3 Areas Where We Need to Examine Our Inner Life- A Book Review
Some contemplatives live in a monastery cloistered far away from a broken world. Others engage with it believing that God’s transformation is not only for us but for many. Rich Villodas and his co-author Peter Scazzero live into this tension well. The Deeply Formed Life: 5 Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus was the winner of the Christianity Today Book Award last year. Reading it, one can see why. The breadth and depth of this book make it one I’ll not read once, but be planning to re-read every few years.
Villodas writes on page 173, “Our most effective strategy in reaching a world for Christ is grounded in the kind of people we are being formed into.” I agree. We cannot apply good ministry and disciple-making strategies and hope for good fruit. Our very lives must reflect the Jesus we work so hard to share.
A Journey of Spiritual Formation
This means we must be willing to take a journey of spiritual formation that involves our whole person-our sexuality, racial prejudices, mental health, areas of anxiety, relationships, and more. Villodas’ book speaks boldly to them all showing a breadth of understanding of spiritual formation I’ve not seen elsewhere.
Our spirituality, as Villodas says, is often “shallowly shaped” rather than deeply formed (p. 27). This causes us to be unaware of places where we need His transforming power and life to flow.
Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.
– Romans 12:2 NLT
My Take Aways and Favorite Quotes
My takeaways follow three main categories.
- Busyness and barriers to transformation.
I wish I could say I’ve conquered busyness and learned well how to slow down. It isn’t as if I don’t know of its importance. Yet this remains a constant challenge where if I am not vigilant, I find myself too busy and with too few margins in my life once again. The result is always less connection with the One who gives me life. The great danger is that if I am not deeply connected to Jesus, I’ll begin to strive in the flesh. I will work hard to produce, and doing will overwhelm being.
Villodas says, “the problem before us is not just the frenetic pace we live at but what gets pushed out from our lives as a result; that is, life with God” (p. 5). He goes on to say, “As long as we remain enslaved to a culture of speed, superficiality, and distraction, we will not be the people God longs for us to be.”
He then describes his own ways of slowing down to be with God in silence, solitude, and Sabbath. To live a fruitful life, we must learn not only to do this once in a while but to build it into our spiritual rhythm and practice of life. Apart from it, we are apart from God. And apart from God, we can do nothing (John 15:5).
- Racial justice and reconciliation
Villodas writes, “Racial justice and reconciliation remain two of the most urgent matters of faith and public witness.” When the Church doesn’t get this matter right, the way the world sees us as Christians is greatly affected. At first, I was surprised to find a chapter on racial reconciliation included in a book on spiritual formation. That would not have been my first thought.
The author goes on to say, “Sadly, there is often a hyperspiritual perspective held by many Christians who see racial justice and reconciliation as optional or ancillary to the gospel.” The more I read the two chapters included in the book on this topic, the more I agreed. It is indeed part of our formation as Jesus followers that we deal with personal prejudices and issues of the heart. We must also, however, be willing to engage with this issue in our world.
When working in North-east India, I remember teaching in a Discipleship Training School for YWAM. I taught the Jonah story and called them toward mission engagement with the plains Indians that were so unreached. As I taught, hatred and racism against the rest of India surfaced. Dark-skinned Indians were not honored or liked by light-skinned North Indians. Tribals were often looked down on and thus looked down on others. There was deep pain and a need for reconciliation between the varied people groups around us.
“At the core of racism is the lie that some people are superior or inferior to others. This happens across all different people groups” (p. 56.) All of us must be willing to consider where our history and upbringing have sown seeds of racist thought in our individual hearts. But it can’t stop there. As Villodas writes on page 56, “Individual racial prejudice is about how we negatively and often violently perceive others, but institutional racism is about how power is used.” Examining how we use power in our Christian institutions is not easy. Yet it is vital to our witness and formation. It takes great courage and humility to be willing to examine and evaluate this. Many are not willing to go there and resist defensively. Instead, let’s be open to the Holy Spirit’s work in us and our ministries too.
- Sexuality and Sexual Wholeness
Chapters Seven and Eight address issues of sexuality with wisdom, vulnerability, and transparency. There is much here to learn from. He writes, “When sex is reduced to the moment, our lives with each other become transactional and potentially objectifying. When it is seen as simply an act, our spouses’ bodies become means to an end and we are in danger of having marriages shaped by using and not communion.”
Earlier in the chapter, it says, “lovemaking takes practice, and it begins outside the bedroom.” The book also addresses issues of sexual abuse, trauma, and singleness. These chapters give the reader, whether married or single, much to consider and prayerfully apply.
I recognize that many of my readers do not have the ability to buy the books I review. If you do, this is one I’d definitely encourage you to grab a copy. If the book is not available where you live, or you don’t have the means to get one, I trust this short review will give you food for thought.
Spiritual formation is vital to our lives as Jesus’ followers. It must not be ignored or shoved in a corner while we pursue ministry goals. This is true for me, and it’s true for you.
Paying Attention
Have you been paying enough attention to your inner life with God? Are you distracted by ministry pressures and priorities? If that is the trajectory you are on, don’t wait to make a course correction. Make time for your own transformation into greater Christ-likeness.
Take a Sabbath. Begin a journaling habit. Go on a retreat where you don’t think or pray about ministry stuff. Instead, you simply enjoy Jesus and allow Him to speak to you about who you are and who you are becoming.
Villodas calls our inner life, interiority. I’ll close with this quote. “A life with God for the sake of interiority requires time.” Let’s make time to let Christ be formed in us, to be, not only do.