jared patrick boyd

Summary: Proposes that constraints in terms of spiritual practices in the context of community, expose our inner desires, allowing them to be healed and formed by Christ.

You might do a double-take on the title of this book. Shouldn’t it read “Finding Freedom From Constraint”? There is no mistake here. It gets at the core idea (as many good titles do) that the author is proposing. As the founder of a missional monastic order, the Order of the Common Life, Boyd proposes that constraints, in the form of a rule of life of spiritual practices, is crucial in Christ’s transforming work in our lives. What he observes is that a crucial element to that transformation is communal practice. Our call to love God and one another cannot be practiced alone. We cannot love, and dies to our self-centeredness, without others. Nor can we die to pride and take on humility alone.

A crucial aspect of how constraint works to free is that spiritual constraints, like fasting, the constraint of food, lays bare our compulsions around food and what lies beneath (pain, trauma, grief) that we try to address with food. As we practice the constraint in community, we can offer these, with the support of others, to Christ for healing and transformation as we discover how deeply we our loved amid our disordered desires. The healing, ordering and purifying of desire allows us to burn more brightly, to “become all flame” for Christ.

The remainder of the book discusses six constraints that form a kind of rule of life–three that we choose and three to which we consent. The three we choose are silence and solitude, simplicity, and marriage or celibacy. In silence and solitude, we submit to the present, to simply attend to what comes, sifting and sorting our distractions, offering them to God, waiting for God, and coming to the place where we know and participate and rest in God. Simplicity is the constraint of our attention, through fasting as we pay attention to the meaning of food and eating, through clothing as we pay attention to what we wear and any attachments we have to clothing, and to our possessions and wealth. Marriage and celibacy have in common the giving away of one’s life for the sake of others. Boyd has some of the most original material on the constraint and practice of love in each state that I have seen and writes with special sensitivity to both gay and straight individuals who choose celibacy, guarding this as a choice rather than something imposed.

The three constraints to which we consent are formational healing, faults and affirmations, and discernment in community. Formational healing means allowing God access to all areas of our lives, open to God’s invitations, accepting the constraints of our stories and experiencing healing of disordered attachments that push God out of the center of our lives. “Faults and affirmations” is a communal practice in families and small groups in which we each confess our own faults and affirm others in their gifts and gracious acts. We practice discernment in community when we bring both personal decisions and those of a community to the community for their prayerful input, listening together for God’s invitation.

This is a book written for small groups and leadership communities to work through together. Each chapter concludes with practical ideas for pastors and church leaders, for small groups, and for parents. The author shares a number of ways he has practiced this in his own family with his wife and four children and vulnerably shares his own transformational journey. For those dissatisfied with the use of spiritual practices on an individual basis, Boyd offers a model of communal practice. And for those who wrestle with the tyranny of a life without constraints, Boyd offers a vision in which constraints free rather than bind.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.… (mehr)