Teaching Them to Observe All I Have Commanded You: But How?

Teaching Them to Observe All I Have Commanded You: But How?

Richard K. Stephens, June 7, 2022 - 1319 words

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1) The 21st Century Compassion Renaissance

The year 2013 was a landmark year in the progress of the 21^st century neuroscience-fueled Compassion Renaissance. It was the year that research scientists could confidently announce evidence that compassion is a learned skill.

"Our fundamental question was, 'Can compassion be trained and learned in adults? Can we become more caring if we practice that mindset?'" says Helen Weng, lead author of the [U Wisconsin-Madison] study and a graduate student in clinical psychology. "Our evidence points to yes."  … "It's kind of like weight training," Weng says. "Using this systematic approach, we found that people can actually build up their compassion 'muscle' and respond to others' suffering with care and a desire to help." [1]

Likewise, 2016 was a landmark year for 21^st century Christianity with respect to the understanding of compassion -- or, it ought to have been, to be more accurate. In August of that year the book, Compassion in Practice: The Way of Jesus, the product of eight years of development and refinement, which lays out the Christian spiritual practice that builds on ancient practices with an eye on the revolutionary science of neuroplasticity.

“Everybody believes in compassion, but nobody tells you how to practice it. Until now.” -- Brian D. McLaren [2]

I say “ought to have been,” because this Gospel-founded spiritual practice that cultivates the trait of compassion, making it available to the Christian world just as secular versions of compassion cultivation methods have been made available to non-Christians, such as the Stanford CCT (Compassion Cultivation Training [3] first offered to the general public in 2015, and which has been met with enthusiastic and widespread acceptance.

2) Rebirth: Passive vs. Active?

The word “repent” in Greek is metanoia — but the original Greek word means much more than just repentance. It means to change, to turn, to think differently. Metanoia is not a one-time event but a process, and as Christians we are called to live a life of metanoia. [Father Dave Pivonka] [4]

The idea of doing brain work-outs for the compassion “brain-muscle” is a novel one. Should we really trust the astonishing claim that this stuff works? The wise response -- at least for those who regard compassion as something at the apex of their religious faith -- need to try and test, the look at the results, the outcome.

But there is a matter of differing -- and sometimes stubbornly opposed -- Christian modes of thinking, however. Let me present the polarized thinking surrounding this matter with a question. Am I reborn if my heart has not gone through a thorough process of repentance -- that is radical change -- can it be said that I am “transformed by the renewal of [my] mind,” [Romans 12:2], that I have been reborn [John 3:7]?

If the answer is “No,” then there is work to do. If the answer is “Yes,” I’m all set. I’m an automatic bona fide Christ-follower. The position expressed in this article is obviously a resounding “No.” [5]

I have been told that Christians again compassion only through the Holy Spirit. But is it not up to the faithful to open up to the Holy Spirit, to invite the Holy Spirit? Is LYNAY (Love your neighbor as yourself) so terrifying a high standard that we will twist logic and try to send the task back to God, telling Him:

“You deal with it. If I’m not compassionate, You yourself are to blame for not sending the Holy Spirit to straighten out my compassion-challenged -- but believing and worshipful -- heart.”

People like to pretend that a Christian who responds to the commandments by using will and making effort is tantamount to accepting the notion of “salvation by works.” Not true. It’s a double fallacy. First, changing one’s mind (repentance) and heart (transformed) is interior spiritual activity. It is not an outward extended action in the environment. Second, when a good deed does indeed flow from the one who has effortfully engaged in transformation, the deed flows not from duty, nor from an effort to earn favor, rather the deed is the natural behavior of one whose heart has been transformed by adopting the way of Jesus, just as the costly compassion is not the natural behavior of the Fallen, unregenerated, heart.

After all, we are not passive at all in our relationship with God. After all, it takes will and effort to show upon Sunday, to read scripture and to donate to a church. Why should acquiring the capacity to follow the second greatest commandment be exempt from will and effort. Is not the acquisition of compassion competency the very essence of mind-changing/mind-redirecting repentance. Is it not the very signal of having been born again?

3) The Compassion “How To” Book for the 21^st Century Christian

While it has been demonstrated that compassion can be strengthened with relevant exercises it also can deteriorate and atrophy. [7] We see that -- waxing and waning of compassion -- in the history of the church. The Twofold Commandment is not observed the church loses credibility, and worse, it loses divine legitimacy.

Whose responsibility is to it transform us? There is a huge division within the Church that can be simply characterized as “passive versus active.” One common conviction that one’s response to the summons of Jests is to declare faith, get baptized, read scripture, take communion . . . and then wait. 

Yet repentance is a patently volitional matter. It is a process that is gradual, one that requires a great deal of deliberative reflection. This process -- as we know thanks to Affective Neuroscience -- has a physical basis that comes about as the result of volition, involving focused attention and continued use.

Nevertheless, many adhere to a belief in an instantaneous transformation, instantaneous rebirth, a one-off event that involves no volition, no effort, no development -- no repentance, in the proper understanding of the biblical meaning of the Greek word behind the translated word. [see n. 4]

The Great Commission does not say to make disciples by  teaching them the scriptures, nor by announcing the Kingdom to come later. It says “teaching them to obey all that I have commanded.” Why? The interpretation we accept is that obedience to the commands is difficult, the means must be taught, just as Jesus himself adopted a pedagogy and curriculum he employed over the course of over three years before his disciples we ready to become disciple-makers.

“Radically alter your mind!” (“Metanoiete!” -- “Repent!”) is Jesus’s first command (Mat. 4:17). Jesus’s final command, delivered following his resurrection, is to make disciples, teaching them to obey all he has commanded. [Mat. 28:19-20] The two are integrally connected. For the process of mind-changing is one that the disciples have learned from the Master and are prepared to teach others. They are to teach not just commandments as scripture, law, part of the Word of God, but they are being told to teach them how to obey -- teach them the process of metanoia mind-changing that when learned thoroughly is to produce a reborn heart.

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” (John 14:15 ESV).

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 7:21 ESV).

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NOTES

[1] Christopher Bergland, “Compassion Can Be Trained: Loving kindness meditation cultivates compassion and altruism.” Psychology Today, May 23, 2013.

[2] Everybody believes in compassion, but nobody tells you how to practice it. Until now. Frank Rogers turns compassion into a doable, daily practice as simple as catching your breath and taking your pulse. If you want to read a book that actually has the capacity to change your life (and the world), beginning today, this is the book to read. -- Brian D. McLaren. Back cover copy. [Frank Rogers, Jr., Practicing Compassion, 2014, Upper Room Books.]

[3] Compassion Cultivation Training™ CCT© was developed by Thupten Jinpa, Ph.D.  at Stanford U., Ca. starting in 2009. CCT is offered by the Compassion Institute (CI), Half Moon Bay, Ca., founded in 2017 by Thupten Jinpa, Ph.D.

[4] Metanoeite! - Repent!; The word “repent” in Greek is metanoia — but the original Greek word means much more than just repentance. It means to change, to turn, to think differently. Metanoia is not a one-time event but a process, and as Christians we are called to live a life of metanoia. [Cover copy: Fr. Dave Pivonka TOR (Third Order Regular of Saint Francis of Penance), Living Metanoia: Finding Freedom and Fulfillment in Christ, Our Sunday Visitor, Jul. 19, 2021]; The lexical idea of μετάνοἑω and μετάνοια involves a change of mind (or heart, will, thinking) and behavior, and so in turn of one’s whole being and life. [ChoongJae Lee and Jonathan T. Pennington, Metánoia (Repentance): A Major Theme of the Gospel of Matthew, Wipf & Stock Publishers, Apr 29, 2020. P. 3]; “Toward an Analytic Conception of Metanoia” -- We speak so often of “changing our mind” that the phrase seems totally ordinary -- even banal. But in the most literal sense, it carries an unacknowledged gravity. Whether undertaken as an intentional act of reason or experienced passively as a spiritual event, to change one’s mind, or, similarly, to have a “change of heart” is not merely to think differently: it is to become someone else. How to live and what we believe are central to our identity. Our habits and beliefs are at the core of who we are. Thus to change one’s mind is to experience a transformation of being -- a renovation of one’s personal ethos. [Adam Ellwanger, Metanoia: Rhetoric, Authenticity, and the Transformation of the Self, Feb. 25, 2020, “Introduction”]

[5] Richard Rohr, on volition, the deliberateness of repentance, which is the willful changing of one’s mind -- “I'd like to say that all of the world religions discovered this at the higher levels: that you needed to change the mind -- the way it operates. And I'm convinced that that was originally what we meant by the word prayer. But the word “prayer” has been so trivialized by making announcements to God or asking God for things, but it wasn't really giving you an alternative consciousness. And so that's why a lot of us use the word “contemplation” to say we're talking about something a little deeper and bigger and broader than just “saying prayers” does.” [Richard Rohr: “The Compassion Interviews”; Interviewer: Kozo Hattori; Jan 28, 2014; 45:24; @ 1:20-3:06; PeaceInRelationships.com]

[6] Here is a discussion of this is by a major expert on self-directed neuroplasticity who is also a Christian: [T]he state of our brain can essentially always, to at least some degree, be viewed as an impediment to our spiritual growth until we change how the brain functions—until we make it work more for our spiritual growth than against our spiritual growth. This raises the key point of a change in perspective. What we want to do is to pursue our spiritual growth and strive to live in imitation of Christ and to view that striving, of course, as being primarily guided by the Holy Spirit. We never want to view this as arising entirely within ourselves without the intervention of the Holy Spirit and apart from our being open to receiving grace. We realize that we can’t pursue these kinds of high spiritual goals independent of grace due to our sinful nature. This bring us to the central point: that the pursuit of spiritual growth through grace and the Holy Spirit is what changes our brain in ways that make it less and less of an impediment. / / Another way of saying this is that as our brain changes in ways that are conducive to spiritual growth, as we come closer to the imitation of Christ through the reception of grace by the work of the Holy Spirit, the dynamic and powerful lower animal drives—which it may be reasonable, from a Christian perspective, to describe as close to identical with what we call sin nature—lose their control over how our mind works. Thus, our mind is less distracted and directed away from the goals of spiritual growth. [Jeffrey M. Schwartz (Research Psychiatrist, UCLA School of Medicine),  “Neuroplasticity and Spiritual Formation,” The Table (Biola U Center for Christian Thought), Apr. 18, 2019]

[7] Even if you don’t necessarily see yourself that way, I bet you’re compassionate at least some of the time (e.g., when you’re well-rested and not in a hurry), or with certain people in your life (e.g., with your closest friends). Compassion can be thought of as a mental state or an orientation towards suffering (your own or others’) that includes four components:

• Bringing attention or awareness to recognizing that there is suffering (cognitive)
• Feeling emotionally moved by that suffering (affective)
• Wishing there to be relief from that suffering (intentional)
• A readiness to take action to relieve that suffering (motivational)

Contrary to what many may believe, compassion is considered to be like a muscle that, as any other, can be strengthened with relevant exercises—or can deteriorate and atrophy. In other words, your capacity for compassion can expand, if you choose. [Hooria Jazaieri, “Six Habits of Highly Compassionate People: Follow these steps to feel more compassionate toward others and toward yourself.” Greater Good Magazine, Apr. 24, 2018]

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