God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)
Many are frightened because meditation has become something of a buzzword in New Age circles. But the differences between biblically based meditation and what we find in Eastern religions and the New Age movement are profound. Here are a few of them:
1. Unlike Eastern meditation, which advocates emptying the mind, Christian meditation call for is to fill our mind with God and His truth.
2. Unlike Eastern meditation, which advocates mental passivity, Christian meditation call on us to actively exert our mental energy.
3. Unlike Eastern meditation, which advocates detachment from the world, Christian meditation call for attachment to God.
4. Unlike Eastern meditation, which advocates visualization in order to create one’s own reality, Christian meditation call for visualization of the reality already created by God.
5. Unlike Eastern meditation, which advocates metaphysical union with “god,” Christian meditation calls for spiritual communion with God.
6. Unlike Eastern meditation, which advocates an inner journey to find the center of one’s being, Christian meditation calls for an outward focus on the objective revelation of God in Scripture and creation.
7. Unlike Eastern meditation, which advocates mystical transport as the goal of one’s efforts, Christian meditation calls for moral transformation as the goal of one’s efforts.
Today friendship has fallen on hard times. Few men have good friends, much less deep friendships. Individualism, autonomy, privatization, and isolation are culturally cachet, but deep, devoted, vulnerable friendship is not. This is a great tragedy for self, family, and the Church, because it is in relationships that we develop into what God wants us to be… Friendships…are there to be made if we value them as we ought – and if we practice some simple disciplines of friendship.