Thursday Theology: The Inward Discipline of Meditation

“In contemporary society our Adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry, and crowds. If he can keep us engaged in “muchness” and “manyness” he will rest satisfied. Psychiatrist Carl Jung once remarked, ‘Hurry is not of the Devil; it IS the Devil.’”

These words mark the opening to the chapter on the Discipline of Meditation contained within Richard J. Foster’s prolific work Celebration of Discipline. I strongly encourage any who are interested in learning of the spiritual disciplines to go out, buy, and read this book; it will change your spiritual life, I assure you. However, as many cannot afford the book, or do not have the gumption to read hundreds of pages on the disciplines I shall, over the next several weeks, be going through this work and posting some very short summaries on each chapter. (To give an idea of the shortened nature of the post in comparison to the book: The chapter on meditation on the book is twenty pages in length; this blog will be significantly less.)

When people, especially Christians, hear “meditation” they often conjure up long taught preconceptions of mysticism, idolatry, and paganism. These are, almost without exception, misconceptions. Meditation has been a part of the Christian Life for centuries; great minds of the church such as Augustine, Aquinas, King David, Brother Laurence, St. Theresa De Avila, and even a prolific guy by the name of Jesus spent hours upon hours in meditation. Each one of these people taught that meditation was a key component in the pursuit of growing closer to God; however, this very thing is another reason that Christians have rejected meditation. The history of religion has been one of an almost desperate scramble to have a king, a mediator, a priest, a pastor, a go-between so that we do not have to go to God ourselves; even the Israelites, after witnessing the plagues and being freed from Egypt, when they heard the voice of God coming down from the mountains, cried out to Moses and asked him to go and then relay the message back to them because they were so terrified of coming into contact with God. A major goal of ours should be to conquer this fear, and draw close to God.

Christian Meditation can present itself in many ways; it can be seen as listening to God’s Word, reflecting on His works, rehearsing His deeds, ruminating on The Law, and many other things. At its core however, Christian Meditation is concerned with three things: Hearing God’s voice, obeying it, and growing into a closer relationship with The Creator. Meditation is also one of the, if not THE most important skill one must have in order to begin the life-long endeavor of taming the mind.

Types of Meditation:

Central to all Christian meditation is meditation upon the Scriptures. It is this form of meditation that all other forms are based upon. Meditating upon the Scriptures is different than studying them; studying is about analysis, gathering of material, exegesis; Meditation is about internalization and personalization of the Scriptures. Take a single event, a few verses, or even a single word and just ponder over it. If you are reading a story let your imagination take you there; feel the sea air on your face, smell the salt air, feel the crowd of people around you as your savior begins to teach from The Mount, or wherever your story takes place.

Remember when meditating upon Scripture your task is not to study the passage, but to be initiated into the reality of which the passage speaks. (e.g. “Be still and know that I AM God.”)

Another form of meditation is what contemplatives of the middle-ages came to call “re-collection”. The idea is to picture all of the things that are currently seperating you from, or hindering your relationship with God. There are various physical exercises that go along with this practice, but they all involve the visualization of God taking those things from you. Then you ask God for, and imagine all of the things that God can give you to replace those things.

Now as you employ these ideas, keep in mind that as with all things, meditation takes practice. Do not expect to sit for three hours the first time without distraction; if you make it five minutes you beat me…if you make it thirty seconds you beat me. If you start making this a regular thing, if you begin to incorporate contemplative practices into your everyday life, you will see marked improvement both in your ability to meditate, and your relationship with God.

Remember that all of these concepts and some of the text come directly from Richard J. Foster’s Celebration of Discipline. I encourage you to employ these ideas over the next week (and the rest of your life) and if you do I would love to hear about your experiences! Next Thursday I’ll be talking about Prayer, something most Christians do, but very few understand how or why.