Dissident Discipleship

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I have been reading Dissident Discipleship by David Augsburger (Brazos Press, 2006). When I first selected this for my summer reading, I did so reluctantly thinking “just what the world needs ANOTHER discipleship book!” However, as I began to read last night, I was pleasantly surprised. Augsburger tackles the issue of following Christ from a moderate Anabaptist perspective. He begins with the broad idea of spirituality and proceeds to gently move to a genuine Christian worldview. To bring us to understanding of true spirituality in the sense of the gospel, Augsburger illustrates spirituality as monopolar, bipolar, and tripolar. He asserts that, “The emerging vision of spirituality in the twenty-first century is largely monopolar and exclusively subjective. It is centered in the spiritual nature of the person, in the person s essential humanity and core humanness. This monopolar dimension is universal to all humans and necessary to their humanity.” Augsburger defines Monopolar Spirituality as “the inner, subjective encounter with ones own inner universal self, with essential humaness that is reverent toward the uniqueness of the spiritual core that is universally present in all human beings. When respected, honored, expressed clearly, and realized more completely, it blossoms into the private inner experience of sacredness without sacred place, ritual, or tradition—of religiousness without formal religion.” Bipolar Spirituality “is both an inner, subjective experience of coming to know one’s true self and an objective experience of existence before God. It is the spirituality of a subjective, reflective life lived before the Transcendent, a life in search of and in compliance with the Divine.” Finally Tripolar Spirituality “possesses three dimensions: it is inwardly directed, upwardly compliant, and outwardly committed. The spirituality of personal transformation (the inner journey), the experience of divine encounter (the God-ward journey) and the relation of integrity and solidarity with the neighbor (the co-human journey with friend and enemy, with neighbor and persecutor) cannot be divided.”

Augsburger places these views of spirituality on a continum with modified views between each. He claims that Christidom has primarily found its place from 1.5 (modified Monopolar) to 2.5 (modified Bipolar) on the continum. He explains, “The position at 1.5 relates the self to a mirroring god who reflects the individual hopes, understandings, and often pretensions of the self. The mirroring god may indeed be an extension of the self as one prays to a being created in one’s own image. Type 2 recognizes a God who is Other and who makes divine demands that shape our lives. The benevolent-self position at 2.5 sees neighbor love as a desirable response of gratitude but not as essential to lived spirituality.”

I have just begun the journey through this book, but I believe Augsburger is fairly correct in his assertions at least based on my experience. While Christian community experiences are lived out differently everywhere, the focus in my realm was clearly in the Bipolar spirituality. My early teen and young adult church exposure was assimilation of truth to do “battle” with the enemy without much realization that the gospel had secured the victory.

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