Interview with author Rande Howell about
Rare Peace, Raging World
Questions:
You talk about busyness
in our personal lives and stress-filled lifestyles as a detriment to our
spiritual growth as Christians. What do
you mean by this?
A life in Christ is about being and doing – not simply doing. When we are focused entirely on doing, we forget how to “Be still and know that I am God”. We lose this valuable connection and can no longer rest in God’s love and peace. Before long, we are doing to make ourselves feel better, rather than acting from hearts that have been opened to God’s peace and love. Learning to rest in God’s peace does not stop us from doing, but it does add a deeper purpose to our action. Think about Christ – He is constantly leaving crowds and going into wilderness to be with God. After resting in God, He comes back and acts powerfully. He is a perfect example of the balance between being and doing. And we need to reclaim this part of our Christian heritage in our churches.
Doing without being is seductive. For a moment or two, it allows us to escape from facing our fears. Avoiding what we fear is what the body is built to do. We seduce ourselves that we are doing good, therefore we are being godly. Relationship with God is anchored in doing that is rooted in our capacity to be with God though. We, as human beings, are built to live life more abundantly than simply to avoid our fears. We are built to be in relationship with our Creator. To the body, this is fearful. It, our neuro-biology, prefers to avoid the unknown. And God is mystery to us.
We enter the spiritual journey with Christ in faith that lies beyond our capacity as biological beings to know. It is easier for the body to focus on busyness to avoid our fears than to embrace something that is inherently unknowable. Yet, to inherit the promise of eternal life, this is exactly what we must learn how to do. To do this, we must come to a much different understanding of what our body and flesh is and its power. This is something we ignore at our own peril in the church today.
What’s important for
people to know about this book?
This book is about finding and maintaining a rare inner peace while still living in this stressful world. It’s about coming to peace with yourself and the world you live in. At the core, it is about discovering the inner conflict that we all experience as human beings, but avoid out of our fears. By not acknowledging this internal conflict that rages within each of us and knowing how to deal with it, we are kept from the peace that Christ promises us. In particular, it is about reclaiming who we are in Christ, rather than who we have been deceived into believing we are. There is a war going on within the self, that by ignoring or pretending it is not there, we forfeit the blessings that our Creator offers His children.
How did you come to
write this book?
In my practice as a Christian counselor, I came to realize what a distorted view most people (including most Christians) have of themselves. It was like they were beating themselves up for not being good enough, perfect enough, or worthy enough. Or they were out trying to prove themselves by acquiring possessions. Yet, these were the same people who claimed Christ as their Savior. I guarantee you that Christ did not sacrifice himself in vain. He was willing to shed His blood for God’s children. He knew we are precious beyond measure and even worthy enough that he would die so that we might live. And He did this at a time that the whole human race, including you and I, were being jerks.
What I also recognized is that many people just want the pain to go away. They really do not want to change. These are what I call casual Christians. They built a wall to protect them from the pain of our broken world. And they are not interested in the hard work of healing their personal brokenness. But they want to look good – as if everything is glorious in their lives. They show up in church, do good works, but never strive to go deeper in their journey with Christ.
Some, however, wanted more than the pain to go away. These people began to see the possibility of who they could be in Christ and were willing to do the hard work and heavy lifting required to reclaim the very core of their being. These people pretty much forced me to come out of my own spiritual cynicism and reach for a deeper calling within me. This is when “new life’ began to be awakened in me. I am thankful.
I began to see that there was a war going on within the people I was working with. Only they didn’t see themselves in a war. They were so blind to their inheritance as children of our Creator that an unseen enemy, in stealth, had robbed them and left them only broken promises. This is tragic.
How does this happen?
Also in my practice I came to understand that Christians unfortunately do not have an appreciation of the power of the flesh. It’s not that the flesh is bad. It can be either a temple or a dungeon depending on a person’s understanding and skill sets. Certainly we are not effectively taught about the flesh at church as part of our Christian spiritual foundation. We may indulge it, we may resist it, we may ignore it, or we may deny it – but most of us are subtlety overpowered by our neuro-biology. Will power, in itself, does not work. Ask any recovering alcoholic if will power alone works in the face of a biological craving. Or watch a person who accumulates power – no matter what their original intent. Power opens the possibility of corruption.
Not understanding and knowing how to work with the flesh leaves us wide open to deception and corruption. We have to grasp that the flesh is more than the parts of our body; it is also our survival motivations and our very thinking. Its organization around fear leaves us vulnerable to the enemy within to corrupt our thinking and our beliefs about who we are. The power of our flesh, our neuro-biology, has certainly humbled me on numerous occasions.
Out of my own conversion to Christianity, I became aware of how precious I am to Christ. And if there were ever someone that was undeserving of God’s love and Grace, it was me. If Christ would go out of His way to shepherd an arrogant jerk like me back from the lost, then the folks I was working with were certainly worthy. This book came out of a desire to help people learn and develop the skills necessary to struggle valiantly in the war going on within the self. And find the peace that Christ offers us in rediscovering who are, and who we can become.
What do you mean by
“a war within the self”?
This is the way the Apostle Paul personally described the internal struggle he experienced as the war going on within the “members of his body” in Romans 7:14-21. Paul describes how every time he attempts to do what is good, evil is right there with him – attempting to lure him into doing exactly what he (in his inner being) does not want to do. Paul repots that the evil within him often trumped over the part of him that delights in God’s presence.
We all experience this internal battle. Paul is recognizing what we in modern psychology might call “parts or aspects of the self”. In his genius, Paul is describing a person being made up of various parts. Some of those parts are evil in nature and attempt to diminish the possibility of who we are as children of God. Other members delight in God. Yet, other parts of who we are attempt to avoid the conflict all together. These parts of our spiritual psychology are in conflict with one another. All these parts of the self, or as Paul describes it as members of the body, can be seen as actors (or voices) on a stage having an internal dialogue.
You speak of internal
dialogue and a “stage of the self” in your book. Is this part of what you call our Christian
spiritual psychology?
Yes. All of us experience an internal dialogue in our mind just like Paul wrote about in Romans. This is normal. What is dangerous is to pretend that it is not there. Anytime you are of two opinions about something, you experience this dialogue. Just listen to a sermon during pledge season at your church about money and tithing and you will hear it raging in your mind. Most of us experience this internal dialogue simply as background noise or our thoughts. But it is so much more. From my perspective, we do not have an internal dialogue, the internal dialogue has us!
We don’t have an
internal dialogue; our internal dialogue has us? What do you mean by this?
Jesus, being human like us, also
experienced this internal dialogue – and could have been seduced by it. He went into the wilderness after his baptism
and confronted this internal dialogue and, at
Christ chose to listen to a different internal dialogue and the world as we know it changed. In Luke we find that it took an angel to sit with Him to keep him calm so he would not cave in to the fear in his flesh that night. The Apostle Paul was no different. He clearly battled evil within him. What Paul did was redirect his attention away from the destructive intent of part of the self to Christ. In focusing on the voice of Christ within him, he was able to prevail in his internal struggle.
This is simply the way our spiritual psychology works. Most people want to ignore or pretend this war is not really happening. And the worst is when a well intended Christian thinks that if they are good enough or nice enough, then we want be tempted or open to corruption. Ignoring the internal dialogue going on within us is dangerous.
Back to the “stage of
the self”. Tell me more about it?
If you accept the premise that we all have an internal dialogue going on within our mind, the question becomes what conversation are we having internally. This is where the concept of the stage of the self is very helpful.
The stage of the self (Paul’s members of the body) is a way to get a handle on critical aspects of the internal dialogue and the war going on within the self. If you image that there is really no singular self, but in its place there is a stage where different parts of the self give their voice much like actors in a stage play. Each of these actors has a different motivation and a particular presence that differentiates each voice from the other. The ones that have dominance are the ones that we hear in our minds as our internal dialogue or as our thoughts.
What is important to know about these voices on the stage of the self is that some are destructive in their intent, some are reactive out of fear or anger, and some seek to act for our good. My interest in this book is to describe what I call the Accusing Voice, the Adapted Voice (or Wounded Child Voice), the Christ Voice, and Core Strength (the part of us that is inherently good, worthy, and made in the image of God – what Paul calls the inner being). Then my interest is in helping people to shift the internal dialogue so we can connect to the Christ who dwells within us and let that be the ground to our being.
The internal dialogue between the Accusing Voice and the Wounded Child Voice generally drowns out our capacity to hear the small, still voice of the Christ within us (though He promised us that He is within us) and to reclaim the part of us that was created in God’s image and Christ came to save. This is the war within the self – only we have not shown up to fight for our birthright. And until we learn how to manage the body and the mind that emerges from our flesh, we really are not properly equipped to deal with the enemy that lurks within us.
What do you mean by
learning how to manage the body and the emergent mind?
As Jesus observes His disciples
avoiding their dread at
Though we would like to disconnect flesh, mind, and Spirit, it can not be done. Christ declares this in the most important commandment – God is one. And love Him with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. We can not separate our body from our emotions and our mind – and our spirit is housed in this body. So it is all interconnected. The flesh is also our neuro-biology and our brain. And our mind emerges out of neural behavior – thoughts. So, without learning to manage our bodies more effectively, the possibility of intervening in our mind’s internal dialogue is a remote possibility. Yet, for the ancient Hebrews including Jesus Christ, the knowledge and skills were present with their understanding of breathing and stillness.
Are you saying that
breathing and stillness were part of Christianity?
Absolutely – through they are no longer practiced in today’s Western Christianity. Let’s take breathing for example. The ancient Hebrew word for breathe is Ruah. But Ruah was so much more. To the ancient Hebrews, ruah included our breath, the act of breathing, the Holy Spirit, the gift and sustaining of life, and the wind. They were all interconnected, much like our body, mind, and Spirit are inner connected. Think about it, what does God do in Genesis to bring Adam to life? He breathes the gift of life into Adam’s lungs – God ruahs Adam into being and awareness. That breath, that ruah, creates life in Adam and sustains life in Adam. And to the ancient Hebrews, with each breath they took, they breathed in God’s Spirit which sustained them.
Taking it one step further, what does the risen Christ do in John 20:21-22? He breathes on His disciples and tells them to receive the Holy Spirit. He ruahs on them. With each breath, He breathed the Holy Spirit onto His disciples. Those guys were never the same. One minute a bunch of bumbling idiots, the next minute they become people who against all odds bring forth the possibility of Christianity into the world and change history forever. Clearly we have lost the tradition of holy breathing in Christianity and we need to reclaim it. His disciples breathed in the life force coming from Christ. I believe we should being the same today.
On a purely scientific level, skillful breathing helps us to understand how we can better manage our body, our emotions, and our mind. We can calm our emotions and frenzied bodies by diaphragmatic breathing. And when we calm ourselves down, that is when we get to influence the state of mind that controls our thinking. It is this aspect, applied to prayer, that also missing from the modern way we practice Christianity. It is a shame too.
Without calming the body and the mind, we can not learn to be still. And if we can not be still, it is nearly impossible to hear the small, still, quiet voice of God among the every day distractions of the world we live in. Just look at what Elijah went through to still the distractions of earthquakes, wind storms, and fire so he could hear in the stillness the voice of God. Amazingly, that voice of Christ is always within us. It is us who have forgotten how to calm the body and still the mind as part of our prayer life. This ancient Christian spiritual practice can take your current prayer life to a new place on your journey into life with Christ.
Let me see if I have
got this right. Are you saying that
stillness is part of prayer?
Yes, if we are to become more Christ-like, it is important. Stillness, or meditation, is not an alternative to prayer as currently taught in Western Christianity. Rather, it is something that we need to reclaim as part of our prayer life and deepen the Christian experience.
Biblically we are told that we need to become still to know God. We do not practice the skill today, but the ancients, including Christ, did. We’re missing part of our heritage. The ancient Aramaic (the language Jesus spoke and thought in) word for prayer is slotak. It literally meant – setting a trap to capture the thoughts of God. In today’s world, a good translation would be to tune your attention into the channel where you can hear the voice of God. Think about what Christ said. He said to go to your inner sanctum to pray and not babble like pagans. Doesn’t sound like He was speaking just about talk prayer to me.
To produce stillness and direct our attention toward the voice of Christ within us, we have to calm both our body and our mind. Doing this, we produce a different state of mind that we normally think and act in. Both Paul and Peter are described doing this. Paul is in a synagogue praying and while praying falls into a trance (a restive, calm state of mind) and Christ speaks to him anointing him ambassador to the Gentiles. Meanwhile, Peter is on a roof praying while dinner is being prepared and also falls into a trance (a restive, calm state of mind where he can direct his attention to the channel where he can hear God). And what happens – he is directed in this vision to abandon aspects of the Hebrew dietary code. A big deal for an observant Hebrew like Peter.
We are constantly slipping into these absorptive states of mind, but it is undisciplined. Like watching a beautiful sunset, driving to work in a car, or even watching TV (dangerous in my opinion). In all of these cases, we enter into a different state of mind than our normal brain wave activity would show. Many of us also enter into these restive states while we pray. The world seems to disappear for a moment as our attention is directed elsewhere. The key is to develop the skill of tuning our awareness to the channel where we can rest in God’s peace. That is where we begin to reclaim our inheritance as children of God and Christ as our guide leading back home.
This sounds a lot
like Eastern meditation – is it?
First, let’s get clear that Jesus
was not a Westerner like you and me. He
was an Easterner. He was born, grew up,
lived, preached, and died in the
My view of stillness, or meditation, is that it is a tool. Maybe even a weapon for the spiritual warrior within us. It is in stillness that we come face to face with both the evil and the good within us. No other tool suffices. Stillness is like a mirror. With it we can see and hear the different voices within the self – and confront the parts of the self that we try to hide from our awareness. The parts we are ashamed to admit exist within.
The spiritual warrior within us has the courage to confront these parts of the self and return to Christ as the ground of their identity. The war is not “out there” – it is inside us. And without stillness, we do not have the tool that we need to look inside. Ultimately, after silencing the lies and deceptions of the Accusing Voice within us, we come to our destination. Life in Christ. Our identity is grounded, not in this world, but in Christ.
You speak of
reclaiming our identity in Christ – what do you mean by this?
This goes back to the war going on within the self. Most of us have been mesmerized into believing the lies of the Accusing Voice. It’s always there as a voice within our minds telling us that we are not good enough, worthy enough, or that we are so flawed that people would not love us if they really knew us. And a part of us believes these lies. This is when we become enslaved by dread that is described in Hebrews 2:14-15. We come to believe that these lies are really who we are. It becomes our identity.
Reclaiming our identity in Christ is about developing the courage of a spiritual warrior and confronting, in Christ, the Accusing Voice within us and then turning back to God (repenting). In Christ, we can reclaim ourselves as the children of God that we were created as. And, like a Good Shepard, Christ is there to protect us and lead us to an abundant life.
What you are calling
the Accusing Voice sounds a lot like Satan.
Can you explain?
You are right. The ancient Hebrew notion of Satan can be translated into modern English as the “prosecuting attorney”. So, in effect, we have a prosecuting attorney in our head on the stage of the self. And what does a prosecuting attorney want? He wants to convict. Will he lie? Yes. Will he deceive? Yes. Will he accuse unjustly? Yes. Will he set a trap and deceive you into falling for it? You bet. Personally, I have found evil to be beguiling, rather than a brute that anyone could recognize.
In modern Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), this internal voice is known as the Critical Voice. It is also known as the Critical Parent. And certainly it can take on the persona of a judgmental parent – but it is so much more. When Adam and Eve ate of the tree of life, they became aware of both good and evil. That is as true today as it was then. This is the fall and is part of our broken nature.
Evil does live within us. So does good. The Accusing Voice is within us, and the voice of Christ is within us. What matters is what we do with our awareness. That is the gift of being human. We have the choice of listening to the voice of accusation and deception that dwells within us, and we have the choice of listening to the voice of Christ within us. Our job is to develop the discernment to recognize the difference.
Practically every character in the Bible had to struggle with this war within – including Christ. It is no different today except that if we decide to remain in Christ, He will remain in us. Returning our attention back to Christ (repenting) from the seductiveness of the Accusing Voice is an essential skill that we have to develop. The Apostle Paul refers to this when he talks about putting on your helmet, lifting your shield, and grasping your sword. There is a spiritual battle going on within us on the stage of the self. Our job is to become the spiritual warrior and reclaim our identity in Christ. Christ would never have incarnated into human form and died for us if we were not precious children of the Creator. God’s love is ever present. It is we who have to claim it. Christ will guide us – our job is to strive for it with all our strength.