Becoming Curious (eBook)

A Spiritual Practice of Asking Questions

Casey Tygrett (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2017 | 1. Auflage
208 Seiten
IVP Formatio (Verlag)
978-0-8308-9249-5 (ISBN)

Infos

Curiosity is essential to growth.A little curiosity moves us deeper into the lives of the people around us.A little curiosity leads to opportunities we never knew existed. A little curiosity helps us understand our own strange emotions.A little curiosity, if focused on Jesus, will make us more like him.Pastor and spiritual director Casey Tygrett loves to ask questions. 'There's a difficult line to walk between what we need to know and what falls into the realm of mystery,' he writes. 'Walking that line often wears on our nerves and causes incredible tension, and so we settle for easy answers. We stop asking questions. We give up. We begin to lose the one thing that fiercely energizes the transformation of our souls-something beautiful, poetic, joyful, and happily disruptive: curiosity.?When we make curiosity a spiritual practice, we open up to new ways of knowing God and knowing ourselves as well. Come and discover the power of asking questions.

Casey Tygrett (DMin, Lincoln Christian Seminary) is a pastor, blogger, adjunct seminary professor, and spiritual director who serves as the teaching pastor at Heartland Community Church in Rockford, Illinois. He was previously pastor of spiritual formation at Parkview Christian Church in Orland Park, Illinois, and has taught at Lincoln Christian University and Seminary and Emmanuel Christian Seminary. He is the author of The Jesus Rhythm, and has written for The Christian Standard, TheOoze.com, and the Apprentice Institute blog.

Autor

Casey Tygrett (DMin, Lincoln Christian Seminary) is a pastor, blogger, adjunct seminary professor, and spiritual director who serves as the teaching pastor at Heartland Community Church in Rockford, Illinois. He was previously pastor of spiritual formation at Parkview Christian Church in Orland Park, Illinois, and has taught at Lincoln Christian University and Seminary and Emmanuel Christian Seminary. He is the author of The Jesus Rhythm, and has written for The Christian Standard, TheOoze.com, and the Apprentice Institute blog. James Bryan Smith (MDiv, Yale University Divinity School, DMin, Fuller Seminary) is a theology professor at Friends University in Wichita, Kansas, and a writer and speaker in the area of Christian spiritual formation. He also serves as the director of the Apprentice Institute for Christian Spiritual Formation at Friends University. A founding member of Richard J. Foster's spiritual renewal ministry, Renovaré, Smith is an ordained United Methodist Church minister and has served in various capacities in local churches. Smith is also the editor of A Spiritual Formation Workbook, Devotional Classics (with Richard Foster), Embracing the Love of God, Rich Mullins: An Arrow Pointing to Heaven and Room of Marvels.

Textauszug

CHAPTER ONE

why curiosity matters

When trees are waving wildly in the wind, one group of people thinks that it is the wind that moves the trees; the other group thinks that the motion of the trees creates the wind.

G. K. CHESTERTON

Why are we often uneasy with curiosity?

What is so troubling about our curiosities, our questions? What about our wondering, pondering, and investigating? Aren’t they very normal pieces of our everyday life?

Every day we are alive, every breathing moment, we are asking questions. Some of these daily questions are settled to a certain extent, answered, and we move on. Sometimes we leave them and move on out of frustration. Then, the day ends and we revisit the questions again. Afresh. Anew.

What will happen today?

What will come of this conversation, this meeting, this unending series of challenges?

Why am I wrestling again with the same challenges and destructive habits?

Am I really loved and accepted by those around me?

What can I do to make up for wounding that person in my life?

While working on this book I was also exchanging emails with a friend who had many questions about this journey of faith. She had questions about the Bible, about how all of the things that Christian traditions claim could possibly be true, and about the very interesting relationship between the God of the Old Testament and the Jesus of the New.

They do seem strikingly different, don’t they?

When I mentioned that I was writing a book about spiritual formation and curiosity, she asked that I remember that curiosity is also a way of dealing with doubt.

Yes. However, I wonder if sometimes doubt—doubt that troubles the faithful and even disconnects people from a journey of faith—is simply curiosity cast as a villain? Where else do we find the language to process doubt, mystery, struggle, and even uncertainty if we have no space for curiosity?

Doubt can be wonder, exploration, or the engagement of a God-wired brain in its highest gear. How can something we’re wired to do become antithetical to being faithful rather than the sweetness and energy of faith itself? Why do Christian communities attach fault or failure to strong currents of curiosity?

The reality is that curiosity does not have a favorable track record in the history of Christian tradition. The church throughout history has responded to curiosity in ways that make us cringe today.

Galileo curiously questioned the earth’s position in the galaxy, and his answer was threats of execution.

Martin Luther wondered what repentance really meant—whether it was the prescription for a set of rituals or a movement of mind and heart—and he was put on trial.

Jesus asked . . .

What did Jesus ask?

I believe this question is the key to curiosity having a chance to shape and form us in our journey with Jesus. If spiritual formation is going to have any impact on how we live our daily lives, it has to reveal Jesus as one who gives space to the curious questions of we pilgrims.

The whole discussion starts with an announcement: Jesus’ first great announcement, to be specific.

The Big Picture

First words are important.

The first thing you say when you go on a date can make or break the future of the relationship.

My wife will tell you that our first date was, to be mild, underwhelming. We went to a mediocre restaurant, she had to pay because I had no financial resources at the time, and the meal included chicken fingers. Yes, fried chicken fingers.

Not exactly The Notebook.

Thankfully she stuck with me, but if she’d had higher expectations for that night or if she had only a mild interest in being with me, we likely would have gone our separate ways. First things are fragile, and first words can be dangerous.

Jesus’ first impression was unique because it came in the form of a bold and ambitious announcement: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 3:2).

For much of my life, and perhaps yours, the word repent has come across with a pointed finger and a disgusted scowl, as if Jesus has “had it up to here” with me. I can’t hear the word repent without thinking of fire-and-brimstone preachers from my past using it like a verbal meat cleaver to separate sinners from their wayward paths.

If we ask a few questions and listen to what’s behind the word repent, a few things start to appear. For example, the audience for Jesus’ teaching on repentance was largely Jewish, people who already were technically God’s people.

How do you repent when you’re already part of the fabric of God’s great tapestry? This is why it was so troubling for me to hear the command “repent” as a teenager in the middle of the sweltering heat of a summer revival service. I was certain I had covered that ground already.

The people Jesus spoke to weren’t surprised either. Prophets had been saying for years that the people of God must turn from worshiping wood-and-stone gods and instead would trust him to make good on his promise.

Jesus was doing something different though.

The Invitation

A few months ago I was on an airplane, and since everything I had brought to occupy myself on the flight required an electronic device, I had some time on my hands as we went nose-first into the clouds.

I pulled out the in-flight magazine and noticed an ad that said, “Fly [airline].”

Maybe I’m the only one who reads things this way, but I noticed that it was phrased as a command. English-language experts will say this sentence is in the imperative voice. That’s the command voice. That’s the “parent” voice, if we’re talking to our children.

Look both ways.

Eat your veggies.

Get out of the cookie dough.

When Jesus says “repent,” it sounds a lot like “parent” voice. If you look at the original Greek word, bingo, it appears Jesus is going into Dad mode.

Imperative.

Repent.

I’m not asking, I’m telling you.

So back to the in-flight magazine: Should I have felt like the airline was giving me a command from on high? Honestly, I was already on that particular airline’s plane, so I didn’t need to be ordered around. Who did they think they were? But the thought occurred to me: Why don’t I feel like someone’s ordering me around when I read this?

The reason is that sometimes the imperative is a command, and sometimes it’s an invitation.

It takes some curiosity to unravel whether we’re hearing a direct command or an invitation because the line between the two isn’t always stark and clean. But what if there is something deep and good in finding that difference?

Or, if we really want to stir things up, what if all of Jesus’ imperatives are invitations? If people are already seeking God, walking with him in whatever way they may find, then what happens when they hear “repent” as an invitation and not a command?

What if  “repent” is actually the embossed invitation to a grand meal spread on a majestic table?

What if “repent” is the key to us walking backwards into our own story of trial, faith, and doubt, and seeing it all differently for the first time?

What if “repent” is not about the threat of hell or damnation, but instead it is the call to be formed differently?

What if “repent” means we see every teaching and action of Jesus as an invitation, and learn to ask question upon question about what that looks like in our story today?

What if “repent” is learning how to see the damp cloak of doubt as curiosity in disguise?

To repent means “a change of mind.”  The word both in Hebrew and in Greek affects thought and action—they are “head and hand” words. Literally, they mean to “turn one’s head” and “return” to where you’ve come from. Repentance then is both a once and a daily move of our whole soul toward God. It is a learning, unlearning, and relearning kind of journey.

If we read Jesus’ great announcement in this light, it sounds like this: “Come and think about things differently, because God’s plan and desires are coming to life right now.”

What can ordinary people do with that?

Converting Again and Again

The work and movement of God in ordinary people, the way we follow Jesus every moment of every day, is the great project of creating space for God to get his way in us. It surprises us and reimagines the way we see everything: from church to politics to sex to our social media presence.

That’s why he began with repent. Rethink. Reimagine. Relearn.

In Jesus’ time this relearning process was a necessity. Jesus’ walking in the world was a way of reimagining everything. The Jewish religious leaders and their people had expectations based on the wise texts of their ancestors who had also walked with God.

There would be a kingdom. A King. A new temple would be built, and a people would be brought back together under the Jewish law, the rich and holy instructions of God.

There would be peace, yes, far-reaching peace. The vicious Romans who occupied the land would be, ahem, moved off, and there would finally be safety and prosperity.

The vision of this kind of kingdom is what most of us live with every day, with or without Jesus. We transpose this vision onto what we believe about God, or we...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 2.5.2017
• Vorwort: James Bryan Smith
• Verlagsort: Lisle
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Christentum
• Schlagworte: ask question • Christian • christian living • Chrsitian curiosity • Curiosity • curious • Identity • jesus questions • questions • Questions Jesus Asks • questions to ask • Spiritual direction • spiritual disciplines • spiritual growth • Spiritual practice • Truth
• ISBN-10: 0-8308-9249-4 / 0830892494
• ISBN-13: 978-0-8308-9249-5 / 9780830892495