I commited my life to Christ 24 years ago. For the first few years, I was just trying to figure out what that meant; for the rest of those years, I have tried to be a good Christian. I have grown more like Christ in the way I live and the choices I make. I have faithfully attended church, been invloved in Bible Studies, Home Fellowships, and ministries that serve others. I even spent many years running my church’s Jr. High youth ministry. But all this time, I have kept this shameful secret. Well, it’s not completely a secret. I have confessed it to people from time to time, but certainly not quit as openly as this. So here it is. I don’t have quiet times.
Now, before I am completely thrown out of any leadership position in my church, I should be more specific. When I led youth group, I would frequently lead Bible Study, and every week I would faithfully spend quite a bit of time reading and studying to prepare for my lessons. I even prepared (though not as much) for the lessons that other people were teaching just in case they couldn’t make it. I have been invovled in quite a few Bible study groups where there was homework, which I dutifully did. In addition to these things, I pray, read the Bible, and Christian books that have all helped me grow in what it means to follow Chirst. In my attempt to be more Christ like by having daily quiet times, I have over the years set up plans to read the Bible before I even get out of bed in the morning, before I would let myself eat breakfast (sort of a fasting idea), or before I went to bed at night. All of these plans would last for a while before I would relapse into my non-quiet time life again. At different times in my life, I have been more successful than at other times, but usually my success has be related to two factors: 1. Did I have a task that needed to be completed? or 2. Did I have a lot of free time (such as summer vacation)? For almost my entire life as a Christian this has been a dark cloud hanging over my head. This shame that I am not as commited to Christ as I should be. If I was a good Christian I would get up early before my kids and spend time with God (early morning seems to be more spiritual a time of day), I would never watch a movie after the kids were in bed if I hadn’t done a quiet time that day (free time can only happen after obligations are fulfilled), and I certainly had no business leading others in ministry if I couldn’t be faithful in my own quiet time with God.
Yet always in the back of my head I would remember my Dad saying that God didn’t want so much from people as they seemed to think. He said that God asked for one day a week, that’s all. He didn’t expect us to be in church every single day. He wanted us to of course follow Him daily, but not live in church services. I thought it was a pretty good argument, but still I thought that a daily quiet time was part of that friendship with God, the time that we would spend together growing closer. After all, friends want to be together, they want to have the time to just sit with one another and not just one hour a week on a Sunday morning.
Then I left leading ministry and found myself in an unusual place in my life. For the first time in many years, I had nothing and no one telling me what to read or study. I wasn’t teaching so I didn’t need to prepare a lesson, and I wasn’t enrolled in a Bible study with homework; it was just me. What was I going to do in my time with God, with no agenda, and no tasks to complete? So I went back to the basics. I read Luke. Inspired also by the book Already Gone by Ken Ham and Britt Beemer, I began looking at the gospel trying to see what things we have added to the gospel as modern day American Chirstians. I looked at what Christ’s life was like, and how we have added to or taken away from that in our faith. One thing I saw was the quiet time. The expectation that is placed on us by Christian society is that we should have a daily quiet time. We are shown verses about the manna in the wilderness and in the Lord’s Prayer asking for daily bread. We have been told that quiet times are the way that we get this daily bread and are reminded that we shouldn’t eat only once a week. There are countless books and thoughts on exactly the proper format for this necessary quiet time to nourish our souls. But is that what it meant?
Let’s think about history. For most of history the average person has been illiterate, or nearly so. Books (or scrolls) have been rare. They were hand written on tablets, parchment, or paper taking a great deal of time to create thus making them too expensive for the average person to own. The scriptures were often only read by priests and by a few other learned men. The average person wasn’t expected to sit and read the scripture or even in some cases to know what it said outside of a few baisc rules that were memorized. As history progressed, we see Guttenburg creating his printing press and many more books, the Bible in particular, becoming available (of course still not in a language that most people knew). When Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theseis to the door of the church in Wittenberg (1517 AD) the majority of people neither had access to a Bible nor the knowlege to read it if they did. It was Martin Luther who translated the New Testament into the language of the people, well his people at least, which was considered heretical by the Roman Catholic Chruch. As time goes on, the Bible would get translatated into different languages and printed so that the common person could access it. Yet, still many people didn’t own books. Also, many of the Christians throughout history have not had the amount of “free” time to devote to daily quiet times that we have in our society. (Think of the African slaves, the Medieval peasants, or even the more modern day immigrants working in the factories of the industrial revolution. Heck, think of the single working mom with three jobs.) I don’t know the origin of the quiet time and when it became the thing for good Christians to do, but I must think that such an idea could not have come into play until access to the Bible was common for people, so sometime in the last 300, maybe 400 years. This means that for the first 5500+ years of world history, it wasn’t part of the plan. It wasn’t part of the early Christain church. And it wasn’t part of the instructions that God gave his people in the scripture.
Now, that said, I am not arguing that quiet times are unGodly, unBiblical or bad in any way. I am all in favor or quiet times, of spending time with God, in sudying the scripture, and even memorizing passages. The more you put into a relationship, the more you will get out of it. In having a discussion on this with a good friend of mine, my friend offered me the best argument I have heard for quiet times. She said, for whom much is given, much is expected. (Thanks Jenn!) We are a generation greatly privlidged to have the Bible available to us to read and we must not waste that gift. I have acess to every translation of the Bible, study tools, and commentaries and I have 20 mintues or more a day that I could devote to quiet times. However, we are also the generation that has been given the gift of the Holy Spirit indwelling in us. We have the scriptures written on our hearts. I try to sit down and have my quiet times as often as possible. I enjoy it so much more that I am doing it as I am moved rather than as a task to check off the list. But I also know that some of my best friends I don’t see daily, I don’t even see weekly. These are friends whom I have connected with on a deep level and we are bound forever, despite sometimes not getting to see one another. Do I like seeing them more often? Do I miss them when I don’t? Of course. I meet with God at least once a week at church, but certainly most weeks more than that. I also live in a state of prayer. I don’t think when Jesus said to pray continually he meant in quiet times, he meant as we go about our days. I pray as I go through my day, remembering people and things, encountering difficulties, counting my blessings, asking for guidance, even telling Christ about my life and the things that I’m thinking. Do I take time out to pray more indepth? Sure, but I think what draws me to God more is my constant prayer not my seperate times of prayer.
Coming to an understanding that God did not command quiet times has helped me free myself of the shame that I have felt for many years. When I would be consistant in my quiet times and then “back slide,” I felt shame. I would feel guilty that I was too self focused in my life and not enough God centered. It is this guilt and shame, this condemnation that does not come from Christ. I want to spend time with Christ and I am certian that he wants to spend it with me. Without this dirty little secret plaguing my heart, I find that I am more inclinded to reach for my Bible, curl up on a chair, and spend some time reading and praying, like friends, not like a task to check off my list. Right now I am reading Acts and how the early church did devote themselves daily to teachings, prayer and fellowship. (Acts 2:42-47) Perhaps I will become more consistant and faithful in my quiet times, not beacuse I feel obligated to out of Christian deovtion, but becauses I desire to. Right now, I am basking in the freedom that quiet times are a man made invention (that very well might be an excellent tool to help me in my walk), but they are not a mandate from God, a mark of my faith, or a measurement of how good a Christian I am.
A religious organization did a study by polling pastors and found that 78% of them only read scripture when preparing lessons or sermons. There are some really astonishing statistics in it you may find interesting, I blogged about it here ages ago.
No response?
Sorry, I read your blog. I thought it was very interesting, but not sure I have a deep thought to add to it. I’ve heard similar type studies on related topic so it didn’t surprise me. The real issue in my mind is the striving to be a ideal rather than real. I don’t think it’s bad to strive to read scripture or pray or whatever, but when it gets set up as requirement it can lead to a sense of failure and that often leads to “faking” it, which is counter prodictive. And it’s not just in the religous community, it’s in life in genreal. We are striving to meet all sorts of expectations that are impossible in thier completeness. Each person is go in some thing and everyone tries to keep up with the Jonese, but with so many people we can’t do it all and we go crazy trying.
@llamanomad – An interesting take. I also imagine members of the clergy also have the existential dilemmas believers in general have, such as the problem of evil, feeling abandoned by god in difficult times etc.Btw I found your response randomly much later, when responding please tag people by clicking “reply” to put the html in your response.