This is one of the chapters in SOUL GRAFFITI that has really captured reader’s interest, and a topic I’m often asked to speak about. I recently did a talk based on this chapter that is available for free here.
ENTER THE JESUS DOJO
We could smell the sawdust and see the power tools—but for the first six weeks of eighth grade woodshop class we were glued to our desks studying an instruction book and taking pop quizzes. My hands were itching to touch the pine boards and press the trigger on a power drill. By week six we were literally salivating for the chance to make something with our hands. At the end of the semester I was thoroughly disappointed that all I had to show for my work was a small wooden candy bowl that I reluctantly gave to my mother.
Two years later I transferred from the big city to a small rural high school in central Alabama, where the only elective class was Agricultural Science—or “Ag” for short. On the first day of Ag class, the teacher, Mr. Mac King, handed me an Oxy/Acetylene torch and taught me how to cut steel. The next week I learned how to arc weld when he slapped a welding mask on my head and sent me into the shed to draw a few beads with high-voltage current. Every week there was a new project—for instance, building kitchen cabinets. We replaced the playground equipment at the elementary school, installed new bleachers in the school gym, and fixed creaking floorboards and broken windows in classrooms. Mr. Mac King also got us involved in his own personal projects. We rotated the tires and changed the oil in his pickup truck, repaired the leaking bottom of his fishing boat, and manufactured new shutters and steel stairs for his home. I even crafted a beautiful cedar chest that he gave to his daughter as a graduation gift. His approach may have been unorthodox, and possibly illegal, but I learned more about the trades from him than I would have in twenty years worth of textbooks, lectures, and pop quizzes.
Sometimes our dignified and sophisticated approaches to education yield poorer results than more primitive and applied methods. When Jesus said, “Repent and believe the good news,” it was an invitation to become students of the master. And like being in Mr. Mac King’s Ag class, those who responded to his call were immediately swept up into his work and mission, inhabiting their belief by learning to do what he showed them. The way Jesus taught his disciples, as a first-century rabbi, was more like being in woodshop or a karate dojo than a lecture hall. Jesus taught his disciples on hillsides, along the road and in the market place, giving them assignments and sending them out as advocates to towns and villages—even before they understood what they were doing.
If we want to believe Jesus’ message and become the kind of followers his early disciples were, we may have to shift our expectations about what spiritual education looks like—leaving the metaphor of the lecture hall to enter the “Jesus dojo.A dojo is a Japanese word meaning “the place where you learn the way.” Jesus once declared, “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6), implying that he is both a savior and a teacher for life—he provided the way to God and he teaches us how to live in the Way of God.
Many of our structures and venues for religious education are set up to be passive and cognitive rather than active and participatory. Most people, for instance, think of a church as a place to sit and listen—not a context in which they will be coached and stretched to practice new skills. How do the schedule and programs of a church reveal what is thought to be most important? How is success measured? (Too frequently by attendance, buildings and budgets.) Even home groups are often just smaller venues for knowledge and study and knowledge. We might ask, Did Jesus give his life on the cross so that we could sit around reading and discussing books about him, or so we could join the revolution?
EAST MEETS WEST
While hiking together recently, I asked my friend Wolfgang about his spiritual journey. Raised in postwar Germany, Wolfgang had some painful experiences with the church that alienated him from Christian belief. His quest for integration prompted him to travel the globe in search of insights and techniques that would lead to greater wholeness. He studied with many gurus and teachers, eventually developing his own practice of inner simplicity, yoga, and daily meditation. At one point in our hike Wolfgang urged me to say something about my own pilgrimage. As I began he interrupted, saying, “Mark, my impression is that you are more Buddhist than Christian.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, your spirituality seems so much about awareness and practice—embracing all of life as sacred. Those aren’t things I associate with Christianity.”
We stopped to look at a waterfall, and after some contemplation I responded, “I see my beliefs as deeply rooted in the life and teachings of Jesus, the Judeo-Christian scriptures, and trustworthy streams of Christian tradition. Perhaps it doesn’t sound like the Christian belief you are familiar with because in Western society, experience and practice are so rarely emphasized.”
Nodding, Wolfgang added, “We seem so obsessed with the rational and theoretical, and maybe especially being German, I find myself wanting a path that helps me move from my mind into my body, to be aware of life in the here and now. I want to experience this waterfall, for instance, not just analyze and dissect it with thoughts and words.”
“I understand the desire for just being,” I said. “Yet, for me the epic narrative of creation and redemption is still significant.” I offered, “But I do find myself trying to strike a balance between the mind of reason and the richness of practice and experience. But we need not be opposed to rationality.”
“That reminds me of something an encounter I hadonce saw during one of my trips to India,” Wolfgang said. “Someone was hit by a car and everyone started screaming and crying. No one helped or called for an ambulance as the person lay dying. The people had a beautiful way of being present to their feelings and experiences, but were paralyzed by their lack of reasoning. It was there that I realized that the consciousness of the East needs the rational mind of the West.”
REASON AND EXPERIENCE
Our conversation illustrates the tension we often feel between reason and experience. The Western obsession with theory and rationality can be spiritually toxic. I believe this explains the a growing fascination with Eastern mysticism and more practice based spiritualities. Like so many people, I was taught that Christian belief is based on facts and, explicitly, not on experience. Instructions and warnings like “Don’t trust your feelings” and “Experiences and emotions can lead you astray” betray the Western quest for certainty and objectivity—a desire to make faith reasonable and appealing to the scientific mind. The difficulty with a purely rationalistic view is that life is full of many uncertainties, ambiguities, and subjective experiences. If the expression of orthodox faith can only be rational and verifiable, then belief must be relegated to an exercise of the mind and statements about words.
Paul of Tarsus noted that “the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power” (I Corinthians 4:20). I think of how personally addicted I am to words and ideas that are often fragmented from my sensations, feelings, and relationships. We struggle to live in our bodies what we believe in our minds. How is it that so many of us have energy to debate about words but lack the passion to seek love and reconciliation? Or why do we tend to look for God in the pages of a book more than in the face of a friend? In the West we have more ideas about God than encounters with God, treating the message of the kingdom more as an elegant theory than a present reality. Is the name and power of Jesus something to be understood or a presence and power to encounter? From our fragmentation we struggle for a unity between thought and experience.
FAITH AND OBEDIENCE
How do people groomed in a Western mindset recover from the separation of body, mind, and spirit? Let me quickly suggest that the solution is not to swing the pendulum from West to East. We’ve already discussed how two things can be true simultaneously—in this case the rationality of a biblical narrative and our subjective experience of the present reality of the kingdom of God. Jesus suggested that his message is best understood through obedience. Once when he was asked to defend himself in rational terms, Jesus responded, “If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own”(John 7:17). We verify the truth claims of Jesus by learning to obey what he taught.
During my life I’ve watched many friends abandon faith, though most never took the risk of obedience. Their “belief” was more like an unconsummated intellectual game, and the stakes were low. “I’m done believing,” they would say—and I wanted to ask, “When did you ever start? When did you seek solidarity with the poor? How did you try to love your neighbor as yourself? When did you work to discipline your appetites? Have you struggled to exchange love of money for the pursuit of greater wholeness?” We think that our beliefs or unbelief flow from logical evidence, when it may be that our beliefs are more influenced by the choices we make in our moral and ethical lives. Perhaps we can only believe to the extent that we are willing to obey.
Although many would say that San Franciscans are irreligious, you can see thousands of people huddled outside of synagogues and churches sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes after early morning Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. In those meetings people are learning to trust a God whose name they might not even know, accessing power to make changes—and seeking reconciliation, healing, and restoration. My friend Elizabeth, who just celebrated her two-year sobriety birthday, explains that she has learned to have what she calls “functional faith.” Like a simple pair of walking shoes, functional faith, rather than being elegant or fancy, is utilitarian and basic—but it can help you get around in the real world. The Jesus dojo is about learning to connect faith with the messy details of everyday life.
LIFE IN THE JESUS DOJO
You enter the Jesus Dojo through new experiences. Perhaps you have been in a setting where in which someone spoke or a group discussed the theme of compassion and justice and in the teachings of Jesus. Several years ago I realized that merely talking about it wasn’t helping me live any betterdifferently. I heard the rattle of grocery carts outside our door every morning as homeless people dug through our trash to collect recycling. Sometimes we saw these same people holding signs out by the freeway. With a group of friends, our family decided to become friends with our homeless neighbors. Instead of having our normal church meeting we went underneath the freeway overpass where nearly a hundred people, many struggling with addictions or mental illness, were living in tents. We cooked together, told stories, and played games. Eventually these neighborhood parties became a regular occurrence. Having this new experience helped us reflect on and internalize what Jesus taught in more profound ways.
I often hear people comment about the life-changing experiences they have had while on a mission’s trip or disaster relief project. “We worked hard together all day, slept on concrete floors, and ate rice and beans all week,” they say, “and it was really great.” !” If these experiences are so helpful to formation, we may want to consider how to make them more a part of our normal patterns of life and community. Most of us live within a short distance of places where there are similar needs and opportunities.
You enter the Jesus Dojo by moving from ideas to action. It is pretty clear that Jesus had some strong things to say about money, wealth, and empire. Reading or discussing a teaching like “Sell your possessions and give to the poor,” we are often quick to suggest that Jesus could not have meant for us to take him seriously. “Of course,” we reason, “he only said this to remind us not to become overly attached to our possessions.” But what if he intended these statements to provoke transformation? The early church certainly took his words literally: “Selling their possessions and goods they gave to anyone as [they] had need” (Acts 2:45). The soles of our walking shoes connect with the grit of asphalt as we struggle together to apply the hard sayings of Jesus.
Last year I worked with a group of friends to develop a two-month project to explore the radical teachings of Jesus on money and stuff. We called the project HAVE2GIVE1, inspired by the statement, “The person who has two [coats] should share with him who has none” (Luke 3:11). We publicly invited people to join us in a campaign to divest of half of what we owned, giving the proceeds to the poorest people in the world through disaster relief. Our groups met once a week to work through the details about how to sell our clothes, music, bicycles, and automobiles. We collected others items for garage sales and recycling. We also took a systematic look at everything Jesus taught about generosity, trust, contentment, and simplicity. One evening we brought our personal budgets and told each other how much we earn and spend. The things we learned together during that time spurred us on to create some group resolutions about how we wanted to change our habits in regard to money and possessions. I was surprised by the number of people who were ready to sign up for such an audacious project—which made me suspect that many people would take bolder steps to pursue genesis-vision if they were merely invited to do so.
You enter the Jesus dojo by creating a social culture where formation is expected. Through social conditioning many of us have learned to approach church or group life as consumers or spectators. It may take a lot of work, but we should try to change our contracts with one another so that action and obedience are anticipated group norms. In our faith community we are learning to gently explain that it is our regular practice to discern an action we will take together. The projects or assignments we give to each othercommit to create momentum for the next time we are gathered. Some examples: This week, write a letter or have lunch with someone you need to reconcile with; Before our next meeting, take one tangible step to love someone you perceive as your enemy; During the next week, do one thing each day to secretly honor a person you live or work with.
You enter the Jesus Dojo through greater intentionality. Many people will tell you they aspire to follow the ways of Jesus. A hip-hop diva may declare her allegiance to Jesus while receiving an award—just as a president might amid the crucible of an impending war. What separates mere sentiment from true substance is intentionality?
Near my thirtieth birthday I came to the painful realization that I was not becoming the person I hoped to be. Part of my dilemma came from the realization that, if the gospel of Jesus is holistic and integrative, then everything matters. Where do I start? How do I begin to live by the example of Jesus? I invited a trusted mentor to speak into my life. He gave me gentle but firm advice: “Mark,” he told me, “the abilities that got you to thirty aren’t going to get you to forty. If you are serious about seeking the ways of the kingdom, then you need to be deliberate, specific, and systematic in your approach—and you are going to have to work at developing your character, skills, and capacities.”
I began reading the Gospels in search of images that I could use to summarize how Jesus lived. My first list included four images: companion, artist, healer, and mystic. Using these images as guides I began to ask, “How can I be a companion, artist, healer, and mystic?” For several years these categories have shaped my planning and experiments (and they are reflected in the four themes of this book). I try to have two or three tangible goals or activities attached to each image that are also reflected in my schedule. As you read the Gospels, I encourage you to come up with your own short list of descriptors to guide your experiments.
Our family is part of a community of faith in San Francisco called SEVEN—because we want to live into the Way of Jesus seven days a week. As a group we are committed to a deliberate approach to making a life together in the Way of Jesus. We reviewed the Gospels and identified seven themes based on how Jesus lived and what he taught: service, simplicity, creativity, obedience, prayer, community, and love. We spend seven weeks every year focusing on each theme and have designed a one-year, project-based, group formation process we call “the Jesus Dojo” that meets weekly. We have also developed common rhythms and vows based on these seven themes that we invite one another to take each year. Our specific practices and rhythms are continually evolving because we see each year as a new phase of our experiment. A summary of our vows (omitting specific rhythms and practices), is included next, but I encourage you to review the Gospels yourself and make a list of themes that fit the language and sensibilities of your community and context.
1. Service. We are made to collaborate with our maker in caring for all of creation. We recognize the sacredness of work and use the capacities of our minds and bodies to serve others with our talents and skills according to the needs of the place where we find ourselves.
2. Simplicity. We acknowledge the abundant provision of our Maker and seek to live in trust, radical contentment, and generosity within an empire of scarcity and greed.
3. Creativity. We seek to be awakened in our imaginations and actions, inspired by the epic story of God’s kingdom and creation, and connected to our cultural context. We want to live artfully, taking risks, experimenting, and using the language and mediums of our culture to explore the story of God’s kingdom together.
4. Obedience. We recognize Jesus as our teacher and authority, and wrestle with how to surrender to the way of love in every detail of our lives. We submit ourselves to one another in love and strive to keep our vows to God and our commitments to one another.
5. Prayer. We seek the fruitfulness and guidance of the Spirit that comes from being centered and surrendered to the will and presence of our Creator. We practice rhythms of prayer, study, silence, and solitude that help us remain open to the voice and power of the Spirit.
6. Community. We seek to practice forgiveness and reconciliation, honor, encouragement, humility, and hospitality in all of our relationships. We are committed to taking the journey of faith in solidarity with our sisters and brothers around the world.
7. Love. We acknowledge that love is the greatest force in the universe, and in every dimension of our lives we seek to cooperate with the reign of God’s love.
You enter the Jesus Dojo by making promises. If the invitation into the kingdom dance leads us toward repentance and transformation, how exactly do we change? In short, by whatever means are necessary. We have the intelligence, resources and capacity to learn to live in new ways, if choose to do so. Change happens by turning desire into concrete resolutions. If you want to see change, you will have to do something different. Jesus suggested an initial step in this process is announcing your intentions. He said, “Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’” (Matthew 5: 37). An ancient secret for change is found through making and keeping vows. King David of Israel once declared,
For you have heard my vows, O God;
you have given me the heritage of those who fear your name. . . .
Then will I ever sing praise to your name
and fulfill my vows day after day. (Psalm 61:5,8)
A vow is a solemn promise made before God and people, to take or refrain from a specific action. Some would relate this to the concept of spiritual disciplines. A vow translates sentiment into tangible action. Paul of Tarsus, for example, once made a vow and did not cut his hair until his short-term promise was completed. I like to think of vows as experiments in truth, opportunities to see if making a specific change over a certain period of time will produce desired results.
Recently a group of friends and I decided that we wanted to become more centered and better at listening to God’s voice. We promised each other that for thirty days we would sit still for fifteen minutes in the morning and evening each day. We all noticed the effects this change had on our sense of focus and peace.
Most of us know that it is difficult to keep resolutions or change on our own. That’s why so many of us join gyms or weight loss clubs or attend Alcoholics Anonymousrecovery meetings. When a group of people make promises together they can support and encourage one another through the process of transformation. Common vows can be seen as improvisational experiments in obedience. By making temporary vows with one another, we can learn which practices are the most helpful to making a life in the Way of Jesus.
You enter the Jesus dojo by taking an experimental approach to life. Tired of sitting and writing all day, I close the computer and walk out the door in search of the a presence that is more real than words. The Israelites tasted manna in the desert and roasted quail by their campfires. John the Baptist ate grasshoppers and wild honey. And tonight I am a middle-class homeowner with a wallet full of cash and credit cards, scavenging the streets for my dinner. I want to remember what it is like to wander with primitive trust in the great mystery. And the streets yield what I need for my journey—along with ample food to take home to my family: hot caffeine-free herbal tea when I’m cold; a cup of water when I am thirsty; a piece of banana bread and two French pastries when I am hungry; pasta with meat sauce, still warm atop the garbage can, along with organic salad and two dozen chocolate chip cookies wrapped in tin; and, in a bag by the bus stop, five loaves of hearty European artisan bread and two dozen exquisite ginger cookies.
I recall Jesus and his disciples walking through the grain fields on the Sabbath, picking the heads of wheat while earning the scorn of more dignified religious leaders who would not stoop to scavenge for their food or break their own rules. No, tonight I will be free—I will walk fifteen miles and roam city streets in the silence of prayer, looking up at the stars under a bridge in darkness, feeling the wind on my face and tasting the salty air. I will remember that the Earth was made to provide for our needs through the Creator’s abundance—not the work of our hands or the cash in our pockets. I want to experience the goodness that money cannot buy, resisting internal and external forces that pressure me toward greater security, control, and conformity. I will remember that life is ultimately about risk and adventure and that we die a certain death when we resign ourselves to propriety and convention. I will affirm, perhaps only in symbolic gesture, the spirit of the wandering Messiah-prophet, spreading the propaganda of hope, like soul graffiti, on the canvas of Earth and eternity.
“As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him” (I John 2:27).
CONVERSATION
Reason and faith and experience. Do you agree that our tendency as a society is to focus on knowledge over action and obedience? Why or why not? Does your faith tend to be more functional or theoretical? How does a person who has mostly a theoretical knowledge of God learn to integrate faith into all aspects of their life experience?
The risk of obedience. How would life be different for you if you took Jesus more seriously as a literal teacher for life? What seem to be the most challenging or counter intuitive things that Jesus said or did?
Vows and promises. Making vows and taking common action is a foreign concept to many of us, and to some ears it may sound exclusive or suspicious. The fact that making a commitment is so unfamiliar to our culture doesn’t imply that doing so is either exclusivist or cult-like. What makes us so cautious about making verbal commitments to God or to one another? What does this say about the norms and values of the culture we live in?
Experiments
An intentional and systematic approach. Reread the gospel texts, noticing the instructions Jesus gave. Put these teachings into 5-7 categories and develop a plan for how you will attempt to integrate them into your life over the next year.
Live with greater intentionality. Live by a budget. Manage your calendar. Examine how you are spending your time and your money and journal about what it would mean for you to become more centered and focused in how you are using your life energy.
Experiment by taking a small vows. We only find out what is transformational through practice and experimentation. With a friend or in a small group, invite one another to commit to a certain practice or activity as an experiment in applied obedience. Your experiment can be as short as a day or as long as a year. If you don’t “cheat” on your commitment you will be better able to determine if the practice was beneficial.
Finding people to share your journey with. If your community is not quite ready for the level of intentionality you seek, consider initiating an experimental group. Some people have found people locally who resonate with their longings by postings on websites or attending conferences or events. If you start moving towards what you have imagined, you will find people in your path to journey with. (It might be just 5 people in a living room.) You may also want to consider visiting or connecting with groups that embody many of the themes in this book. They may be able to encourage you and put you in contact with people closer to where you live. Here is a short list of places to start:
SEVEN is a missional community in San Francisco (www.Sevensf.org)
ReIMAGINE is a Center for Life Integration in San Francisco that hosts workshops, projects and internships. (www.Reimagine.org)
Emergent Village is a web-based network of faith seekers committed to the Way of Jesus and generative friendship (www.emergentvillage.com)
Relational tithe is an online community that encourages the global redistribution of wealth (www.relationaltithe.com)
Innerchange is a global order among the poor. (www.innerchange.org)
The Church of the Sojourners is a residential “church family of disciples” (www.churchofthesojourners.org)
The Simple Way is an activist residential community of faith (www.thesimpleway.org)
Mustard Seed Associates (MSA) provide resources and a network for people committed to seeking the kingdom of God and making a difference (www.msainfo.org)
Solomon’s Porch is an example of a larger faith community seeking to follow God in the way of Jesus through intentional formation (www.solomonsporch.com).
Rutba House is a new monastic community helping to network people exploring radical Christian community (www.newmonasticism.org)
Allelon Foundation sponsors initiatives to help churches and organizations develop missional leadership (www.allelon.org)
