Why the Goal of Spiritual Formation Can’t Be Balance

“There was a good 10 years where it felt like somebody had a boot on my chest.” This is how Justin Vernon—known as Bon Iver—describes the season before making his most recent album, SABLE, fABLE. After years of relentless touring and the weight of fame he never expected, he says it all “eats away at you”—the overwork, the anxiety, the crushing sense of being overrun by it all.

He couldn’t keep going in the way he was going. He reflects,

I’m finally . . . in this place where I’m like, I’m OK. Boohoo, I thought I’d have kids and a wife and that kind of love in my life. But what I’ve discovered is the most important thing is just to be where I’m at and to feel OK.

You may have been through a similar season: near collapse, anxiety attacks, or a sense of dread of what life has become. Vernon’s arrival at “I’m OK” represents real resilience and a hard-won settledness. We might describe this feeling as “balance,” a sense of having the mental, emotional, or spiritual resources that make us feel buoyed in the face of life’s turbulence, pressures, and difficulties. Many of us long for that feeling.

I was sitting with a young woman in pastoral care who was expressing doubts about her faith. She struggles with anxiety, but a Buddhist coworker she knows doesn’t. To her, his life seems so balanced and measured, so put together and unbothered by the stress the rest of her coworkers feel. She felt his spiritual resources were deeper. Don’t we all want to be more balanced?

Well-Being Culture

These desires to be balanced and measured—to feel OK—are part of an increasing, even marketable, trend. Since 2019, the wellness-app industry has generated over a billion dollars annually. Many young adults are demanding more flexibility at work, willing to take lower pay in exchange for better work-life balance.

You might say we’ve entered a well-being culture. Our highest goal isn’t to feel only good but balanced. We’re anxious, attached to our phones, drinking too much, working too much, not healthy enough, not eating right. And now, many are eager to change these realities.

The problem with well-being culture isn’t its diagnosis—mental, emotional, and physical health are real needs. The issue is that it lacks a coherent vision of what well-being is.

We’re repeatedly told there’s a product or subscription for every need. If you need better mental health, go to therapy. Want to get in shape? Buy a gym membership, hire a trainer, download an app. Want better nutrition? Subscribe to a meal plan or pay for a coach.

But none of these industries has an endpoint. There’s no destination—only ongoing maintenance and, if you work hard enough, optimization.

The problem with well-being culture isn’t its diagnosis—mental, emotional, and physical health are real needs. The issue is that it lacks a coherent vision of what well-being is.

In talking with the woman who wished she had the spiritual resources of her Buddhist friend, my temptation was to try to use the resources of our Christian faith to match her coworker’s balance. We can simply transfer the final goals of well-being culture to our spiritual formation: to feel OK and obtain balance. But balance is like a tightrope that invites constant self-monitoring.

Goals of Spiritual Formation

Years back, my emotional life took a deep dive into darkness. I struggled with depression and anxiety for about 18 months. I began to worry this was the new normal—my kids always experiencing me as sad, my energy always being cut too short to finish things the way I wanted to.

Someone told me, “It won’t always be this way.” I didn’t believe him. The darkness felt definitive. Some of what happened was explainable—I was burned out, overworked, and grieving painful relational conflicts. Other parts seemed mysterious. God felt distant. My phone, of course, was always near.

Mental health experts were a great help, and older Christians encouraged me to lean into spiritual formation practices more intentionally. Keeping a weekly Sabbath and practicing solitude were lifelines in getting hold of my interior life. Since then, these practices, among others, have helped me experience vitality and life.

Maybe you have a similar story. Anxiety or burnout caused you to take spiritual formation more seriously. Your desire for balance led you to take a Sabbath; an anxious heart led you to practice solitude. As far as I can tell, there are no bad reasons to take up spiritual practices. But what brings you to spiritual formation may not be what ought to keep you there.

Spiritual formation’s final goal isn’t balance and well-being. What’s happening in our prayers, our Sabbath-keeping, our meditating and reading of Scripture, or our solitude isn’t meant to lead us to balance. We’re “being transformed into [the Lord’s image] from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3:18).

Later in 2 Corinthians, Paul tells the discouraged and timid, the crushed and the despairing, “We do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day” (4:16). Paul isn’t saying our emotional lives get stronger while our bodies fall apart. Instead, God is preparing us, our whole selves, for glory while this tent—our bodies and minds—falls apart.

In my season of longing for balance, I wanted to feel normal. At other times, I wanted life similar to those I envied. But Paul calls me to “look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen [felt, measured, comparable] are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (v. 18). Christ wants glory, not just balance, for us—likeness to him rather than comparable lives to others. Look to the things that are unseen.

Christ wants glory, not just balance, for us—likeness to him rather than comparable lives to others.

Where are we looking? We “[fix] our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith” (Heb. 12:2, NIV). Jesus is our pioneer, meaning he’s already walked through our life and into the future that’s ours: resurrected glory and infinite inheritance. His future is our future. What’s true of Christ is true of us; what belongs to Christ belongs to us. We’re filled with the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead (Rom. 8:11). Spiritual formation is learning to live from the status and supply you have in Christ.

If balance and emotional health are the end of our spiritual formation, then all we’re doing is looking for techniques toward self-sufficiency—the flesh rather than Christ—for our healing and wholeness. Sabbath, solitude, meditation, and prayer are balms for the anxious and addicted heart. But Christ intends to heal more than just our hearts.

Spiritual Formation Leads to a Cross

“Jesus told his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me’” (Matt. 16:24). Jesus’s clear instruction to his followers includes this cross-patterned life. While Paul’s language shifts away from the imagery of discipleship or Jesus-as-mentor toward the concept of union with Christ, the calling is the same.

• “Our old self was crucified with him” (Rom. 6:6).
• “I have been crucified with Christ” (Gal. 2:20).
• “Those who belong to Jesus Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions” (5:24).
• “You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ” (Col. 3:3).

If balance and a sense of well-being are spiritual formation’s main goals, a life patterned after Christ’s life and death will be intolerable. And it will be exhausting. Rather than being formed into the image of Christ, we’ll be endlessly consumed with trying to shape our lives into the vague and often shifting worldly standard of balance.

Frankly, the cross is destabilizing. Repentance is disruptive. The mortification of our flesh can cause mental anguish. But without it, there’s no renewal. And spiritual formation without renewal is something entirely foreign to the New Testament.

If balance and a sense of well-being are spiritual formation’s main goals, a life patterned after Christ’s life and death will be intolerable.

I remember sitting with a friend who was struggling with panic attacks. She felt confused and guilty that she was experiencing fear when the Bible tells her not to be afraid. Even talking about it caused feelings of panic.

So I listened, and then we prayed together. We opened to the story of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane. I don’t think we can clearly assume Jesus is having a panic attack. But the Gospels describe him as feeling overwhelmed and sorrowing to the point of death, being troubled and distressed, sweating like great drops of blood, and falling to the ground (Matt. 26:38; Mark 14:35; Luke 22:44). This corresponded with her experience. Jesus felt what it means when a human mind and body are near the limits of what they can bear.

As we read this passage, she was learning how to have a panic attack with Jesus, who understands what she’s going through and intercedes as the One who knows her frame. Yes, my friend was listening to and engaging with competent mental health professionals and following their prescriptions—which is important. But she was also pressing into something deeper than mental health.

She was learning to live with the resources she has in Christ and in the life that’s being renewed day by day, even as she was experiencing her outer self (even her mind) diminish in ways she couldn’t control. She was learning that balance, though desirable, isn’t sufficient. She was experiencing what only the Spirit who resurrected Christ could provide.

News Source : https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/goal-spiritual-formation-not-balance/