Book Review

Sacred Pathways
Gary Thomas
© 2000 Zondervan. 232p

Review by Ray Hoekzema

Spiritual nutrition, writes the author, is an individual matter. Apart from a prescription for a daily devotional time, group bible study and church attendance, many Christians have never realised there is more to ensuring they are spiritually fed.

The solution lies in an awareness of our spiritual temperament. This will enable us to develop the tools we need to grow in faith, and it will keep our love for God fresh as we serve him with a new understanding and obedience.

Although these spiritual temperaments differ from the more familiar territory of personality types, Thomas does use the Briggs Myer categories to identify nine ‘sacred pathways’ or the ways we relate to God. Most of us, he believes, have one predominant spiritual temperament. They are as follows:

1. Naturalists prefer to worship God outdoors as they observing and enjoy creation

2. Sensates revel in the awe, beauty and splendour of God and are drawn to the sights and sounds of worship found in music, liturgical language and architecture

3. Traditionalists have a need for ritual, structure preferring a well-defined liturgy

4. Ascetics love God in solitude and simplicity, placing great value on introspection and prayer

5. Activists like to adopt causes, either social or evangelistic, and are energised by interaction with others, believing that truth means confrontation

6. Caregivers love and worship God primarily by serving others

7. Enthusiasts like their hearts to be moved with the mystery, excitement and celebration of worship

8. Contemplatives love God through concentrating on adoration

9. Intellectuals thrive on ideas and concepts. loving and worshipping God with their minds

Mature and well-rounded worship may incorporate all of these elements in different proportions of course. The reader is shown how to identify his or her main spiritual temperament and also made aware how each has its own weaknesses or temptations.

The points he makes are appealing and convincing, particularly as he draws on many biblical incidents and examples eg Mary and Martha. As well, he discovers in the classics of the Christian faith and church history that people have found many ways of drawing close to God. For example, while many of the differences in the ways Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists and Anabaptists chose to worship had biblical roots, some were simply related to worship preferences and quite theologically neutral.

However, Thomas makes clear that this is not where we are to stop. If we are to grow as Christians, we should learn from others and develop other aspects of our relationship with God, other ‘sacred pathways’. The goal, he firmly writes, is ‘not self-actualization or spiritual self-absorption, but to feed our souls so we can know God in a new way, love him with every cell of our being, and then express that love by reaching out to others.’ In fact he meets objections at every turn.

For example there may be concerns that such ideas could unleash all kinds of conflicting opinions on the form and content of group worship, encouraging individualism and a focus on self instead of on the way God reaches out to us in Christ in the church service. Each congregation, it would appear, is full of conflicting temperaments whose needs may not be fully met by the corporate worship service.

Thomas is very quick to firmly state that it is ‘neither wise nor scriptural to pursue God apart from the community of faith. Our individual expressions of faith must be joined to worship with the body of Christ.’

While unanswered questions remain, this is a thought-provoking and readable book, valuable for enriching our devotional life. It challenges us to examine how we are handling our personal worship, whether this best suits our spiritual temperament, and suggests that there may be other possibilities or ‘sacred pathways’ to follow.
 

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