Several weeks ago I asked a subscriber what she’d want me to write about. I got a good list of topics and wanted to tackle one for this week’s post.
How do you make structure & discipline part of spiritual life and not look at structure as the opposite of spirituality?
In my current season of life, I often talk to men and women who wish they were more consistent (which I’ve written about here). At work, maybe they want more accountability (written about here). At home, they want to get up earlier (check here). These desires appear regardless of their faith tradition. The atheist, the agnostic, and the Christian are all wanting more discipline or structure—or at least think more discipline will help them.
I see this theme so often I wonder how many of us are walking around most of the time feeling bad about ourselves for not being whatever version of success we think is most important.
And I’ve definitely been there.
As a college student, I remember one of the first times I was called out for noncompliance on memorizing Bible verses, of all things. I’d started to meet with a friend at the dining hall. Good guy who had a fire I found enviable, so of course I met. He suggested we memorize some verses. “Sure,” I said. And then we met a week later (Christian life hack: it has to be weekly if it is true spiritual growth).
I forgot to look at the verses. Kiss of death.
Nothing malicious. Just forgot. So I fumbled through what I could while my food got colder than my Bible memory heart. I thought little of it.
“Hey, we agreed to do the verses and if you said you’d do it, then you need to do it.”
“Oh. Okay.”
I’m not sure how much longer we continued to meet, but it wasn’t much longer.
I have several known allergies—sulfa drugs, certain penicillins, peanuts, and making people feel bad for not having enough structure and discipline. The first three I’ve had since birth. That fourth one got acquired early in life and was already active by college.
Welcome to the spiritual life. Cost of entry: feeling terrible about yourself.
Jesus says the world will know people follow him because of the love they have for one another and . . . we show that love by telling people they didn’t do a good job at something? Feels off.
Now, you might be laughing. Some of my readers are people I actively coach (and weekly, at that!). We build coaching sessions on commitments—what needs to happen next to keep making progress. I have a whole way I build dashboards and session notes so that we don’t lose sight of those commitments. We report back on them. Structure of some type is required. Very often the people I’m sitting with did not finish everything and have to sit with me and tell me they didn’t finish everything. When that happens, I might say the following.
“Okay. Does that bother you?”
I ask that because maybe they just picked the wrong goal to hit. Maybe they got distracted. Maybe they truly were just lazy. I won’t know until I get their answer—and the answer will help pick the recovery strategy.
I might also ask, “Well, what do you want to do with that?” That is, do you want to try again? Do you want to abandon it? Do you want to modify it?
But, for me, that way of surfacing desire is the actual answer to the question of not viewing structure as the enemy of spirituality.
When it comes to structure for your spiritual life (or really for any part of life), you often find yourself pulled in two directions: (1) what you want to do and (2) what you think you should do. Those appear to be in constant tension.
“Should” is a miserable master. “I should pray more” is often near the top of the list. “I should read more” is up there, too. “I should exercise more” is pretty universal. Christians can produce a lot of “should.” Sometimes you can combine them all and double, maybe even triple, the guilt. “I should get up 90 minutes earlier than I do to read, pray, and exercise.” That’s four (!) potential failures before you even start the rest of the day. Yikes. I guess if we are disciplined in anything, it is in making structures that produce guilt.
Die to “should.” There’s no joy there.
“More” will get you in trouble, too. It’s endless and exhausting. You’ll spend 45 years wishing you did more, or pursuing a structure you think is right because someone you admire is able to do it effortlessly.
So how do I not view structure as the opposite of spirituality? I don’t see it as a hard and fast demand. The structure serves the purpose: loving God and loving others. Nothing fancy. I have a whole lifetime to grow there.
A pastor I’ve admired for much of my adult life calls disciplines tools not rules. He speaks about that idea here (cued up his sermon from last year). He points out that introverted, big brain, big vocabulary, type-A personalities are the ones that often write about disciplines—and that’s not most people.
I’ll go back to this question I often ask: well, what do you want to grow in and what would you like to try?
Desire + experimentation is my equation for any of this.
There’s a base assumption I have that the people I know at my church, for example, have good desires put there by God (Phil 2:13). Thus, when I ask, “What do you want to grow in?” I am trusting they won’t say, “I want to learn how to murder people better.”
And whatever it is they have the desire to grow in, I’d say, “What do you want to do about that?” And then see what they say. I might have some thoughts on it, but I’d rather them pick what they want.
Then? Try it. Try it for a month. Try it for six weeks. Try it for a year. I’m not that concerned with how long you try it. You’re working on it the same way I am. When done, evaluate it and then (1) keep it, (2) adjust it, or (3) drop it.
That’s the point. There’s freedom here. Structure serves the goal, and the goal is unique to where you are right now. Without the goal, structure is the end in itself, and that’s exhausting.
How would you answer the question? Give your response in the comments.