INWARDS OR OUTWARDS?

Since writing the last Insight on mysticism I’ve been reading a book that illustrates the modern evangelical fascination with this form of spirituality.

The book concerned, The Deeper Journey by Robert Mulholland Jnr, is published by well respected evangelical publishers IVP. Mulholland’s basic premise is “that loving union with God is the essence of the Christian life in the world” (p. 20). Again he writes, “You are created to experience your true life, your genuine identity, your deepest meaning, your fullest purpose, your ultimate value in an intimate, loving union with God at the core of your being” (p. 27). Few of us would argue with that, and most of us hunger after a deeper experience of it.

However, the point at which Mulholland expresses the mystical tendency so common among evangelical writers today is when he claims that intimate, loving union with God is something to be enjoyed by an “inward journey” into the inner sanctum of our own hearts. God, in other words, is to be found and enjoyed within us. That’s a core claim of mysticism in all its forms.

“This reality,” he writes, calls us to the discipline that the classical Christian journey has called ‘contemplation.’ This is the practice of stilling ourselves before God, and moving ever deeper into the core of our being and simply offering ourselves to God in totally vulnerable love” (p. 97 – emphasis added). Quoting Thomas Kelly he adds, “A practicing Christian must above all be one who practices the perpetual return of the soul into the inner sanctuary, who brings the world into its Light and rejudges it, who brings the Light into the world with all its turmoil and fitfulness and recreates it” (p. 98 – emphasis added).

Once more, alluding to one of the Church Fathers, Augustine of Hippo, he writes, “Augustine, like us, sought for an external God, a God separate from himself. He discovered, however, that God is to be found and loved within the depths of our being… It is to this presence of God in the depths of our being that we must be attentive, for it is here where loving union with God is engendered” (pp. 143-4 – emphasis added). By way of conclusion he adds, “Our greatest need then is to return to the deep centre of our being, where God’s very self is present to us in cruciform love as our true being” (p. 145 – emphasis added).

How true to the Bible is this appeal? Do we find the New Testament Scriptures urging us to find God within ourselves? Is that where Jesus looked to find his Father – even though he was aware of being indwelt by his Father? And what about the people of God under the old covenant – did God meet them within themselves, in the deepest recesses of their being, or did they encounter him “outside” themselves? Where was the God to whom they prayed – in their hearts, or in heaven?

You don’t need to search or think deeply to answer these questions. While there is an unmistakeable inner element to true spirituality, we don’t meet God and have fellowship with him by looking inwards, or by journeying into the inner sanctuary. That approach typically produces self-absorption and uncertainty. It leaves us at the mercy of our moods and feelings, and in the end makes us more reliant upon inner light than it does upon objective revelation (the Scriptures). The way to know and enjoy God is not by making the inward journey of contemplation, but through the outward look of faith.

---oOo---