A lil' thread, humbly offered, sparked (I'm afraid) by some of the *discourse* around prayer on Twitter the last couple of days: (1/)

When one reads premodern or early modern pastoral care for Christians in crisis, the move to assert normative Christian affective, intellectual, and volitional states and activities often happens with a speed that is rather jarring to the modern reader. (2/)

Quiet trust in God, rejection of doubts, forgiveness of wrongdoers, acceptance of suffering as divine correction or a spur to holiness of life - these are forcefully urged on the Christian as the proper Christian response to evils. (3/)

I think this tendency powerfully and movingly asserts the claim of Jesus Christ upon all parts of human life. For the Christian, our willing must be subject to the Spirit's purgation and the Bible's injunctions. There is no space where we can simply do what we want. (4/)

However, I think this strategy often fails to realize that what many Christians in crisis need are not the terrors of the Law (you must do this!) but the consolation of the Gospel. It can break bruised reeds & quench smoldering wicks, demanding a severe, lifeless perfection. (5/)

And thus, in reaction, there is a tendency in much modern thinking about pastoral care, especially in the mainline, to emphasize above all nonjudgmental presence and an affirmation of one's current spiritual state as a reasonable or acceptable one. (6/)

And so the caregiver is interested in all the particularity of the person in crisis, and comforts them with the assurance that it is unsurprising, indeed fine, to be mad at God, to doubt, to be unable to forgive someone, to be unable to pray for someone, and so on. (7/)

And this strategy rightly emphasizes the need to diagnose and gently name the specific issue the person is facing, to extend grace in order to banish the shame that so often prevents honesty about our spiritual lives, to care especially for the faltering and anxious. (8/)

But where this can go awry is that in the affirmation that to feel doubt or fail to even attempt Jesus' commands does not separate one from God's love, there can be a sense that it is fine for a person to remain in that state, that Christian life lacks a normative shape. (9/)

Indeed, there can be a valorization of doubt or a 'difficult relationship with God' or not ever moving towards fulfilling those commands of Jesus' which chafe the most against contemporary articulations of self-determination. (10/)

But while it is an ordinary, not shameful, part of the Christian life to rage at God or to feel unable to forgive or to doubt, the goal of the Christian life is not to stay there! It's to move to something like the life the old model enjoined, if too harshly! (11/)

And so the question for me, as someone in the final stages of training for pastoral ministry, is how to hold the genuine goods and avoid the genuine pitfalls of either of these strategies. What is, as it were, the proper Hegelian synthesis here? (12/)

Now, it's not so terribly difficult for me to imagine discerning what is needed - simply a listening ear, exhortation, reproof, consolation, etc. - in a one-on-one session with someone. (13/)

But I think what gets trickier is talking about some of the harder duties of the Christian life in public ways, whether in preaching or - as we've seen in the last few days - on social media, when what you're putting out will be heard by Christians in any number of states. (14/)

That is, you'll have an audience where there will be some people who do need the Christian kick in the pants, some smoldering wicks that desperately need to be protected, and any number of other situations. (15/)

And I don't think the answer can be "so assume everyone is always the smoldering wick"; that produces the sort of spiritual anemia and vacuous theology one finds in too many of our mainline churches today. (16/)

But nor can it just be "here is what Jesus commands and what the Christian must do" all the time either. But some combination, I guess, of both, recognizing that one cannot say the single thing that everyone needs to hear. (17/)

I'm not sure this is a convo suited for Twitter, tho I'm giving it a shot - but imo this is a vital thing for me (and, if I may be so bold, not only for me) to think through. Most immediately for social media, where we all exist as in some sense 'public Christians.' (/fin)

A postscript: the question of what sort of people are being asked to do what and when is of course also relevant and significant! (1/2)

But the move here must be to move *all* people of whatever social location to fuller discipleship, not suggest that a dominical command, because it is applied unevenly, therefore becomes not a real command at all. (2/2)