Christ Plays…no. 1
Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology is one of several efforts by Eugene Peterson, all successful in my opinion, to provoke pastors and all interested Christians to think seriously about our spirituality. I have been reading Peterson since college. The older I get and the longer I work in the pastoral world the more I come to appreciate him, believe what he has to say, and anxiously await his next offering.
We too easily forget that there are forces that influence and shape us in ways that are contrary to Christ. In fact, sometimes these forces come over us concealed as “Christian” or “spiritual”, and we fail to make discern between how God is working and how we would prefer him to.
Christian spirituality is not a life-project for becoming a better person, it is not about developing a so-called “deeper life.” We are in on it, to be sure. But we are not the subject. Nor are we the action. We get included by means of a few propositions: God with us (Matt. 1:23), Christ in me (Gal. 2:20), God for us (Rom. 8:31). With .. in … for …: powerful, connecting, relation-forming words, but none of them making us either subject or predicate. We are the tag-end of a prepositional phrase.
So, what do you think of this? There is more to come from Peterson’s book Christ Plays…
BTW, you can see a great interview of him on an older post here. HT to Rustin for this one:
