“In the Spiritual community the Word of God alone rules; in the emotional, self-centered community the indovidual who is equipped with exceptional powers, experience, and magical, suggestive abilities rules along with the Word. In the One, God’s Word alone is binding; in the other, besides the Word, human beings bind others to themselves. In the one, all power, honor and rule are surrendered to the Holy Spirit; in the other, power and personal spheres of influence are sought and cultivated. So far as these are devout people, they certainly seek this power with the intention of serving the highest and the best. But in reality they end up dethroning the Holy Spirit and banishing it to the realm of unreal remoteness; only what is self-centered remains real here. Thus, in the spiritual community the Spirit rules; in the emotional community, psychological techniques and methods. In the former, unspohisticated, nonpsychological, unmethodical, helping love is offered to one another; in the latter, psychological analysis and design. In the former, service to one another is simple and humble; in the latter, it is to strangers treated in a searching, calculating fashion. – from “Life Togehter 40”

… A person who sins is refusing to accept the love which our Father wishes to pour out upon him or her. Sin says no to love.

Sin is tragic because it is the only thing which can prevent us from reaching our eternal happiness. Unfortunately, sin not only harms the sinner but also impedes the Lord’s divine life and love being poured out upon the whole body of Christ.

On the other hand, the Lord’s statutes are directives enabling us to receive God’s love. They are also the avenues leading us to our eternal salvation.

Listen to the tenderness in Jesus’ words as he says; ‘It is mercy I desire and not sacrifice.’ I have come to call, not the self-righteouos, but sinners.” (Matt 9:13)

Many persons see comuity because they are afraid of loneliness. Because they can no longer endure being alone, such people are driven to seek the company of others. Christians, too, who cannot cope on their own, and who in their own lives have had some bad experiences, hope to experience help with this in the company of other people. More often than not, they are disappointed. They then blame the community for what is reallyt tehir own fault. The Christian community is not a spiritual sanatorium. Those who take refuuge in community while fleeing from themselves are misusing it to indulge in empty talk and distraction, no matter how spiritua this idle talk and distraction may appear. In reaity they are not seeing community at all, but only a thrill that will sllow them to forget their isolation for a short time. It is precisely such misuse of community that creates the deadly isolation of human beings. Such attempts to find healing result in the undermining of speecha d all genuine experience and, finally, regignation and spiritual death. from “Life Together” 81-82

When we become a burden to ourselves, when we don’t want to keep on going, when we are afraid of the mountain lying in front of us, when guilt feelings weigh heavily on our mind, when we feel we have been lied to and victimized by the world, then we need only one thing – we need a person who we can fully trust without reservatio a person who understands everything, hears everything, a person who bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, forgives all things. We need a person to whom we can says: ‘You are rest, you are gentle peace, you are the longing and the one who stills it’ (Ruckert). We need a person under whose eyes our suffering disappears and our heart opens up in silent love, a person who gently takes our burden from us and frees us from our fits of rage and from all our fears. In so doing, this person delivers our soul from this world … Now the greatest of all miracles is that every individual has and can find this person because this person calls each of us to himself on his own initiative, offers himself, invites us. This person who is our rest, our peace, our refreshment,, and our deliverance, is Jesus Christ alone. He alone is trul human. And in this true humanity he is God – From “A Testament to Freedonm 235-236

As the number of Americans belonging to a house of worship declines, some athletes are finding a new sense of spirituality in swim, bike, and run.

Published Sep 5, 2024

Elaine K. HowleyFollow

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Photo: Hannah DeWitt/Triathlete

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The first time I saw a shooting star was several hours into a nearly 18-hour swim from Newport, Vermont, to Magog, Quebec, in 2011. We’d launched the 25-mile adventure in the cool water of Lake Memphremagog at midnight, smack into a 20-mile-per-hour headwind.

The struggle to make progress amid the chaos of that chilly September night meant I zoned in on my swimming in a way I hadn’t before, and suddenly, I realized hours had passed since my last fully coherent thought. I was so in the moment, swimming along meditatively while managing the waves and uncertainty around me, that I had lost all sense of time.

I looked up at the sky. A streak of silver flashed across the dark dome. In that glorious moment, I felt at one with the universe. Swimming was no longer just a physical experience, but a spiritual one.

It turns out I’m not alone. This phenomenon is documented in a recent study, “The Church of the Sunday Long Run: Endurance Sport as an Alternative to Institutional Religion?” conducted by Dr. Kathleen Mroz, assistant professor of theology and religious studies at Emmanuel College in Boston.

For the study, Mroz interviewed 63 people who self-identify as either long-distance runners or triathletes. She asked whether they felt their participation in endurance sports bore a relationship to their feelings on institutional religion. The responses Mroz received were eye-opening, she says.

“The conversations were a lot deeper than expected,” Mroz says.

A moment of inspiration

Mroz, a runner who joined a triathlon group in 2018, noticed a pattern among her circle. Whenever the concept of church and spirituality would come up during a group workout – as it does when there’s a theologian in the mix – several people would share that they don’t go to church anymore.

“This is where I pour out my heart,” Mroz admits. She was pained by the decreased enrollment many religious organizations have seen in recent decades. In 2020, the number of Americans belonging to a house of worship (church, synagogue, or mosque) fell below the majority for the first time, according to a poll conducted by Gallup.

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Mroz wondered whether something else – perhaps endurance sports, which have enjoyed rapid development in recent decades – was filling the theological void theoretically left by this growing absence of organized religion.

“I started thinking maybe I should actually talk to some more people, and then it took off way bigger than expected,” she says.

She started with her immediate circle of triathlon friends, and as word got around, she conducted some five dozen interviews. Some of the quotes she included in the study show that many athletes feel quite spiritual about endurance sports, and many use their time engaging in it to ruminate on some of life’s biggest questions – prayer, perhaps, by a different name.

Filling a spiritual void with sport

During the study, Mroz heard stories of endurance sport shepherding athletes through just about every life situation — from commemorating the anniversary of a loved one’s suicide to moving forward in recovery from substance abuse.

Many interviewees clearly saw the overlap between sport and religion, but many also insisted the experiences are fundamentally different. For example, one participant told her, “Church… is more of a grounding experience, while running is more of a coping mechanism and form of escapism. No one can reach you on a run. You can come [up] with solutions to problems without even trying.”

Another noted that a fellow runner and Vietnam veteran “started running with us because the weekends are when his friends commit suicide. He realized he could run and just be with people without having to talk about it, and he credits running with why he is alive.”

Yet another respondent put it simply: “Religion is a mess and causes confusion. Running is simple.”

Religion is a mess and causes confusion. Running is simple.

Mroz is careful not to suggest that endurance sport is a religion per se, but to argue that for some people, endurance sport functions as an alternative or supplement to institutional religion.

This is true for Father Thomas Elitz, a recently ordained Jesuit priest who’s also a marathon runner. “I know that running calms me and keeps me level-headed about things,” Elitz says. “Compared to before I started running, I find myself a little less stressed and a little more even-keeled about my life because there’s some kind of meditative aspect to it.”

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He says these feelings are especially powerful when he’s running at dawn or dusk, “at those transition times,” when he can be particularly contemplative while immersed in nature.

“There’s a tranquility and a peace to it that I just enjoy,” Elitz says. “The scripture of St. Paul talks about peace as one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit and living into that while running is accepting a sense of peacefulness.”

Communion and community

A shared sense of purpose and community is also a key feature of both religious groups and endurance sports groups. Mroz notes that community aspect is a big part of why she fell in love with triathlon in the first place: “Beyond just getting the training and learning the skills, we were also really helping each other through a lot of tough stuff.”

One respondent in Mroz’s study said she felt a sense of communion after falling into step with another runner she didn’t know on the trail one day. Suddenly, she was “running two miles with a man she had never met before, ‘talking as if we had known each other our whole lives. Nowhere other than running can I connect so easily with a stranger… Runners have an implicit trust and affinity.’”

Dr. Andrew Davis, professor of Old Testament at the Clough School of Theology and Ministry at Boston College and a long-distance open water swimmer, says he’s also had spiritual experiences during swims.

“The way I think about swimming and doing a long race is really coming from a place of spirituality. I connect with the experience in the same way I connect with other experiences of spirituality,” he explains. “It’s the same feelings and experience that I have going to church or meditations. They go hand in hand for me.”

Davis says he thinks this shared experiential connection between swimming and spirituality comes down to the fact that “a lot of swimming, in particular, feels meditative. I think because you’re restricting your sensory input,” it can trigger the same effects as a silent retreat might. “You’re just quiet for seven or eight days and that experience of quieting yourself down, your body, your senses, really brings you to a place of receptivity and openness to the Divine in a way that we just can’t get to in our everyday lives because there’s so much sensory input.”

He continues, “ I feel like going for a swim, especially in the lake, is a mini-version of [a silent retreat]. You can’t hear, your sight is limited to what’s at the bottom of this murky lake, and you’re just kind of shutting all systems down for a little bit.”

Synchronity of body and soul

Giving the body a focused, repetitive task like striding or stroking for a long period “gives our mind freedom, and the sprit also, to breathe and to blossom. So much of our consciousness in everyday action is being attentive to how our bodies are moving in space, so giving our bodies a task to do on repeat, I think gives our mind and spirit an opportunity to come to the foreground in a way that it’s just not able to in everyday moments,” Davis says.

That synchronicity of body and soul, working in harmony, is also part and parcel of why some athletes say they feel in touch with the Divine when engaging in endurance sports, but also a means of improving their corporeal existence.

As one interviewee noted, endurance sport has helped her heal a poor relationship with her body. “Madison described her first time running in a sports bra as a ‘religious experience,’” Mroz writes. “As someone who lives in a larger body, Madison says, ‘the feeling of rain hitting my stomach was so freeing. It was beautiful.’ Nevertheless, she wishes that more people realized that endurance sport, for her, is not a means to lose weight but to celebrate her current body and what it can do.”

The neurobiology of sport and spirituality

A new and emerging field in theological research says here may be a neurobiological element to the numinous feelings some athletes experience when pushing to their physical limits. Neurotheology – the neuroscience of theological belief – has suggested these experiences may be based in the inner workings of the human brain, with some of the same regions that make sex and drugs pleasurable being involved in religious sensations.

Some research has shown the frontal lobe of the brain – what Dr. Andrew Newberg, a neuroresearcher who has investigated spirituality in the brain, calls the “attention area” of the brain – lights up when a person is meditating or having a spiritual experience. That region, which is also home to higher cognitive functions, is also active during exercise.

This overlap in location may account for some of the simultaneity individuals report, but there’s much more study to be done before a full picture can be painted.

The downsides of sport as a spiritual outlet

While endurance sport can fill a spiritual and community role for some practitioners, it’s not without its drawbacks. Though some like to claim there are no barriers to entry for would-be athletes, plenty exist, from high cost of gear and entry fees to a lack of racial and ethnic diversity.

A misunderstanding or discounting of one’s own privilege in pursuit of endurance sport can also be problematic. “Statements like ‘everybody can do a marathon’ or ‘everybody can quality for the Boston Marathon if they really try’ can be extremely toxic and isolating,” Mroz writes, noting that one interviewee summarized this problem by saying “there is always some element of grace involved, it is not simply a matter of deserving or earning.”

An element of selfishness is inherent to endurance sports, which can prevent some people from participating, Mroz reports. A hyper-focus on the body can lead to disordered eating and mental health issues are prevalent in sports such as triathlon.

Across the board, excessive involvement in these groups can lead to relationship tensions for some and addictive behaviors for others. Injury and illness can threaten a person’s ability to fully engage with endurance sports communities the way they’d like, and the emotional and physical letdown that often occurs after completing a big goal can be a dangerous period for some athletes.

As one interviewee said, “in the end you have to go back to reality. Ironman is not fixing any problems. When it is over, what do you do?”

Still, many endurance athletes insist their circle is welcoming and open to all-comers, which some feel hasn’t been traditionally true for some religious groups. And for disciples of the Church of the Sunday Long Run, meeting up with a group of fellow endurance athletes on a regular basis provides the grounding, the discipline, and the community they need to thrive.

Finding God in a workout

Nevertheless, it seems there’s something innately human about feeling awed or reverential when you’re intensely focused on a particularly task – whether that’s prayer or reaching the finish line. That state of flow can lead you to feel as though you’re connected to the universe and operating on a higher plane, fully integrated with your own sense of purpose.

But is this the definition of God?

Perhaps for some. But Davis says for those who don’t have an organized, Western religious background or a developed sense of spiritual life, “to explain it without the ‘God’ language, there’s two countervailing movements that I feel when I’m swimming. One is self-transcendence and the other is humility.”

By self-transcendence, he means “the experience feels somehow bigger than I am in my everyday life. The experience feels more capacious, bigger, more wonderous than the everyday stuff of our lives.”

Concurrently, he says, it’s “profoundly humbling, which is kind of the opposite experience. As soon as you feel like you’re part of this bigger thing, you also recognize the smallness of yourself vis-à-vis that bigger thing. It’s this paradoxical experience of feeling bigger than I am in my everyday life and recognizing how small I am.”

I certainly understand what Davis is saying as I think back to when I spied that meteorite zipping along, light years above Lake Memphremagog more than a decade ago. The smear of stars surrounding it and the indigo sky that spanned 180 degrees of vision above the waterline humbled me, reinforcing just how tiny I was in that vast lake. I laughed out loud at the absurdity of my hubristic efforts to reach the far shore.

But continuing on felt like the full realization of my physical potential, and the only thing I was designed to do throughout that long moment stretching from dusk to dawn and beyond.

It was an intensely somatic experience, but also one in which I was able to bathe briefly in the light of the Divine – whomever and whatever that might be – lying just beyond the edge of our current understanding

Monday September 2, 2024

Hi this is Pastor Jim Driskell of Christ Lutheran Church with the NCTV 45 thought for the Day.

Happy Labor Day, whether you’re hearing this at the shore, camping, in the city, hope you’re having a nice three day weekend. Labor Day, to me, is the most depressing holiday of the year. It’s the downhill slide into short, dark, cold, days, and good by to the relaxed days of summer.

This is from a very recent post from John MacArthur. The Rev Dr MacArthur, who is also a college/seminary president stood up to the very radical attempts of the Los Angeles County government, attempts to shut down churches. Seems in LA County stores for alcohol, tatoos, gambling, were ok, but churches weren’t, and it wasn’t just LA County, churches were treated as some evil place that needs to be controlled. Well LA certainly isn’t unique beginning with the Roman Emperors like the sick twisted Nero, Caligula, etc who tried to shut down Christian churches, interestingly it’s always only just the Christian churches that they try to close down. Up through the times of Madame LaFarge, Hitler, Stalin, Mao to this very day with the sick humanists in the world, including the American leaders who shut down the Unite States and seemed especially concerned about shutting down Christian Churches. MacArthur stood against this and was severely persecuted and harassed by authorities. Ultimately MacArthur sued the county and the state and September 2021 was awarded a judgement of $400,000 against both for violating the churches first amendment rights. We are going to be talking about standing for Christ this week.

I’m Jim Driskell the pastor of Christ Lutheran Church 1302 E Washington St, New Castle, Pa check us on the web Christlutheran-new castle.org questions comments contact me on the website. Sunday worship is at 10:30am all are welcome, with the NCTV 45 thought for the day, God bless your day.

Tuesday September 3, 2024

Hi this is Pastor Jim Driskell of Christ Lutheran Church with the NCTV 45 thought for the Day.

There are a lot of people who count on the average American to be pretty passive, pass the problem to the next guy, not my problem, hey what can you do? I don’t know about you, I hear it constantly. I can’t say I always succeed, but I’m not the type to give up.

Well here’s my selection for my this American isn’t going to stand for it anymore. Last July Captain Adam, captain of a large container ship, was traveling past the Somalia coast, off the eastern shore of Africa. This area is notorious for pirates, yes, there really are pirates in the 21^st century, even as close as the Caribbean. Yes, there really is. On the bridge of this very large vessel, Captain Adam sees a vessel approaching, that well, don’t have to paint me no picture, he knew what these guys were about. He tried some evasive manuevering, I can tell you from experience, trying to get onboard one of those ocean going vessels. But the pirates did manage to get alongside and up to the weather deck.

Instead of just surrendering, or, they did have weapons, fighting it out, Adam chose a third way. Once you get on one of those boats and start going below deck, it starts to get a little disorienting, if you have been on one of them you know you can get a little lost. Adam took advantage of that and led the pirate crew down deep in the ship and secured the hatches behind them so the pirates were being slowly trapped. Adam finally met them led them even further where his crew was and basically dropped the net on the pirates without a single shot. The US Coast Guard had been called and arrived to take the pirates into custody. No one hurt, nothing stolen and a crew of pirates being brought back to the United States. Piracy is punishable by those who capture pirates on international waters. The Coast Guard was responsible for bringing them back to the US for trial

I’m Jim Driskell the pastor of Christ Lutheran Church 1302 E Washington St, New Castle, Pa check us on the web Christlutheran-new castle.org questions comments contact me on the website. Sunday worship is at 10:30am all are welcome, with the NCTV 45 thought for the day, God bless your day.

Wednesday September 3, 2024

Hi this is Pastor Jim Driskell of Christ Lutheran Church with the NCTV 45 thought for the Day.

Back to the Rev Dr John MacArther who is the pastor of Grace Community Church, a mega-church in California, and a very prominent Bible teacher, who has been teaching on the Bible on nationwide radio and television for forty years. Needless to say someone like that who is prominent, also sets themself up as a target of bullies and unfortunately state and local governments have become very imposing in general and on the church in particular. While Grace Community Church was making every good faith effort to contend with the covid outbreak, nothing they were going to do was ever going to be enough for the people in the local government with an agenda, and an antagonism toward the Christian Church. The Christian Church has weathered many much more difficult epidemics of various diseases, e.g. the Black plague. The church was the place where people could go for help, to get comfort and encouragement to face the epidemic. Dr Martin Luther dealt with many epidemics during his time as a Christian priest. He was not about avoiding ministering to those who were in need. For the record, I followed Dr Luther’s example in my own ministry during covid. Some people got sick, none as a result of church attendance, and I did not miss one Sunday of worship. Dr Luther wrote “I shall ask God to mercifully protect us, I will fumigate the air, … If God should wish to take me, he will surely find me, and I have done what is expected of me…I shall not avoid a place or person but go freely as stated above.” What time is the church needed more than in a time of crisis. It is the duty of the Christian pastor to go and serve where he is needed. Rev Dr Martin Luther did and was of service to many as was the Rev Dr John MacArthur and in my own humble way, the Rev James Driskell. Our call is trust and faith in Christ and to serve His people even in the most difficult circumstances and I am proud to serve in the example these men and many other men set.

I’m Jim Driskell the pastor of Christ Lutheran Church 1302 E Washington St, New Castle, Pa check us on the web Christlutheran-new castle.org questions comments contact me on the website. Sunday worship is at 10:30am all are welcome, with the NCTV 45 thought for the day, God bless your day.

Thursday September 5, 2024

Hi this is Pastor Jim Driskell of Christ Lutheran Church with the NCTV 45 thought for the Day.

Dr MacArthur’s article is about how the church, the leaders of the church have to stand against what Paul describes, “…the cosmic powers over this present darkness.” Call me dramatic but anyone who is deliberately trying to undermine the Christian church by targeting it to close its doors, they are the spiritual forces of evil as Paul refers to in Ephesians 6: 10-20. Yes there are a great many people in local government who are well meaning and not about to abuse their authority. The local officials where that church was located were not about to abuse their authority. They were right, the other powers were wrong. Paul writes to the Ephesians: we are called to be overseers of the church “…God’s steward, not self-willed, not quick-tempered, not pugnaicious, not fond of sordid gain … holding fast to the faithful word which is in accordance to the teaching so that they will be able to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict, as he wrote to Titus.

MacArthur writes: “Pastors have the God-given obligation to cultivate discernment among their congregations. And that discernment is needed to give their people an understanding of the truth necessary to protect them from the ubiquitous error that incessantly assaults them.” Pastors and churches are not a wax-nose that people try to fit to their liking to make them happy. The disciples all suffered a great deal to be faithful to Jesus and people down through history to this very day continue to suffer as Christians. Why? Our promise isn’t in this world, Jesus said the world will hate you because it hates me. It’s in the eternal world of the resurrection where we will live in the body and in a way God intended us to live since creation. We have to be strong and persevere through what the world throws at us.

I’m Jim Driskell the pastor of Christ Lutheran Church 1302 E Washington St, New Castle, Pa check us on the web Christlutheran-new castle.org questions comments contact me on the website. Sunday worship is at 10:30am all are welcome, with the NCTV 45 thought for the day, God bless your day.

Friday September 6, 2024

Hi this is Pastor Jim Driskell of Christ Lutheran Church with the NCTV 45 thought for the Day.

We have been talking about the Rev Dr John MacArthur the pastor of Grace Community Church and how he stood against the local authorities who tried to stop Grace Community from holding worship during covid. The people at Grace Community were not negligent and did everything they could reasonably be expected to do to prevent passing the disease. Very few people at Grace even caught covid and no way to know where those people caught it. There certainly wasn’t a big outbreak from those who attended worship. And when more than in a crisis should the church be open and ministering to people? Most of us remember right after 9/11 during the week churches were open and impromptu worship and prayer was being held. Why wouldn’t the same happen for covid? MacArthur writes: “The Lord’s preachers and teachers are to be polemicists against unsound doctrine that goes under the guise of biblical truth.” A polemicist is one who stands by their position makes forthright well-founded gains. Paul was writing to Titus in Crete and Paul’s words, there were many rebellious men who were trying to undermine the church. MacArthur writes and quoting Paul: “They were not to be ignored, much less tolerated, but were to “be silenced because they [were] upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not teach, for the sake of sordid gain.” We have this idea in America that we cannot assert whatever we want and demand to know what we want. That is not the Church of Jesus Christ. We have to have the confidence of people to trust their pastors like they do their lawyers, doctors etc. Part of that is realizing that a genuine Christian pastor is not going to step away from the church to defend her against external or internal attacks. I took an oath in the military, many times to protect and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. It is even more so in terms of defending the church of Jesus Christ.

I’m Jim Driskell the pastor of Christ Lutheran Church 1302 E Washington St, New Castle, Pa check us on the web Christlutheran-new castle.org questions comments contact me on the website. Sunday worship is at 10:30am all are welcome, with the NCTV 45 thought for the day, God bless your day.