Going to the Gym with God (Part 8): Training for Christian Discipleship

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There is an extended discussion of Christian discipleship in 1 Corinthians 9, where Paul compares our life in the Lord to the life of an athlete competing in the ancient Olympic games. He starts by describing the freedom that is ours in the Gospel. We are no longer bound by the regulations of the Jewish law, he says (9:20-21), but the consequence of that freedom is that we have become “slaves of the Gospel,” bound by the love of Christ to be “all things to all people” (v. 19).

To help us understand this paradox—that the call of Christian freedom is really a call of servitude to Christ—he asks us to picture an athlete in training. “In order to win the prize,” he says, “the athlete must put his body through a strict regime of rigorous training.” He then compares it to a boxer, “beating his body into submission” so as to win the prize in the ring (v. 26b-27). Athletes, in other words, are free to compete, but in order to compete well, they must submit to exacting disciplines of physical training.

It’s all metaphorical, of course, using the rigors of athletic training to help us more fully to appreciate the demands of Christian discipleship, both what’s required of us as the Lord’s followers (“beating our bodies into submission”), and also why it's required (“in order to get a crown [of glory] that will last forever”). It’s a metaphor the New Testament uses repeatedly. In Hebrews 12:1, we’re to run our race with perseverance, in Philippians 2:16, we’re to “press on towards the finish line,” in Galatians 5:7 we’re to take pains to ensure no one “cuts in on us” in the race, and in 2 Timothy 4:7 Paul talks about his life as an apostle in terms of “finishing the race.”

So this metaphor is all over the New Testament. And the more I explore the “theology of exercise,” the more I wonder if it's more than just a metaphor. At the very least, it’s no wonder to me, that when the authors of the New Testament wanted a fail-safe image for what the disciplined life of a follower of Jesus really looks like, they reached for, of all things, athletic metaphors to make their point.

There is, after all, something character-forming that happens inside us when we undertake some exercise routine or other and then discipline ourselves to stick to it, regardless the screaming in our brains to give it up when the going gets tough, and never mind all the distractions trying to tempt us away from keeping at it.

I have found this to be true, at any rate. Disciplining myself to exercise a little bit every day, even when I would rather do anything but exercise, benefits my heart, soul and mind, as much as it does my strength. It develops determination. It forms mental toughness. It strengthens my resolve in other areas of life. It shows me that my limits are actually further past where I always assumed they were.

I’m not the only one who has found this, by the way. I read a fascinating and very practical guide to life-coaching a few years ago by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, called The Power of Full Engagement. They argue that, contrary to received wisdom, the key to being effective in life is not so much time management as it is energy management. They suggest that if we really want to be successful across all the domains of life—from our relationships to our work to our families to our hobbies—we need to put disciplined routines in place that help us manage our spiritual, emotional, and physical energy well. That energy then becomes the fuel for attaining goals and achieving success.

It’s an interesting read, and I’ve found it helpful to put some of their ideas into practice; but here’s where it goes from “hmmmm….” to “whoah….” Because Loehr and Schwartz argue that the key to energy management is the intricate connection between our physical energy and our spiritual energy.

On an on-going basis, the most important source of energy for our daily effectiveness is our physical energy. This is maintained by things like regular exercise, healthy eating, restful sleep, and so on. Our physical energy is the “fundamental source of fuel” that energizes all the others, from our emotional, to our mental, to our spiritual energy levels. If we are not stewarding our physical energy well, then the energy required for difficult emotional tasks, or tough mental exertion, or meaningful spiritual practices just won’t be there when we need it.

There’s a flip-side to the coin, though, because Loehr and Schwartz have also found that the energy we use to make the kind significant changes necessary for us to get better at stewarding our physical energy well—to give up the video games that are interfering with our sleep patterns, maybe, or to quit the smoking habit that’s slowly killing us, perhaps, to start eating better, or to figure out how to work an exercise routine into our schedule—the energy needed for these kinds of life-overhauls, they argue, is actually spiritual, not physical.

It is our spiritual energy—the deep-down commitments we make to higher causes and important principles—the Christian commitment to things like stewardship and discipleship, for instance—that motivates us for the changes needed to become more disciplined at managing our physical energy well.

In other words, they found that there was a positive feedback loop between spiritual and physical energy. Spiritual energy is the motivator for positive change, which leads to better management of our physical energy, which deepens the wells that our spiritual energy has to draw on, which improves our physical energy, and so on.

I found this concept profoundly helpful in my own understanding of the interplay between physical exercise and spiritual formation. Physical energy provides the fuel for deeper spiritual formation, and our spiritual commitments provide the motivation for getting better at stewarding our physical energy well.

Of course, Paul had never read The Power of Full Engagement when he talked about Christian discipleship in terms of the rigorous training an athlete undergoes, but it may be that he recognized this principle, even if he wouldn’t have put it in quite those words back in the first century AD. The words he did put it in are perhaps less technical but no less true: “Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training," he claims. "They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it get a crown that will last forever.”

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