of emotional reaction to music, that impulse to tap your feet and clap along, leading to talk of music as a universal language.  But it is now estimated that 3-5% of the population, myself included, have a condition known as “music specific anhedonia.”  It is not that we can’t understand music.  It just doesn’t make much of an impact.  For me, music can be a helpful distraction to drown out other noise, but I don’t miss it if it is not playing.  This can be especially difficult in worship settings where music is a fundamental part of how people encounter the divine.  Those who can’t imagine worship without music are not wrong for their love of music, nor are those who find little power in music wrong for that reaction.  It is simply a reflection of the unique nature of our minds.

                I suppose that is part of what draws me to contemplative prayer, encountering God is silence.  One of the initial aspects of working with silence is becoming aware of how your brain is generating a constant background of thought.  Zen Buddhists refer to this as “monkey mind.”  When you stop and pay attention you realize that there are many loosely connected thoughts buzzing around in your brain.  You think about what you should be doing.  You wonder about choices you made in the past.  You think about what you are going to do in the future.  You wonder how long you have been sitting there in silence and how much longer you should.  You wonder about the dog that is barking in the distance.  Does it see a deer?  Are there deer in this forest?  I haven’t seen a deer here but I did all the time when I was in Michigan.  Michigan is a great state with nice beaches.  At night time, you can look across Lake Michigan and see a haze of lights from Milwaukee and other places in Wisconsin.  Wisconsin has good cheese…Monkey mind.

                I have found mindfulness, meditation and contemplative prayer to be essential practices for the stewardship of my own mind.  They are practices that allow the mind to settle.  You learn to notice your thoughts and, importantly, let go of recurring or unwanted thoughts.  You become aware that thoughts are like cars driving by your house.  Unless you go out and stop them, they pass by, their noise fading into nothing.  These practices take time and some level of discipline.  The benefits are not immediate, but build with regular practice.

                The other aspect of mental stewardship I would encourage is learning.  We live in an age where there are amazing resources for learning.  Yet many adults leave learning to the young.  Often there is an attitude that if something doesn’t further one’s career or earn money, it isn’t worth the time.  Why learn to play the piano when you are not going to be a professional musician?  Why learn a language if you aren’t going to travel somewhere soon?  Why study a science if you are not a professional scientist?  Why study the Bible when all you need is Psalm 23 and John 3:16?  Learn for the joy of learning, for the “Aha!” moments and the instances of “I never did that before.” 

                For example, there is some debate about the need for seminary students to study the original Hebrew and Greek of the Bible.  Professional scholars have produced excellent translations.  In many ways pastoral ministry has been shifting from a scholarly model to a service-oriented model.  Some argue that the study is not worth the time.  Yet I still remember the moment when I was walking by a synagogue in Chicago and I realized I knew the meaning of what had previously been, for lack of a better phrase, Hebrew squiggles.  I was and am by no means an expert in biblical Hebrew, but I remember the sense that a new part of the world had opened up to me, new connections were being made.  These moments shape the mind and keep the mind in shape.

                Your brain is a gift and, as with all the gifts of God, you are encouraged to enjoy that gift but also to care for it.  Use your mind to that for which it was made, to make something beautiful, continuing God’s process of creation.  Be still.  Pay attention.  Be engaged.  Learn something new.  Be creative.  Make something beautiful.

The Path of Discipleship - Stewardship of Creation

As I have been writing this series, my definition of stewardship has also evolved.  I mentioned in previous articles the term “created co-creator” as a definition of what it means to be human.  This is the idea that we have been brought into being to participate in the continuing action of God’s creation.  To further expand on this idea, I will say that we have been made beautiful by God in order to make something beautiful.

                This is not a new requirement that all Christians become artists or musicians, as though beauty was only confined to the art world.  It is an understanding that we have been called to make and preserve beauty in the world.  Stewardship becomes divided into two spheres of action.  In one sphere, we are actively using the gifts that God has given us to make something beautiful.  Art is beautiful.  A garden is beautiful.  A home run is beautiful.  A loving family is beautiful.  Community is beautiful.  Peace is beautiful.  Justice is beautiful.  Go make something beautiful!

                The other sphere is more about preserving the beauty that already exists.  This is where we get into environmental stewardship.  Many countries have areas that they consider so beautiful and important that they actively preserve them as national or state parks.  As much as possible, they seek to limit the impact of humanity on such areas, restricting their use, in some cases restricting the number of tourists that can enter them in a given year.  This is considered good stewardship.

                As Christians we might consider our stewardship of creation in a similar way.  What are we doing to minimize our impact on God’s good creation?  How can we help preserve the natural beauty of clean air and water?  Are the ways that we can better live in harmony with the forces of nature rather than trying to fight or control them?

                For Christianity, it comes down to understanding of a word we rarely use in other contexts, “dominion.”  According to the Genesis 1 creation myth, on the sixth day, God made human beings and gave them “dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”  Historically we have often treated dominion as license, acting as though God said we could do whatever we wanted with the environment.  Species can lose their habitats if it helps human beings to flourish.  Air, land and water can be polluted in the long term if human beings are helped in the short term.

                I would suggest that we need to let our understanding of dominion be shaped by the image of the human task in the Genesis 2 myth.  God puts the first human being in the garden, “to till it and keep it.”  Dominion is not power over creation but a responsibility toward creation.  We have been made beautiful in order to maintain and preserve the beautiful.

                The first task here is not to make picket signs or buy an electric car or solar panels.  The first task is consistently to remind ourselves of the beauty of creation which means going and experiencing it.  This goes back to the virtue of awe and wonder that I wrote about in December.  We need to have the experience of being overwhelmed by the beauty that is already around us.  We need to take the time to encounter the vastness of nature and wonder at the small and fascinating details.  We need to get outside, celebrating the power and the mystery, the strength and frailty that make up the living creation.  Then let the awe and wonder turn into gratitude.  Let it inspire us to care for what God has made so that each day we ask ourselves how our plans for the day help or harm the creation.  Will our next steps create, damage or destroy?  We have been made beautiful in order to make something beautiful with our lives.  We have been made beautiful to preserve the beauty that God has made.

Matters of Faith - On Earth Day

This article was published in the Cape Cod Times the weekend of April 15 as part of their Matters of Faith series.

I am the son of a biology professor.  My dad was an entomologist and I spent several summers collecting insects with him on behalf of skittish undergrads taking his courses.  They would attack the bushes with beating nets and I would try to capture what came walking, crawling or buzzing out.  His specialty was velvet ants, wingless wasps that we would track around the sand flats outside of Kalamazoo, Michigan.

                I am also a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.  Although my denomination allows for a fairly liberal view on scriptural interpretation, periodically I am asked how I can reconcile a scientific upbringing with a religious point of view.  Because conservative Christian traditions have become some of the louder religious voices in the United States, people assume that all Christians, myself included, must believe that the earth is about 6000 years old, evolutionary theory is a pile of hooey and the Bible is a reliable science textbook. 

                So that the reader starts out knowing where I am coming from, I believe none of those things.  The universe is billions of years old.  Life on earth has evolved over millions of years through a process of natural selection.  The Bible is a wonderful, inspired and important resource for faith, but written by people who knew very little about physics, astronomy, geology or biology.  Neither the author of Genesis 1 (the account of a 6-day creation) nor the author of Genesis 2-3 (the Garden of Eden story) were writing textbooks.  Instead they were divinely inspired to paint pictures and make metaphors about creation.  They were not trying to describe the making of the world in the past but trying to ascribe meaning to the world in which they lived.

                As we approach Earth Day (April 22), the meaning of these ancient texts is still important.  I think that what they say about creation can inform those who take the texts literally, those who take the texts metaphorically and those who think these texts are a waste of time.  First, from Genesis 1, is the idea that the creation is fundamentally good.  Again and again, the creator looks at what is happening and sees that it is good.  That doesn’t mean that only “good” things happen in it.  There are predators and there is prey.  There are viruses, bacteria and parasites that are part of the natural order.  There are natural disasters beyond our control.  Yet watch the sunset over Buzzard’s Bay, the sky changing color minute by minute; the stars and planets becoming visible in the growing darkness; the waves coming in with the satisfying sounds of pebbles slowly grating each other into sand.  There is an unmistakable sense of good, not a moral or ethical description, just goodness, right and whole. 

                The Genesis 1 story ends with the instruction that human beings are given dominion “over every living thing.”  The Genesis 2 story broadens that image with the creator putting the first human being in the garden “to till it and keep it.”  For people of faith, neither of these images should be seen as God granting ownership of the Earth to humanity.  Rather God tasks humanity with being stewards of the Earth.  We human beings are here to help the Earth thrive.  As one of my seminary professors, Phil Hefner, put it, we are “created co-creators”, meant to preserve and celebrate the inherent goodness of the creation.

                Unfortunately, instead of a creative sense of stewardship we have approached the environment with a destructive sense of entitlement, with the idea that we should get to do whatever is best and convenient for us.  We have polluted the earth, seas and skies.  We have harvested in unsustainable ways and then wasted much of the food we have grown.  We have filled the oceans with plastics, the land with pesticides and the air with excess carbon dioxide.  As a result we have not kept the planet but are changing the planet, entering a new geological age that some are calling the Anthropocene era, where the work of human progress has permanently left a mark on the environment.

                This situation demands a call for collective repentance; repentance that is not just about feeling sorry for our actions, but seeking to change our ways as individuals and as a society.  We need to pay attention to what we consume and how much we throw away.  We need to pay attention to how much water we use and where that water drains.  We need to be mindful of ways that we can simplify our lives, doing more with less.  And finally, we need to spend more time encountering that inherent goodness, whether at the seashore, a forest walk or a starry night.   Take the time to reconnect to the planet, reminding yourself of your small role to keep, honor and preserve this holy place in the universe.  Whether as people of faith or simply as citizens of planet, we need to pay attention.

The Path of Discipleship - Stewardship and the Body

The attitude about the human body within Christianity has long been shaped by a Greek dualism that separates the body and the soul.  In this image, the body is a troublesome cage that traps the soul until finally the soul is freed in death.  Not only is the soul imprisoned in the body but it also has deal with the limitations, urges and general nastiness that flesh is heir to.  The soul is not hungry; never uses the bathroom; never gets tired or sick; never gets sexually aroused in inappropriate places and does not weaken with age.  If only we did not have to deal with the body, then we could be pure and spiritual people.

                Because of this view, much of Christian practice and teaching has revolved around getting the body under control.  At the extremes this could include severe fasting and self-flagellation.  It is theorized that some of the great medieval mystics had shorter lives because they made themselves sick by denying themselves food, sleep and adequate clothing.  At the time this was seen as faithful living, punishing the body in order to avoid the sins of the body.

                The image of a distinct split between body and soul also gave people a concrete sense of the afterlife.  The body dies and the soul escapes, either to eternal reward or eternal punishment.  It is important to understand the most of the biblical tradition does not hold this view of what it means to be human.  In the Garden of Eden story of Genesis 2, the first person, Adam, is made when God sculpts a body out of the ground and then breathes into it.  To be human, in this image, is to be body and breath/spirit.  Without the breath, the body is just dirt.  Without the body, the breath remains with God.  In the six-day creation story of Genesis 1, human beings (with bodies) are made in the image of God.  It is not the soul or spirit that holds the image of God but the whole package.

                This united image complicates the “What happens when we die?” question.  But if we carefully read the scriptural story, we find that the common image is not disembodied spirits after death, but resurrection from the dead.  Jesus makes a point of showing that he has risen in body, inviting Thomas to touch him, sharing a meal with his disciples.  In Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, he deals with the question of Christians who had died before Christ’s return saying, “For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first.”  To clarify, I am not trying to explain what happens when we die, an event that is still shrouded in mystery while we live.  What I am trying to demonstrate is that the disdain for the body that has shaped much of Christian history was something that developed, and was not part of the original teaching.  We are taught to learn self-control, reigning in urges and obsessions, but we are not taught to reject the body.  Read Song of Songs and try to deny that physical pleasure is a gift of God.

                The way we treat our bodies is a reflection of our sense of stewardship.  I suggest that the body is not testing ground for the soul, a means for God to see if we give in to temptation, but is rather part of God’s gift of being alive.  It is true that bodies do embarrassing things like passing gas at inopportune times and it also true that bodies, especially older bodies, ache and tire more easily.  Yet our bodies in their many and various forms are the means through which we experience reality.  Take a moment as you read this and pay attention to everything you are experiencing right now: the feel of the fabric of the chair on which you are sitting, the low rumble of traffic or voices of songbirds.  Go outside and pay attention to the feel of a soft breeze.  Make a cup of coffee or tea and notice the comfort of a warm mug, the smell and feel of the steam, the taste of a satisfying drink.  Take a deep breath and feel the joy of letting things slow down.  All of these experiences are brought to you by the gift that is your body.

                As a gift of God you have the opportunity to care for your body, to pay attention to what goes into it, to pay attention how it feels.  And as I write this, I am realizing how easy it is to fall into the dualistic language that somehow separates the body from you, as though the body was a pet you have to keep under control.  Your body is essential to you.  Your body doesn’t need adequate sleep.  You do.  Your body doesn’t feel better when you eat better food.  You do.  Doing the things that you know keep your body in better shape: movement, rest and consuming healthy fuel, is about keeping you in the best place to experience God’s gift of life in the present, sustaining you to be God’s creative force in the world, bringing love, hope, beauty and peace into being.

                I should also mention the obvious, the mortality of the body.  No matter how well we take care of ourselves, walking ten thousand steps, stretching, doing reasonable resistance training, eating healthy food, our bodies will age.  As a man in my later forties, I am not as fast as I was when I was eighteen.  The need to look over my glasses to read a thermostat clearly reminds me that I am edging toward bifocals.  This is also part of being human.  The process of living is also the process of dying.

                Yet it is God who began the cycle of birth and death; it is God who sustains it; in our tradition, it is God who interrupts it in Jesus.  We do not know exactly what it means.  Paul speaks of the mystery in the first letter to the Corinthians when he writes, “For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality.”  One day our true selves will stand before God, enfleshed in immortality.

                In the meantime, enjoy the gift that is your body.  Care for it.  Move it.  Revel in it.  Eat well.  Sleep well. Breathe deeply and love the Lord. 

The Path of Discipleship - An Introduction to Stewardship

For the next couple of months I am going to be writing about the Christian virtue that is associated with stewardship and generosity.  This can be an awkward idea to write about because often, at least in my American Lutheran tradition, we associate stewardship with money and feel uncomfortable talking about money.  There is a sense that money is too personal a topic (aka none of your business).  There is also a feeling that clergy only talk about money in order to get money.  

                As a clergyperson I can share a slightly different frustration, the uncomfortable overlap between being a faith leader and an organizational leader.  As a faith leader, I want to talk about money because Jesus talks about money and the way it affects our walk with God.  For instance, he says, “You cannot serve God and wealth.”  In that simple statement there is whole lot to unpack.  We have to talk about money as a matter of faith.  To avoid the discussion would be like a doctor who never talks about your digestive system because eventually it gets awkward. Unfortunately, money is also tied to my role as an organizational leader who is paid a salary and works with an operating budget based on the money that people give.  So there will always be some cloudiness around discussing money so long as pastors make a living from the money that is donated by the people to whom they preach. 

                I hope this cloudiness might start to become clearer when I maintain that I am not talking about money, but about stewardship.  Just a warning, there will be an article on money and stewardship.  Our finances are a piece of our stewardship, but not the whole pie. 

                Stewardship is a discipline that is much broader than we have taken it to be.  It is reflected in our attitude and care of our bodies, our possessions, our minds and God’s good creation.  The idea of being a steward is the idea of being entrusted with something on behalf of someone else.  The things we have are not our own, we are God’s stewards, caring for what belongs to God, which means that our minds, our bodies and our possessions belong to God. 

                In a grace-centered tradition, stewardship always begins with God.  Some traditions start with law, talking about things like tithing and God’s expectations.  I would rather start with God’s generosity as both the model and the reason for our stewardship.  One of the most important things about the creation myth in Genesis 1 is what it doesn’t give, a reason for the creation.  God isn’t looking for slaves to serve God.  God isn’t looking for power or self-esteem.  God isn’t looking for praise or honor.  God simply creates because God is creative and what God makes is good.  God chooses to make the creation.  It is not an accidental birthing of the universe, but a divine decision.

                This implies that every living thing is in some way part of that divine decision.  You are, literally, God’s gift to you.  You are also, potentially, God’s gift to the planet and God’s gift to the community around you.   You are an ongoing part of God’s good creation story, wonderfully made with gifts and abilities that are meant to help the planet thrive and build up the human family.

                Everything that we do as stewards, as with everything we do with any aspect of discipleship, is in response to God’s generosity, both in the initial stories of creation and the story of re-creation and redemption found in Jesus.  Jesus is our model for what being a steward means.  He shares his food.  He shares his time.  He shares his very life on the cross.  He shares himself, becoming part of God’s blueprint for a continuing creative act.  And through Jesus we have also been brought into that blueprint, each called to become what my theology professor Phil Hefner called “created co-creators.”  To be a steward is a sacred responsibility.  To be a steward is a divine gift.  To be a steward is a step on the path of discipleship.