Celebration of Discipline Foster, Richard.

Celebration of Discipline

Foster, Richard. The Celebration of Discipline. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1998.

Richard J. Foster's Celebration of Discipline acts as a powerful antidote to the extremities of attitude that often plague us in modernity while the book still embraces many of the newer practices created by recent Christian spiritual leaders and teachers. Today, some people may seem to exist as entirely social creatures, living lives glued to their cell phones, chatting even when buying groceries or in the car. They feel spiritually empty because of an inability to let God exist within them in solitude. In contrast, some people are entirely isolated from their community, making friends online rather than seeking out like-minded people in the real world. They lack a connection and sense of their responsibility to others. Individualism and an obsession with the self are endemic to modern society regardless of whether one is an extrovert or an introvert. Solitary pastimes or pastimes that isolate the individual from his or her community dominate our lives, and this self-obsession makes our lives poorer and less spiritually interesting.

Foster suggests a series of disciplines to bring Christians back to the basics of their faith and to help believers move forward in their lives in a more productive fashion. He offers practical advice on how to practice these pillars of spiritual development and awakening, even while he defends them according to Christian, philosophical doctrine. Through practicing the disciplines, a believer can place him or herself before God and be transformed. He categorizes these different disciplines under three different headings. Inward disciplines involve the practices of meditation, prayer, religious fasting (as opposed to fasting for a political cause or for one's health), and study. Outward disciplines involve the cultivation of simplicity, solitude, submission, and service. Community disciplines are confession, worship, guidance, and celebration. Inward and outward harmony is required. A believer cannot focus on one discipline to such an extent that it comes at the expense of the other. For example, the disciplined community member who engages in weekly worship and celebration, no matter how many church bake sales she may organize, will not have a full spiritual life without some inward reflection and meditation about what the church services means. Christians must not leave meditation and prayer solely to 'professionals' like priests and pastors; they must also have their own, personal and direct relationship with God. But a contemplative scholar cannot simply study and hope that this will give him a revelation about the nature of the divine, without engaging with others to see how what he studies works in the real world. Through self-fulfillment, self-actualization, loving ourselves, mutual submission, and coming to terms with our past we must learn to heal others and take our knowledge about the self and use it in a meaningful and selfless fashion.

The inward disciplines are necessary to focus on the individual's personal relationship with Jesus Christ and to put the distractions of the world in perspective. The outward disciplines call the individual to emulate the life of Christ in the world in the service of others. By participating in community disciplines believers participate and become one in the Body of Christ. Although this may sound complicated, none of these goals are beyond a believer's grasp. The chief obstacles to mastering the disciplines are a preoccupation with worldly success to the extent that the believer cannot let God within, a lack of knowledge about how to practice, and by passively waiting for change to happen, rather than actively changing one's own life. "Everybody thinks of changing humanity and nobody thinks of changing himself." Moral superiority, setting unrealistic and fixed goals, and judging others are antithetical to good practices, self-knowledge and reaching out to others in an open and tolerant fashion facilitate spiritual practice.

Foster stresses that many Eastern practices are compatible with Christian practices. Meditation is not an esoteric part of discipline, but within every believer's capability provided that he or she does the practice in a spirit of contemplation, by using the correct posture, breath, and in mindful isolation. "Christian meditation leads us to the inner wholeness necessary to give ourselves to God freely, and to the spiritual perception necessary to attack social evils. In this sense it is the most practical of all disciplines... Anyone who can tap the power of the imagination can learn to meditate." Journaling as well as contemplating and centering prayer can lead an individual to God as can more conventional forms of prayer and practice in the tradition of Thomas Merton, the Buddha and Christian mystics such as Eckhart.

Following the advice of Foster in many ways requires believers to think outside of the box of mainstream culture's individualism and emphasis on indulgence. True Christian simplicity requires that we accept that all we possess comes from God, that what we have is ultimately under the care of God, and that what seems like 'ours' is also spiritually available to others. Letting go of ego is essential, thus Foster distinguishes between true service, that gives the individual what they genuinely need and self-righteous service that only serves the giver. But perhaps the most fascinating and radical advice given in the book, from an orthodox Christian point-of-view, is Foster's reinterpretation of the nature of Christian submission and humility before God. He says these ideas have been abused to encourage debasement or making adherents feel bad about themselves rather than really being used as a positive asset to practice. Someone who hates him or herself is not showing respect for God's creation and self-hatred ultimately inhibits the individual from helping others because it is really simply the mirror image of too much self-love, self-hatred just another form of obsessive fixation upon the self. Self-contempt and self-denial are different and submission must be freely undertaken, not compelled.