Two Distorted Versions of Discipleship: Part One

I’ve been thinking lately about what it takes to grow in Christ. And I’ve been thinking that maybe we’ve been getting something wrong.

James KA Smith is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers. I’ve enjoyed delving into his thoughtful analysis of the intersection between American culture and Christian discipleship. One of his key ideas is that people are not just “brains on a stick.”

This “brains on a stick” version of human nature is why I thought for years that if you could change a man’s thinking, you could change the man altogether.

That rationale does make sense. Our view of reality dictates how we respond to life situations – whether or not we believe there is a God who is wise and good, whether or not we believe there is an objective difference between right and wrong – these and other basic worldview questions form the mental framework out of which we operate.

But I’m beginning to see a fatal flaw in that line of thinking:

We act as if we think that faith is all about ideas when it is also about stories, imagination, and desire.

I first wrote about this when I reviewed Smith’s book You Are What You Love (“Why It Matters That You Are What You Love,” August 10, 2022). When we assume that our intellectual life is the source of our spiritual formation, we end up with a cerebral sort of discipleship that emphasizes things of the mind but neglects other aspects of our personality. We are not merely thinking creatures, we are also – and maybe more importantly – imaginative creatures. We love to tell and hear stories.

This is why the “brains on a stick” approach to discipleship is so faulty. That model reduces human nature to a one-dimensional caricature, and it reduces our discipleship to a narrow stream aimed at the mind where God has provided an abundant river of resources aimed at the whole person.

I’m not saying that facts are unimportant. Facts are, in fact, essential. My point is that facts alone do not supply all we need for spiritual formation. Our souls must be fed alongside our minds.

Maybe that’s why so much of the Bible is composed of stories. Scripture crackles with narrative tension that arouses our imagination. Think of Jesus’ parables:

A man had two sons. The younger son went to his father one day and insulted him by asking for his share of the inheritance now…

A man on his way from Jerusalem was waylaid by bandits who robbed him, beat him, and left him for dead. Then came passers-by, who saw the man…

Or think of the historical narrative in Scripture:

David facing down the gargantuan Philistine bully…

Esther exposing Haman’s plot before the king…

The Gospel itself is historical. The story of Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth takes place in the same space-time continuum that we inhabit. But the Gospel is not just a set of historical facts. The story of Jesus is the cosmic turning point of a grand narrative that began as far back as the Garden of Eden, when God told our ruined parents that a descendant of our Mother, Eve, would crush the head of the serpent, Satan (Gen 3:16).

In other words, the Gospel is a spectacular story, the crucial turning point in a grand epic spanning all of human history, and we cannot reduce discipleship to a merely intellectual process without distorting it.

When we make our spiritual formation all about our minds, we not only twist God’s Truth into a nerdy caricature, we also make it possible to lie to ourselves by creating a checklist mentality about our spiritual growth: “I’ve mastered these doctrines, and I have this high level of biblical literacy, so I’m spiritually mature.” And in this way, we can keep God’s Spirit at arm’s length and hinder His sanctifying work in our lives. Exhibit A of this mindset: the scribes and Pharisees, experts in the Scripture but hard in their hearts.

In her book Teach Us to Want: Longing, Ambition and the Life of Faith, Jen Pollock argues that  humans are “desiring agents.” We are guided in life, she says, not just by what we believe but also – mainly – by what we love. “The business of following Christ,” says Pollock, “is about reorienting our loves and desires toward his kingdom. We need not just be convinced of Christ. We need to be captivated by him.”

God wants to change us utterly, not just intellectually.

He wants to capture not just our minds but also our hearts and passions. When we reduce spiritual formation to an intellectual process, we short-circuit development that should be holistic and all-encompassing and therefore exhilarating.

This affects how I read my Bible: Do I observe Scripture from a cool, detached perspective or do I dive into the text with my imagination open to experiencing all that God has for me? And it affects how I evangelize, how I describe the Gospel to an outsider: Do I present a series of bullet-points designed to persuade a customer to make a purchase or do I extend an invitation to a friend to join the glorious Kingdom of Jesus?

This has all been percolating in my mind over the past year. Look for more thoughts on this in the future.

In the meantime, if I get enough queries about Pollock’s book, I’ll put it on our Discipleship Resource shelf. We stocked Smith’s You Are What You Love and ran through those pretty quickly. I’ll also restock Smith if there’s enough interest. Let me know.

Next time we’ll consider another popular distortion of discipleship: Christianity as a hero’s quest.

Persevere, Paul Pyle Pastor of Discipleship