Doing Philosophy as a Christian by Garrett J. DeWeese concludes with some insights regarding the spiritual disciplines that I believe are valuable on many fronts. He writes:
…the disciplines are means, not ends. Focus on the disciplines themselves, and they will lead to a dry legalism. Ignore them, and spiritual progress will be more meander than march. In the end, a spiritual discipline is simply a method, a technique, for facilitating the process of reflectively reordering desires, reexamining beliefs, readjusting emotions and reforming intentions. The point isn’t to practice a discipline but to be transformed by renewing the mind.
Through the years it has seemed to me that some advocates of spiritual formation forget that point. There’s always a tendency to draw principles out of one’s own experience and to advocate for everyone else what one has found helpful for one’s own self. Such tendencies should be avoided. In Romans 14, Paul notes that among believers in Rome, a variety of different practices are observed. But he forbids those who observe one practice from condemning those who don’t, “for God has accepted him” (Rom 14:3). “Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another….for the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom 14:13, 17).
(pp. 330-331)
May means be means and ends be ends.
May judging cease and grace abound.
May righteousness, peace, and joy rule.
In the name of the Way, the Truth, and the Life,
Amen!