5 reasons to practice silent contemplation and how to get started
Practicing silent contemplation is something a lot of Christ-followers would associate with old, worn-out, traditional Christianity. I’ve found it to be a hugely significant part of my spiritual life - here’s why I think you should give it a go and how you can get started.
Moralistic Therapeutic Deism…
What the hell is it?
It’s a way of understanding who god is:
- Moralistic - the need to do good things and not bad ones.
- Therapeutic - the need to feel good about ourselves.
- Deism - A ‘deity’/god who is ‘far away’ and doesn’t actively intervene into reality.
Some Moralistic Therapeutic Deist beliefs might look like this:
- “A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.”
- “God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.”
- “The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.”
- “God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.”
- “Good people go to heaven when they die.”
There’s a worry that this actually sums up the beliefs of a lot of people who describe themselves as Christians pretty well.
What does the god you follow look like?
Does he look like the ideas above, or does he look more like this:
- A God who saves, forgives and liberates us from the power of sin and death?
- Unsettles and challenges as much as patting us on the back?
- Is active and at work in our lives and in his world?
Theology is the study of God. Unfortunately all to often we stop studying and begin to define him in our own limited way.
Christopher M. Johnson
