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131 pages

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We all want to improve our spiritual lives, but the task often can seem overwhelming. And while there is no shortage of self-help gurus hawking their wares, not enough Christians are making meaningful progress toward a deeper relationship with God. Now best-selling author David Augsburger reveals the life-giving nature of surrender and service in Dissident Discipleship. Moving beyond self-centered therapies and "Lone Ranger" spirituality, Augsburger reveals that our spiritual lives will grow when we look outside of ourselves and lay down our lives in service to God and neighbor. Anyone interested in the topic of spiritual growth, from pastors to counselors, will be sure to welcome Augsburger's balanced approach.

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Philosophie et théologie

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	01 juin 2006
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781441201614
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0691€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Dissident Discipleship
Dissident Discipleship
A Spirituality of Self-Surrender, Love of God, and Love of Neighbor
David Augsburger
2006 by David Augsburger
Published by Brazos Press a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.brazospress.com
Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means-for example, electronic, photocopy, recording-without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Augsburger, David W.
Dissident discipleship : a spirituality of self-surrender, love of God, and love of neighbor / David Augsburger. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 1-58743-180-7 (pbk.) ISBN 978-1-58743-180-7 (pbk.) 1. Spirituality-Anabaptists. 2. Spiritual life-Anabaptists. 3. Spiritual life- Christianity. 4. God-Worship and love. 5. Love-Religious aspects-Christianity. 6. Self-acceptance-Religious aspects-Christianity. I. Title. BX4931.3.A94 2006 248.4 843-dc22 2005031102
Scripture marked KJV is taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
Scripture marked NASB is taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE . Copyright The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.
Scripture marked NEB is taken from The New English Bible. Copyright 1961, 1970, 1989 by The Delegates of Oxford University Press and The Syndics of the Cambridge University Press. Reprinted by permission.
Scripture marked NIV is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION . NIV . Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
Scripture marked NKJV is taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture marked NRSV is taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission.
Scripture marked RSV is taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1946, 1952, 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission.
Contents
Introduction
1. The Practice of- Radical Attachment
Not believing in Jesus, but believing Jesus and believing what Jesus believed. (Core Christology)
2. The Practice of- Stubborn Loyalty
True community: where the person you like least always is; if that person dies or disappears, a worse takes the place. (Solidarity in Community)
3. The Practice of- Tenacious Serenity
Let go, let come, let be, let God; Get up, get going, get to it. (Willing Obedience)
4. The Practice of- Habitual Humility
Humility claimed is pride renamed. (Unpretentious Personhood)
5. The Practice of- Resolute Nonviolence
Because my life is in God s hands, I will never take my enemy s life into my hands. (The Way of the Cross)
6. The Practice of- Concrete Service
The best service ever seen, goes unseen, the best servants are, at their best, secrets. (Concern for Others)
7. The Practice of- Authentic Witness
Preach the gospel at all times; if necessary, use words. (Faithful Presence)
8. The Practice of- Subversive Spirituality
My nationality? Christian. My discipleship? Dissident. My spirituality? Subversive. (Dissident Discipleship)
Appendix One: Anabaptists Core Convictions
Appendix Two: The Politics of Jesus
Appendix Three: The Sermon on the Mount for Peditation
Appendix Four: The Jesus Prayer for Peditation
Appendix Five: Anabaptist Order of Communion
Appendix Six: The Discipleship Prayer
Bibliography
Introduction
This is a book about spirituality, not your ordinary garden variety, but the stubborn, persistent, radical spirituality appearing in unusual people across the last two thousand years who combined three strands-love for God, others, and self-in a unique way. This three-dimensional kind of discipleship that I call a tripolar spirituality links discovering self, seeking God, and valuing people into a seamless unity.
Spirituality, the real stuff of genuine spirituality, invariably boils down to some kind of the practice or apprenticeship in living that we call discipleship. We enter it by following a path, joining a quest, learning a new dimension, finding co-travelers, claiming a living tradition, accepting a guide, choosing a mentor. (Even a private, individualistic style of spiritual quest does the same-it follows a path of autonomous spiritual experience modeled by other such private persons, seeking a personal sense of wonder, awe, or reverence for life.)
Whatever sort of spirituality one is attracted to and eventually opts for, it takes a certain shape in its disciples. For example, take the spirituality that I discuss in this book.
It is about discovering a clear sense of self, a firm link to God, a sensitivity to others.
It is about choosing , not inheriting. It is a personal choice, voluntary, individual.
It is about doing , not high intentions. It is a set of practices for living out faith.
It is about loving , not civility. People matter. All people matter.
It is about linking , not individualism. It is a quest for real community.
It is about serving , not self-care. It is something you offer, concretely, caringly.
It is about being , not having. It is discovering authenticity and simplicity.
It is about risking , not withdrawal. It is constructive, courageous, bold.
It is about reconciling , not coexisting. It is open to healing and growth.
It is about suffering , not injuring. It is resolutely nonviolent and constructive.
This path of spirituality has appeared in various forms across two thousand years. It is a path worn bare by a particular line of spiritual people-a long thin line of spiritual dissidents that insistently reaches back to Jesus as mentor-originator-file leader for their a-bit-over-the-edge discipleship. People on this path are folks like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Mother Teresa, St. Francis of Assisi, Thomas Kempis, Gandhi, Tolstoy, Hans Denck, Michael Sattler, Menno Simons, Martin Luther King Jr., Desmond Tutu.
Some groups have pursued this path, like the community of people called Mennonites (or Anabaptists), and the best elements of Anabaptist spirituality have been taken and adapted by dozens of other groups that have often done them better. However, in this book we will draw on Anabaptism-the alternative to traditional, mainstream Catholic and Protestant spiritualities-that broke out in the sixteenth century as a revolutionary movement to recover a bare-bones discipleship to Jesus. This was a jolt in an era when there was little choice-the nation-state registered your religion and defined your spiritual path at birth. There was little freedom in living-worth was defined by birth, status, wealth, land ownership. There were limitations on loving-the powers declared who mattered and who didn t.
This is revolutionary stuff in the twenty-first century as well when spiritual passivity, collective helplessness, a sense of religious futility, and exhaustion with the disciplines of traditional spirituality have turned so many away from formal religion, church, doctrine, and theology. The Anabaptist alternative that continues in the Mennonite, Amish, and Brethren groups flows outside their boundaries and appears in Catholic, Protestant, and more particularly in charismatic and Pentecostal forms of spirituality. It is a cluster of practices of dissident discipleship, not a set of disciplines. It is an attitude of subversive spirituality, a stubborn set of commitments, a radical obedience to the Sermon on the Mount. It is a set of practices that return one to seeking a new attachment to Jesus. It is a constructive force when it crops up among Christians of many different heritages, histories, and traditions, and when it appears among those who recognize none. This is the spirituality we will be exploring in the following pages.
We call these practices spirituality because this is the word most frequently used to take the place of, or to fill the gaps between, terms like religion , personal religious experience , reverence for life , unity with nature , and awareness of core humanity. Various studies have listed over a hundred meanings for spirituality and have concluded that it is both one of our fuzziest concepts and one of the most appealing.
Spirituality has essentially replaced religion (which is deemed too public), displaced faith (too transcendent), nudged out personal religion (too narrow), and become preferable to invisible religion (too elusive). In popular usage it now refers to a privatized, individualized, nonrelational reverence for one s unique humanness, universal core, or essential humanity.
The word spirituality , when used without a modifier, is a glow word that can be attached to persons, places, and things with a positive effect. It has become comfortingly vague and is usefully vacant, allowing people to insert and then extract meanings virtually at will. The quest for the true essential meaning of spirituality is a fool s errand, Lucy Bregman has concluded after studying the uses of the concept over the last two decades. As definitions of spirituality proliferated, these have enabled this one term to do double, indeed triple duty. . . . It is in the self-interest of many persons who like the term to keep it as loosely defined as possible; its meanings keep slipping and it can be relied on to fill gaps vacated by older terms, while at the same time pull in other meanings from other contexts (Bregman 2004, 157).
In much contemporary usage, spirituality is a path of self-discovery. It is the secret of releasing and unfoldin