Contemplation and Action: Twin Beams of the Christian Life
The ministry and the spiritual life belong together. … When our ministry does not emerge from a personal encounter, it quickly becomes a tiring routine and a boring job.
One of my all-time favorite books is Henri Nouwen’s The Selfless Way of Christ. I try to read it every year because of its poignancy and relevance. In it he touches on the crucial relationship between our personal encounter with Jesus and our ministry in his name—or what Thomas Merton called the dynamic of contemplation and action.
Here’s how Nouwen begins the book:
“The subject of our ministry is Jesus Christ, the Word who was from the beginning with God and was made flesh to live among us. To be a Christian is to witness to this Word, to reveal the presence of this Word within us as well as among us. Yet this witness, which takes the form of preaching and teaching, of celebrating and counseling, of organizing and struggling to alleviate the suffering of our fellow human beings, is a true witness only when it emerges from a genuine personal encounter, a true experience of love. We can only call ourselves witnesses of Jesus when we have heard him with our own ears, seen him with our own eyes, and touched him with our own hands. The basis of the mission of the twelve apostles was not their knowledge, training, or character, but their having lived with Jesus. …
The ministry and the spiritual life belong together. … When our ministry does not emerge from a personal encounter, it quickly becomes a tiring routine and a boring job. On the other hand, when our spiritual life no longer leads to an active ministry, it quickly degenerates into self-scrutiny, and thus loses its dynamism. Our life in Christ and our ministry in his name belong together as the twin beams of the cross.” — Henri Nouwen, The Selfless Way of Christ
In this brief article, I want to survey some biblical passages in which this dynamic is displayed, then offer a few words of instruction about what happens when these “twin beams of the cross” get separated.
Biblical Passages
The contemplation-action dynamic is modeled by our Lord himself:
“Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray.” — Matthew 14:22–23
Notice the characters in these verses: Jesus, his disciples, the crowds, and the Father. You see Jesus’ spheres of concern all mentioned: his ministry to the crowds (many demands), his ministry to the disciples (his primary strategic focus, if you will), and his relationship with the Father. Jesus makes it a point to get alone on a mountain to pray. He removes himself from the ministry in order to prioritize a personal encounter with the Father. He gets away from the noise so he can speak with God.
Action without contemplation leads to busyness, burnout, anxiety, distraction, resentment, and more. It also, as Henri Nouwen wisely points out in The Selfless Way of Christ, gives way to meeting the wrong demands.
In Jesus’ high priestly prayer in John 17, we get a window into what Jesus was doing during those times of prayer. He was getting his marching orders:
“For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me.” — John 17:8
Jesus did not minister according to his own whims, rather he delivered to the people what he received from the Father. Of course we don’t know specifically what Jesus’ prayers before the Father were like, but the high priestly prayer allows us to confidently guess that his prayer was a time of alignment to the Father’s will. Thus Jesus’ ministry flowed from his personal encounter with God.
Jesus’ apostles followed this same model. Look at 1 John 1:1–4, which Nouwen quotes from in that paragraph above:
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us—that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.
The apostles testified to what they themselves had experienced: the risen Christ. Of course, the apostles were different from us in that they physically encountered the risen Christ before his ascension; we encounter him now only through the Spirit (although in a real sense physically through the Lord’s Supper). But the point still stands that ministry in Jesus’ name flows from an encounter of Jesus’ ministry to us.
I have noticed in my life that contemplation without action leads to unhelpful self-preoccupation. Contemplation without action simply returns you to yourself over and over, leading to self-scrutiny and navel gazing. Conversely, being engaged in meaningful work takes you out of your head and out of yourself and draws you into service to others.
Contemplation is a means of personal encounter. It’s getting alone with God to experience his word, his love, his presence. It’s meditating on his word, which reveals to us who God is and what God has done and is doing—it’s him speaking to us. It’s making time to dim the noise all around us so we can hear ourselves think, hear God speak, and enter into dialogue with him. It’s where we hear him tell us about his love, about sin we need to confess and repent of, about areas of service we may pursue. And action flows from that. Action is delivering to others the kind of ministry God has done to us.
And with that, I want to move into some practical applications of this truth. Let’s look at what happens when these twin beams of the cross get separated.
Action without contemplation
Perhaps the best biblical example of action without contemplation is the difference between Mary and Martha. Mary is the contemplative, Martha the activist:
Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.” — Luke 10:38–42
Does the Bible commend service and hospitality? Of course it does. But look what Jesus says about Martha’s service: she’s distracted by it. It’s taking her attention away from where it should be. And you can tell she’s more than distracted; she’s beginning to resent her sister for not helping. In fact, Jesus diagnoses an even deeper problem: Martha is anxious and troubled about many things.
The problem is not that Martha is serving, it’s that she’s neglected the one thing for the many. She’s split her attention this way and that instead of giving it first to the one and most important thing: Jesus himself.
Action without contemplation leads to busyness, burnout, anxiety, distraction, resentment, and more. It also, as Henri Nouwen wisely points out in The Selfless Way of Christ, gives way to meeting the wrong demands. Nouwen shows how Jesus is able to battle the temptations of Satan in the wilderness by a continual and persistent appeal to the word of God. Satan tempts him with what seems most pressing and most desirous: food, meeting others’ needs, being powerful and highly acclaimed. Jesus stays the course, though, and commits himself to obeying the word of God and carrying out the mission of God in God’s way and God’s timing.
This is what contemplation before action does: it helps us carry out the right marching orders. Our own flesh and the demands of the world will split us this way and that, making demand after demand after demand. And we exhaust ourselves meeting the wrong demands (either wrong morally or wrong in terms of what’s actually needed and important). But by being like Mary, by choosing the good portion and sitting at Jesus’ feet—in his presence, under his teaching—we put first things first. Only then is it possible for our ministry to flow from our encounter with Jesus and for us to give to others the words he gives to us.
Contemplation without action
There is also a danger that comes from contemplation without action. Two threats in particular come to mind: idleness and legalism.
The Bible condemns idleness, particularly in the area of work (2 Thess. 3:6–13). And it commends the opposite: “Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord” (Romans 12:11). We can fall into a sort of spiritual lethargy, when instead we are called to spiritual fervency and meaningful service. Idleness is a sin that leads to other sins, whereas service is a fruit that leads to more fruit.
The reason we’re afraid to do it is because prayer is transformative; you do not come before the Father of Lights without feeling some heat.
I have noticed in my life that contemplation without action leads to unhelpful self-preoccupation. Contemplation without action simply returns you to yourself over and over, leading to self-scrutiny and navel gazing. Conversely, being engaged in meaningful work takes you out of your head and out of yourself and draws you into service to others. Especially if you are prone to too much introspection or even to depression or anxiety, having something to do can be a needed escape from negative thought loops. I’m not talking about stuffing your emotions but about engaging with your external world, which is especially helpful when your internal world is stormy. The gospel always has an outward focus that runs through the inner person. We are not meant to feed and feed and feed on the gospel just to sit and do nothing with it—think spiritual gluttons, too full to get off the couch—but rather are meant to seek the kingdom in the world, feeling light on our feet and energized by the gospel.
A second danger of contemplation without action is legalism. You see this in one of the charges Jesus levels against the Pharisees in Matthew 23:
“The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.” (vv. 2–4)
The Pharisees were to be teachers of the law, which meant they were deeply studied in the Scriptures. And yet look at what their lives had become. They preached but didn’t practice. They became out of touch with the actual lived experience of God’s people, distanced from the needs of others. They became harsh, exacting, and detached.
This is what happens when our Christian faith just exists in the abstract. Our worldview becomes a house of mirrors, devolving into introspection and becoming a trap rather than a way of life that leads to joy, God’s glory, and meaningful service to others.
Some thoughts on application
On one hand, the application of all this is clear enough: balance contemplation and action. Properly order them (contemplation first), build some disciplines around contemplation*, and be engaged in regular and meaningful Christian service, especially among the poor. (*You might try morning prayer and Scripture meditation plus an evening examen, plus weekly, monthly, or quarterly practices of solitude and silence.)
On the other hand, if it were this easy, we’d all be doing this already. Why do we resist contemplation? One reason is that we’re afraid of it.
In The Selfless Way of Christ, Nouwen puts forth three disciplines for countering the temptations of Satan, the world, and the flesh. The disciplines are word, prayer, and the church. He says that prayer is the one we give up most easily, and offers an insightful reason why:
The discipline of the heart is probably the discipline we give up most easily. Entering into the solitude of our closet and standing there in the presence of our God with nothing but our own nakedness, vulnerability, and sinfulness, requires an intense commitment to the spiritual life. Personal prayer is not rewarded by acclaim, does not translate into helpful projects, and only rarely leads to the inner experience of peace and joy.
There it is. Prayer is exposing, hard, and doesn’t get immediate results. And so we are so quick to abandon it.
To really embrace disciplines of contemplation, we must insist that in fact prayer is—like most difficult things—deeply good. That, in prayer, we commune with a Father who loves us more than we can possibly imagine. That we commune with a Father who removes our sins from us with Jesus’ cleansing blood. That we have as our advocate Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, who always lives to make intercession for us. That God already knows everything about us anyway and loves us still, so we might as well drop the pretense. That, whether we admit it or not, we are naked before him, and he looks on us with love. That he loves to give us what we ask when we pray according to his will. That prayer works in ways we cannot know. And that there is no fruit where there is prayerlessness.
We must also insist that openness before God is the only path to true change, even if it hurts. Many of us can easily sit before a counselor and talk about ourselves for an hour, but we can hardly do that for one minute before God. Why? Is a counselor less judgmental than God? Certainly not. No one is gracious and gentle like God. The reason we’re afraid to do it is because prayer is transformative; you do not come before the Father of Lights without feeling some heat.
But our conviction is that change is good. Transformation is what we seek. We have two options: suffer the chronic pain of the double life, or the acute pain of repentance followed by the long-lasting relief of integrity. Distance or raw intimacy—these are our choices. We come to God and he burns off the dross, or we go through life caked in it.
The contemplative life is not a charmed one. It’s not yoga mats and essential oils. It’s gritty, exposing, costly, and active. But a Christian cannot be engaged in God’s will without developing it. So let us believe that God is good, even if he isn’t safe (Lewis). Let us come before him in regular intervals to hear his voice, align ourselves to his will, and be bent back into his image, and then go out into the world with his words and having been loved by him.
