Fred picked up a book and learned a new thing called contemplative spirituality

...but he didn't learn everything about it. This is not a brand new article, but relevant…as more people all the time are picking up this new thing...only it's not new at all, really...

Hungry for God
www.christianity.ca

Spiritual formation is not new but it has been rediscovered, and it is attracting Evangelicals.

After serving 32 years as a lay leader in an Evangelical Missionary church, Fred Clark began to feel a need to grow closer to God. Regular worship services were not enough. Although he appeared mature in the externals of faith, on the inside “I wanted and needed to grow,” he says.

At first he wasn’t sure what to do. “I had no real idea what that growth would look like or what was possible.”

So he went to his pastor who recommended the book Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth. This well-known book (more than one million copies sold since its debut in 1978 and named one of the top ten books of the century by Christianity Today) is by Richard Foster, a Quaker from Colorado.

The book includes chapters on meditation, prayer, fasting and study (“inward disciplines”); simplicity, solitude, submission and service (“outward disciplines”); and confession, worship, guidance and celebration (“corporate disciplines”).

Oops, while the article continues with more things that are filling people's spiritual hunger, it kind of neglected to mention just a few more things in Foster’s book. Poor Fred, I guess he never noticed or learned about the bad stuff…things like:

"...faulty views on the subjective leading of God (pp. 10, 16-17, 18, 50, 95, 98, 108-109, 128, 139-140, 149-150, 162, 167, 182); approval of New Age teachers (see Thomas Merton below); occultic use of imagination (pp. 25-26, 40-43, 163, 198); open theism (p. 35); misunderstanding of the will of God in prayer (p. 37); promotion of visions, revelations and charismatic gifts (pp. 108, 165, 168-169, 171, 193); endorsement of rosary and prayer wheel use (p. 64); misunderstanding of the Old Testament Law for today (pp. 82, 87); mystical journaling (p. 108); embracing pop-psychology (pp. 113-120); promoting Roman Catholic practices such as use of “spiritual directors,” confession and penance (pp. 146-150, 156, 185); and affirming of aberrant charismatic practices (pp. 158-174, 198)."

-Mysticism Part 2 (www.svchapel.org)

It seems that all kinds of people are forgetting to mention, let alone notice, these things when they refer to Foster and his ever so popular books and Renovare and all that stuff. Hmmm...it's almost as if finding the silence transcends all commandments of God to not participate in pagan practices or vain repetions, etc.

Anyways, as the above article explains, rediscovering spiritual formation is definitely the latest new thing. As if there is such a thing as a new thing...

That which has been is that which will be, And that which has been done is that which will be done. So there is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1:9