What are we doing here? Thinking about the Church's mission of religious/spiritual Christian Formation-- Part 3

In my last post, I posed a particular question that could come up in using the metaphor of "language" to think about "religion." 

 A language is arbitrary, and morally neutral, in the sense that there exist many spoken human languages on earth, all contributing to the great human enterprise of life, without any sense in which any one language is superior to another.  It’s this particular characteristic of language—its moral neutrality—that might give one pause about using this metaphor to describe the phenomenon of religion.  Many adherents to a religion are not used to thinking of their own religious community as morally neutral.  Many would claim that their own religion is superior to any other.  What might be gained if we continued to use the “religion as language“ metaphor in this sense?

One benefit might be to open up our understanding of what makes for a “good” religion and what makes for a “bad” one, if we can even use those descriptors. Maybe we can use the language metaphor to explore other characteristics of religion, other than “good” or “bad” to see what other ideas emerge.

For example, there are dominant languages and small group languages.  Dominant languages are spoken by lots of people, and sometimes collectively abuse the power of that dominance to the detriment of non-speakers.  Sometimes the harmful effects on non-speakers of the dominant language are not obvious to the dominant speakers, but they are to the speakers of the minority language. However, human beings cannot avoid the power-dominant problems in language by refusing to speak!  In fact, remaining silent would contribute to the problem.  Languages can evolve and people can learn to communicate across language barriers in places where the speakers are willing to listen to and learn from each other.

Other characteristics of a robust language are a deep history, a large collection of literature, and a shared cultural context that transcends time and geography.  In this sense, a language is “true” when it contributes to the flourishing of human life lived in a particular cultural community.

Here's another way this metaphor can help us focus: How is a language transmitted?  Parents and care-takers, formal and informal schooling—a great number of cultural venues make it possible for children to learn a language.  It’s a lifetime job.  However, we would consider parents or care-takers defective if they decided not to teach a child a language until they were old enough to choose for themselves.  We aspire for our children that they learn to communicate in some language well enough to flourish in life and contribute to society.  We also might aspire for them that they learn more than one language.  However, to learn any language well, they have to acquire the skills of at least one particular language.

I want to propose that “growing disciples of Jesus Christ” is like teaching a language: the particular, robust spiritual language that is called Christian.  The nurturing of Christian disciples is like teaching people the particular language that nurtures spiritual health in the direction of Christian spirituality, not spirituality in general, but a spiritual shape that is like Jesus.

Does this metaphor help us to understand our mission to call people to discipleship?  Is it like teaching a language?

If we’re going to take seriously our church’s mission to “Call people to Discipleship” we’re going to have to think clearly about what that means, and put into practice the community steps that make it real.