Practices of Love , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - David Bennett Kyle

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101 pages

English

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Spiritual disciplines are often viewed primarily as a means to draw us closer to God. While these practices do deepen and enrich our "vertical" relationship with God, Kyle David Bennett argues that they were originally designed to positively impact our "horizontal" relationships--with neighbors, strangers, enemies, friends, family, animals, and even the earth. Bennett explains that this "horizontal" dimension has often been overlooked or forgotten in contemporary discussions of the spiritual disciplines.This book offers an alternative way of understanding the classic spiritual disciplines that makes them relevant, doable, and meaningful for everyday Christians. Bennett shows how the disciplines are remedial practices that correct the malformed ways we do everyday things, such as think, eat, talk, own, work, and rest. Through personal anecdotes, engagement with Scripture, and vivid cultural references, he invites us to practice the spiritual disciplines wholesale and shows how changing the way we do basic human activities can bring healing, renewal, and transformation to our day-to-day lives and the world around us.

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Philosophie et théologie

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	22 août 2017
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781493409587
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0518€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2017 by Kyle David Bennett
Published by Brazos Press
a division of Baker Publishing Group
PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.brazospress.com
Ebook edition created 2017
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 is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-0958-7
Scripture quotations are 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 United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Endorsements
“Spiritual disciplines, if done wrong, can become a form of sanctified narcissism. Bennett’s book is a welcome corrective. He turns the disciplines sideways, and in doing so life gets oriented outward. We have focused much on the first great commandment. Bennett helps us put shoes on the second great commandment. After he discusses each spiritual discipline he gets down and dirty with specifics. If you take him seriously, your life and your neighborhood will be changed.”
— Dennis Okholm , Azusa Pacific University; author of Dangerous Passions, Deadly Sins: Learning from the Psychology of Ancient Monks
“What if spiritual disciplines are not just for Sundays? And what if they are not just for your own spiritual growth? In this lively book, Kyle David Bennett shows how our everyday working and resting, speaking and listening, eating and shopping can be Christian practices with and for our neighbors. With earnest passion and humble humor, Bennett calls us to spiritual formation that is an intentionally social expression of love.”
— Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung , Calvin College; author of Glittering Vices
Dedication
To Andrea— because you saved my life once, and continually.
Contents
Cover i
Title Page iii
Copyright Page iv
Endorsements v
Dedication vi
Epigraph vii
Foreword by James K. A. Smith xi
Preface xiii
Introduction: Spiritual Heroin—How Not to Get Fixed 1
1. Spiritual Disciplines and the Way of Love 17
2. “What Do You Have That You Did Not Receive?” 39
Simplicity and Renewed Owning
3. Directions for Ruling the Mind 59
Meditation and Renewed Thinking
4. This Is My Tummy, Which I Will Curb for You 77
Fasting and Feasting and Renewed Eating
5. Time-Out for Adults 95
Solitude and Renewed Socializing
6. Controlling the Chatterbox 113
Silence and Renewed Talking
7. How to Make Friends and Empower People 129
Service and Renewed Working
8. Work Hard, Consecrate Hard 147
Sabbath Keeping and Renewed Resting
9. Who’s Afraid of Love? 167
Everyday Discipline for the Life of the World
Acknowledgments 179
Notes 182
Further Reading 188
Index 190
Back Cover 194
Epigraph

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
—Jesus of Nazareth (Mark 12:31)
Come, let us go up to the mountain of the L O R D ,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.
—Isaiah the prophet (Isa. 2:3)
The chief thing is to love others like yourself, that’s the chief thing, and that’s everything; nothing else is wanted—you will find out at once how to arrange it all. And yet it’s an old truth which has been told and retold a billion times—but it has not formed part of our lives!
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
Love seeketh not Itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care;
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.
So sung a little Clod of Clay,
Trodden with the cattle’s feet;
But a Pebble of the brook,
Warbled out these metres meet
Love seeketh only self to please,
To bind another to Its delight,
Joys in another’s loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven’s despite.
—William Blake, “The Clod and the Pebble”
When one has once fully entered the realm of Love, the world—no matter how imperfect—becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for Love.
—Søren Kierkegaard
Foreword
Imagine a unique tree—one that grows in the soil of church fathers such as John Cassian and Gregory the Great, with roots that trace back to “old vines” in Abraham Kuyper and Søren Kierkegaard, and branches grafted from Dallas Willard and Richard Mouw. The fruit of such a tree is this book: a vision for how to “do life in the Spirit.”
If I could, I’d insert Practices of Love as volume 1.5 in my Cultural Liturgies trilogy. Giants such as Dallas Willard and Richard Foster showed us the significance of the spiritual disciplines for sanctification: Jesus invites us to follow him by doing what he does , not just thinking God’s thoughts after him. In Desiring the Kingdom (and You Are What You Love ), I tried to provide an “ecclesiological assist” to their spiritual disciplines project, arguing for the communal, gathered practices of worship as the hub for those other spiritual disciplines—that sacramental worship is the heart of discipleship. But in Practices of Love , Kyle Bennett expands the frame and shows us another part of the picture: all these disciplines are undertaken not just for our own relationship to God but also as a way to love our neighbor.
In other words, the spiritual disciplines are how we learn to obey the greatest commandments (Matt. 22:36–40): this is both how you learn to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind and how you learn to love your neighbor as yourself. Bennett calls this “flipping the spiritual disciplines on their side”—approaching them not merely as vertical channels for cultivating our relationship with God but as horizontal conduits that direct us into loving what God loves, including our neighbors and God’s creation. Through the disciplines the Spirit invites us to unlearn the habits that lead us to ignore, dismiss, or just plain walk all over our neighbors in their need and vulnerability. The spiritual disciplines are a workshop for crooked, broken culture makers.
Every facet of our Monday to Saturday lives comes into view here. This book is invasive: it’s going to push its way into your eating and your spending. It’s going to take hold of your smartphone and your calendar. It will insert its argument into your family and your friendships. But that’s because all of them matter to God. The spiritual disciplines—the “practices of love”—are how we learn to live out the Kuyperian conviction that there is not a single square inch of creation that isn’t claimed by Jesus. But Bennett reminds us that the creation-claiming Jesus also gives us the gift of these practices to “occupy” creation in ways that are faithful, life giving, and attentive to our neighbors. This is why Bennett rightly describes his project as “a Christian philosophy of public affairs.” But don’t let that scare you off: Bennett’s lively prose and passionate verve will make you forget every caricature of the tweedy, elbow-patched philosopher. This is feisty Christian thinking with wit and wisdom and both eyes fixed squarely on the nitty-gritty realities of the proverbial “real world.” Above all, this book is a thoughtful invitation to life like the new creatures that we are.
James K. A. Smith
Preface
If you picked up this book because you are looking for a new, hip, or updated book on spiritual disciplines, then you might as well throw it in the fire pit because you will find this to be a book fit for burning. But if you are someone who cares deeply about following Jesus to the ends of the earth while caring for and enjoying the manifold affairs of God’s creation, then this book is for you. And if, by any chance, you are like me and you are tired of the way that we Christians go about our witness to the world through deliberations and debates about ethical norms and political policies, and you want to figure out exactly what following Jesus looks like on the ground, then this book is most assuredly for you.
This book is about spiritual disciplines, but it’s unlike other books on the topic. I do not tell you how to practice spiritual disciplines; I only suggest how frequently we should practice them. I do not provide a theology for practicing them; I only remind us of biblical principles to keep in mind as we do them. I do not try to justify our practice of them; I only make plain their significance. There are plenty of other books out there that can provide a history of their practice, a theology to support and motivate you to practice them, and a user’s guide for practicing them. But what’s missing from the literature is how these disciplines relate to everything else we do as Christians. What’s missing is how these disciplines offer different ways of doing everything we do as human beings, how we can do them in ways that honor and witness to Christ and work toward the well-being of our neighbor. What is missing is how to understand life in the Spirit in accordance with our original calling from the Father as human beings and the commission given to us by the Son as his disciples.
What I offer in this book is simple: a framework. I try to synthesize, thematize, and cast these seemingly random and strange practices in a different light so that we can see how they are related and central to God’s story of creation, redemption, and renewal and to our participation in it. In doing so, I hope to show that these seemingly strange and random practices relate to our original calling from the Father as human beings, his commandments to us as his people, Jesus’s commandments and commissions to us as his disciples, and the Spirit’s convicting us and creating us into our Savior and King’s image. The way of Jesus is a holistic and integrated life—it covers all aspects of living. Our spirituality, which I will s