SPIRITUAL

DISCIPLINES
and
CHRISTIAN
ETHICS

Shiera Mae B Puguon

BETHESDA SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
Spiritual disciplines
What are Spiritual Disciplines?
Spiritual disciplines are habits, practices, and experiences that are designed to develop,
grow, and strengthen certain qualities of spirit — to build the “muscles” of one’s character and
expand the breadth of one’s inner life. They structure the “workouts” which train the soul. Some
spiritual disciplines are personal, inward exercises that are practiced alone; others require
interpersonal relationships and are practiced in community.

Throughout time, many philosophers, theologians, and writers have proposed a number of
practices that might be considered spiritual disciplines. These include:

 Meditation  Study
 Prayer  Evangelism
 Fasting  Contemplation
 Simplicity  Confession
 Fellowship  Solitude
 Journaling  Gratitude
 Chastity  Self-Examination
 Stewardship  Silence
 Submission/Obedience  Celebration

We have chosen eight of these spiritual disciplines as being the most vital for men in the
modern day and inclusive of varying belief systems, and which incorporate several of the other
disciplines within them. This series will explore these eight as four complementary pairs:

 Study and Self-Examination

 Silence and Solitude
 Simplicity and Fasting
 Gratitude and Service

Are the Spiritual Disciplines for Me?

 
“Perhaps somewhere in the subterranean chambers of your life
you have heard the call to deeper, fuller living. You have become
weary of frothy experiences and shallow teaching. Every now and
then you have caught glimpses, hints of something more than
you have known. Inwardly you long to launch out into the deep.”
—Richard J. Foster

The spiritual disciplines grew out of the early Orthodox and Catholic churches,
particularly their monastic orders, with their emphasis on ascetic practices. But they’ve been
widely adopted by Protestant denominations as well.

Though the idea of “spiritual disciplines,” defined and categorized as such, is associated
with the Christian tradition, many of the disciplines themselves are common to all the world’s
religions, as well as philosophical schools like Stoicism. They can be practiced not only by men
of every faith tradition, but also by those who espouse none at all.

Theists will see the soul they are aiming to train as an eternally-created essence; non-
theists may simply see it as the mind’s higher capacity or the human will. Those with different
belief systems will also see the reasons for and the aims of the spiritual disciplines in different
ways. But there is much overlap for all, especially when it comes to the “mechanics” of the
practices. This series will thus seek to describe the potential purposes, benefits, and applications
of the disciplines in an inclusive, practical, and yet still meaningful way.

So, if there’s something about having a deeper, richer inner life that appeals, then the
spiritual disciplines (and this series) is for you.

If there’s something that stirs inside whenever you hear words

like solitude, silence, simplicity, the spiritual disciplines are for you.

If you’re nagged by a restless feeling that there must be more to life than your day-to-day
existence, the spiritual disciplines are for you.

If there’s a part of you that feels strangely attracted to a life of ascetic monasticism
— that yearns to become something of a warrior monk, though you don’t actually want to go off
and live in a cloister — the spiritual disciplines are most definitely for you.

What Are the Purposes of the Spiritual Disciplines?

 
 “Ask me not where I live and what I like to eat. Ask me what I
am living for and what I think is keeping me from living fully
for that.” —Thomas Merton

There is very little meaning in physical exercises themselves — jumping jacks or squats
are just motions and muscle contractions; their purpose is in what they produce: fitness and
strength. Likewise, spiritual exercises are means to ends. Their meaning is not found in the
practices themselves, but in the strength and growth they create in the soul.

The nature of this strength takes many forms (which are developed to greater and lesser
degrees, depending on the particular spiritual discipline practiced), but generally include an
increase in one’s ability to:

 Delay gratification
 Receive insight
 Hear God’s voice/one’s inner voice
 Make better decisions
 Remain centered and unaffected by external events
 Demonstrate moral courage
 Detach from distractions
 Feel inner peace
 Behave unselfishly
 Act with practical wisdom
 Follow one’s own course
 Endure hardship
 Forge good habits
 Conquer the worst parts of yourself

If you start any kind of physical exercise program, you’ll enhance your health. But people
who are most successful in making exercise a habit, who stick with a program and see real
results — significant transformations in their physical aptitudes and physique — are those who
have a higher purpose beyond simply “better health.” Without this kind of higher purpose — a
desire to hit certain PRs, run a particular race, be around for one’s children — the motivation
required to complete regular workouts is easily overcome by the entropy and busyness of daily
life. Without a more animating aim, physical exercise can seem less important — pointless
drudgery that’s not worth the time and effort. With a higher purpose, workouts still require
effort, but the participant pushes himself harder, and with more relish, and even joy.

Likewise, doing the spiritual disciplines out of a simple desire to improve the general health
of the soul will certainly garner something of the intended effect. But this effect will be much
smaller, and the disciplines far harder to stick with, than if they were approached with a higher
purpose in mind. It’s hard enough to find time in one’s day for such habits when you’re clear on
their raison d’etre. Without one, activities that require discipline will assuredly fall victim to
those that don’t, like smartphone surfing and Netflix watching.
 For many adherents of the Abrahamic religions, in which God has required his followers to
practice good works, the higher purpose for the spiritual disciplines is obvious: to follow this
command and live a life that’s less sinful and more holy.

For Christians who believe in salvation by grace alone, the spiritual disciplines are not a way
to earn one’s way to heaven, but rather are the means by which to put oneself in position to more
fully receive that grace. As Richard J. Foster puts it in Celebration of Discipline:

“The Disciplines allow us to place ourselves before God so that he

can transform us . . . The inner righteousness we seek is not
something that is poured on our heads. God has ordained the
Disciplines of the spiritual life as the means by which we place
ourselves where he can bless us.

In this regard it would be proper to speak of ‘the path of

disciplined grace.’ It is ‘grace’ because it is free; it is ‘disciplined’
because there is something for us to do.”

Or as Donald S. Whitney writes: “Although God will grant Christlikeness to us when

Jesus returns, until then He intends for us to grow toward it. We aren’t merely to wait for
holiness; we’re to pursue it.”

For an atheist or agnostic, their higher purpose may be to live a fully flourishing life: to
be able to know oneself, enjoy healthy relationships, find meaning in work, and become a
happier, more mindful, and all-around better friend, husband, father, and man.

ne particularly compelling purpose for practicing the spiritual disciplines, that nearly all
might agree on, is this: learning how to properly “order our loves.”

In his writings, Saint Augustine argues that virtue is essentially “rightly ordered love,”
and that sin, conversely, is disordered love:

“But living a just and holy life requires one to be capable of an

objective and impartial evaluation of things: to love things, that
is to say, in the right order, so that you do not love what is not to
be loved, or fail to love what is to be loved, or have a greater
 love for what should be loved less, or an equal love for things
that should be loved less or more, or a lesser or greater love for
things that should be loved equally.”

If you say God is the thing you love most in life, but you spend two hours each day on
social media, and five minutes reading your Bible, you really love Instagram more than God. If
you say you love your family more than your job, but you keep saying yes to unnecessary
overtime hours at work, you really love work more than your family. If you say you love the
ideal of friendship, but you snub a nerdy acquaintance to look cooler in front of your buddies,
you really love popularity more than friendship. Your loves are out of order.

The purpose of training the soul, of practicing the spiritual disciplines, is to align them
aright.

Saint Ignatius is famous for writing a book commonly known as The Spiritual Exercises.
But its original title was: Spiritual Exercises to Overcome Oneself, and to Order One’s Life,
Without Reaching a Decision Though Some Disordered Affection.

That’s a mouthful, but perhaps the best summation of the ultimate purpose of the spiritual
disciplines.

Shouldn’t Spirituality Be Spontaneous?

 

“Do you have less respect for your own nature than the engraver
does for engraving, the dancer for dance, the miser for money or
the social climber for status? When they’re really possessed by
what they do, they’d rather stop eating and sleeping than give up
practicing their arts.” —Marcus Aurelius

It’s popular these days for people to say they are “spiritual but not religious.” What this
usually means is that they still see a deeper, even transcendent meaning in life, but don’t want
their views and pursuit of it to hemmed in by institutional rules and calcified dogmas, doctrines,
and traditions. Personal spirituality, the thinking goes, should be completely untrammeled and
free, left to roam and explore wherever an individual wishes. Spirituality should be spontaneous.
 While this idea sounds great in theory, it works far poorer in reality. The paradox of not
just spirituality, but all creative endeavors, is that the more an individual disciplines his talents
and yearnings, the freer and more spontaneous he can be.

Someone who is just starting to learn to play an instrument can only haltingly play with
sheet music at hand, and then only a very limited number of basic tunes. A musician who has
spent thousands of hours mastering his instrument, however, can play an astonishing range of
soaring, beautiful songs, and can improvise his own music. Discipline has liberated his art.

Just like a budding musician must practice the scales before playing a classical concerto,
you must practice spiritual fundamentals if you wish your soul to become capable of producing
great beauty, of improvising the right moral decisions, at the right times, for the right reasons.
Joy awaits anyone who seeks to master a craft, including the craft of the soul. The Latin root of
“discipline” in fact traces to words like “instruction” and “knowledge” and that’s what the
spiritual disciplines essentially are: courses of learning. The more your soul-knowledge grows,
the freer you become: free from addiction to superficial pleasures, free from self-centeredness,
free from following the enticements of advertising and other people’s “should’s,” free from the
mindless distractions and appetites that sabotage our higher goals — free from the tyranny of the
worst parts of ourselves.

Here’s another analogy. Author John Guest compares “The ‘spontaneous’ person who
shrugs off the need for discipline” to “the farmer who went out to gather the eggs”:

“As he walked across the farmyard toward the hen house, he

noticed the pump was leaking. So he stopped to fix it. It needed a
new washer, so he set off to the barn to get one. But on the way he
saw that the hayloft needed straightening, so he went to fetch the
pitchfork. Hanging next to the pitchfork was a broom with a
broken handle. ‘I must make a note to myself to buy a broom
handle the next time I get to town,’ he thought. . . .

By now it is clear that the farmer is not going to get his eggs
gathered, nor is he likely to accomplish anything else he sets out
to do. He is utterly, gloriously spontaneous, but he is hardly free.
He is, if anything, a prisoner to his unbridled spontaneity. The
fact of the matter is that discipline is the only way to freedom; it
is the necessary context for spontaneity.”
 Spirituality without discipline moves in hapless fits and starts; it is sporadic, dependent
on fluctuating feelings and external circumstances. It requires little to no effort, but also produces
little to no sustained growth, and thus little to no fruit.

This is as true for the “spiritual but not religious” as for those who do consider
themselves religious, or at least nominally adopt the trappings of a faith. They may go to church
every week, maybe even pray every night, but their spirituality has been almost completely
stagnant for years. They go through the motions, but don’t really discipline themselves, and thus
only produce the barest of fruit. They’re like the people above who “work out” without real
purpose, and without putting forth much effort. They may be getting a tad healthier, but their
physiques look exactly the same as they did two years ago when they first joined the gym.

For the soul to strengthen, it has to be trained in a consistent, deliberate way. Just like
your physical muscles, it needs something to push against, it needs resistance. If you really want
your spirit to be able to soar to adventurous heights and explore the profoundest of depths, if you
really want it to possess power — if you really want it to be free — it paradoxically needs some
structure. It needs discipline.

How Should I Approach the Spiritual Disciplines?

 

“Spiritual discipline, then, is developing soul reflexes so that we

know how to live. We discipline ourselves to develop soul memory
in normal times so that we’ll be equipped for the times of high
demand or deep crisis.” —Douglas Rumford

You’re likely no stranger to discipline in at least one, and probably several areas of your
life. You discipline yourself to graduate from college. You discipline yourself to make it on a
sports team. You discipline yourself to learn to play an instrument, or to speak a foreign
language. You discipline yourself to go to the gym every day. You discipline yourself to get
ahead at work. You know that in order to master a course of study, lose weight, and get to where
you want to be in life, you’re going to have to put forth effort. You’re going to have to dedicate
time to the pursuit. You’re going to have to sacrifice.

You may never have thought much about disciplining yourself spiritually, however. But
the same immutable laws that underlie all other pursuits in life, underlie the growth and
development of your soul.

You can’t hope that circumstances will somehow naturally shape its course and hone its
strength. You can’t only attend to the soul as your feelings dictate.
 The decision to train the soul must be intentionally chosen, and then consistently
practiced. Persistence is essential.

Just like you (hopefully) carve out time each day to exercise your body, you must make
the spiritual disciplines a nearly inalterable part of your schedule.

Just as when you decide to go to the gym, even when you don’t feel like it, you invariably
feel awesome by the end of your workout, rather than waiting to feel like working on your soul,
you must work on it anyway, knowing the feelings will follow.

Just like a single workout at the start of the month won’t sustain your strength for the rest
of it, you must exercise your soul on a regular basis.

And just like a novice weightlifter needs to learn the best exercises for building strength,
and how to perform them for maximum effectiveness, you must learn the time-tested spiritual
disciplines that best train and grow the soul.

To those specific disciplines, we will turn in the months to come

REFERENCES

https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/introduction-spiritual-disciplines/

CHRISTIAN ETHICS
1. Christian ethics teaches us how to live.

Christian ethics asks what the whole Bible teaches us about which acts, attitudes, and
personal character traits receive God’s approval and which ones do not.

This means that Christian ethics teaches us how to live. It is important to study Christian
ethics so that we can better know God’s will, and so that each day we can “walk in a manner
worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him” (Col. 1:10).

Christian ethics asks what the whole Bible teaches us about which acts, attitudes, and
personal character traits receive God’s approval and which ones do not.

2. The ultimate basis for Christian ethics is the moral character of God.

God delights in his own moral character, which is supremely good, unchanging, and
eternal. His moral standards for human beings flow from his moral character, and therefore they
apply to all people in all cultures for all of history (although the Bible also contains many
temporary commands intended only for specific people at a specific time).

God is love, so he commands us to love (1 John 4:19). He is holy, and he commands us to

be holy (1 Peter 1:15). He is merciful, and he commands us to be merciful (Luke 6:36). He is
truthful, and he commands us not to bear false witness (Titus 1:2; Exodus 20:16). God’s moral
character and the historical fact that he has given us moral commands provide the basis for a
Christian answer to the question of how we can move from “is” statements to “ought” statements
in ethics.

3. Christian ethics is based on the Bible.

One of the purposes of the Bible is to teach us how to live a life that is pleasing to God
(Col. 1:9–10; 1 Thess. 4:1; 2 Tim. 3:17). Because it is the Word of God, the Bible is a higher
authority in ethics than tradition, reason, experience, expected results, or subjective perceptions
of guidance. While these other factors can never override the teaching of Scripture, they can still
be helpful for us in making a wise decision.

4. Christian ethics is essential to the proclamation of the gospel.

Some Christian speakers today downplay or omit any call for unbelievers to repent of
their sins, but evangelism in the New Testament clearly included a call to repentance. Just before
he returned to heaven, Jesus told his disciples “that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should
be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:47). Similarly,
Paul proclaimed the need for repentance to pagan Greek philosophers in Athens, warning them
that the final judgment was coming: “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he
commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge
the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance
to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:30-31; see also Acts 2:38; 3:19; 5:31;
11:18; Hebrews 6:1). “Repentance” in the New Testament is not merely a “change of mind” but
includes both sorrow for one’s sins and a sincere inward resolve to turn away from sin and to
turn to Christ in faith (Hebrews 6:1; Acts 16:31).

But how can unbelievers repent of their sins if they do not even know what God’s moral
standards are? I do not believe that widespread revival will come to any nation apart from
widespread, heartfelt repentance for sin. Therefore gospel proclamation today must include an
element of teaching about God’s moral standards, which means teaching about Christian ethics.

5. Christian ethics teaches us how to live for the glory of God.

The goal of ethics is to lead a life that glorifies God (“do all to the glory of God,” 1 Cor.
10:31). Such a life will have (1) a character that glorifies God (a Christ-like character),
(2) results that glorify God (a life that bears abundant fruit for God’s kingdom), and
(3) behavior that glorifies God (a life of obedience to God, lived in personal relationship with
God).

Although we are justified by faith in Christ alone and not by works, extensive New
Testament teachings about living the Christian life show that our day-by-day obedience as
justified Christians is an important part of the Christian life. Understanding obedience correctly
requires that we avoid the opposite errors of legalism and antinomianism.

6. Obeying God brings numerous blessings to our daily lives.

The New Testament teaches at least seventeen specific kinds of blessings that come to us
in connection with living in obedience to God’s commands in Scripture. These blessings include
the joy of deeper fellowship with God (John 15:10); the joy of pleasing God (2 Corinthians
5:9; Colossians 1:10); the joy of becoming a vessel for “honorable use” by God (2 Timothy 2:20-
21); the joy of being an effective witness to unbelievers (1 Peter 2:12; 3:1); the joy of increased
answers to our prayers (1 Peter 3:10-12; James 5:16; 1 John 3:21-22); the joy of closer
fellowship with other Christians (1 John 1:7); the joy of a clear conscience (1 Timothy 1:5, 19);
and several other blessings.

God intended that obedience to him would not be burdensome (1 John 5:3) but would
bring us great joy. For this reason, when Christians are not “conformed to this world” we
discover that following the will of God is a path of life that is for us “good and acceptable and
perfect” (Romans 12:2).
7. Willful sin brings several harmful consequences to our daily lives.

It is not too popular to talk about sin today, but it is a huge topic in the Bible. Searching
for the English word “sin” (and other words with the same root such as “sins” or “sinner”) shows
that it occurs 440 times in the New Testament alone. And my copy of the Bible in the English
Standard Version (ESV) has 235 pages in the New Testament. This means that the topic of sin is
mentioned in one way or another, on average, nearly two times per page through the entire New
Testament. We would neglect such an important topic at our peril.

The New Testament mentions several harmful consequences that come from willful sin in
the life of a Christian. These consequences include a disruption of our daily fellowship with God
(Ephesians 4:30; 1 John 3:21), the awareness of God’s fatherly displeasure and the possible
experience of his fatherly discipline (1 Cor. 11:30; Hebrews 12:5-11; see also Ephesians
4:30; Revelation 3:19), and a loss of fruitfulness in our ministries and in our Christian lives (John
15:4-5).

Christians should pray daily for forgiveness of sins (Matthew 6:12; 1 John 1:9), not to
gain justification again and again, but to restore our personal fellowship with God that has been
hindered by sin.

8. Christian ethics teaches us to consider four dimensions of any action, and nine possible
sources of information.

Christian ethics is not concerned only with our right and wrong actions. We are complex
people, and life itself is complex. Therefore, in studying Christian ethics, God wants us to
consider not only (1) the action itself but also (2) a person’s attitudes about the action, (3) the
person’s motives for doing the action, and (4) the results of the action.

In seeking to know God’s will, sometimes we must make a decision instantly, with no
time to ponder the situation (see the story of Joseph in Genesis 39:12). But at other times, we are
able to ponder a decision at some length. When we have more time to ponder a decision, we can
consider as many as nine possible sources of information and guidance: (1) the Bible, (2)
knowledge of the facts of the situation, (3) knowledge of ourselves, (4) advice from others, (5)
changed circumstances, (6) our consciences, (7) our hearts, (8) our human spirits, and (9)
guidance from the Holy Spirit. We need wisdom from God in order to evaluate these factors
rightly in making a decision.

9. We should never think that God wants us to choose a “lesser sin.”

Although several evangelical ethics books claim that, from time to time, we face
situations of “impossible moral conflict” where all our choices are sinful and we must simply
choose to commit the “lesser sin,” this idea is not taught in Scripture. It is contradicted both by
the life of Christ, “who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15),
and by the promise of 1 Corinthians 10:13, which says that God will always provide a “way of
escape.”

he “impossible moral conflict” view easily becomes a slippery slope that in actual
practice encourages Christians to sin more and more.

10. Using the Old Testament for ethical guidance requires an understanding of the history of
redemption.

Many Christians have read the Old Testament and wondered how we should understand
the detailed laws that God gave to the people of Israel under the leadership of Moses. This
requires an understanding of the “history of redemption”—the overall progress of the main
storyline of the Bible.

The Mosaic covenant, which began at Exodus 20, was terminated when Christ died.
Christians are no longer directly subject to the laws of the Mosaic covenant but now live instead
under the provisions of the new covenant. However, the Old Testament is still a valuable source
of ethical wisdom when understood in accordance with the ways in which the New Testament
authors use the Old Testament for ethical teaching, and in light of the changes brought about by
the new covenant. The New Testament authors explicitly reaffirm all of the moral standards
found in the Ten Commandments, except they do not reaffirm observance of the Sabbath as a
requirement for new covenant Christians.

Understanding the progressive development of the Bible from the old covenant (under
Moses) to the new covenant (inaugurated by Christ) is especially important when thinking about
the Bible’s teaching regarding civil government today. It is important to remember that God’s
wise laws about crimes and punishments that he gave to the civil government of Israel as a
nation then are in many ways different from God’s wise purposes for the civil governments of
secular nations now.

REFERENCES

https://www.crossway.org/articles/10-things-you-should-know-about-christian-ethics/