Mystic At Heart: John Eldredge’s Remedy For The Digital Age

In recent years, self-help and productivity gurus have increasingly turned to ancient wisdom to inspire modern audiences. Few have done so as successfully as Ryan Holiday, whose books, like Right Thing, Right Now, apply the philosophy of Stoicism to modern life. His books have sold tens of millions of copies. Following Holiday’s advice, many people, from Silicon Valley elites to ordinary podcast listeners, regularly consult the sayings of the Stoics to manage their lives, pursue virtue, and face hardship.

Many evangelicals seem interested in doing something similar with Christian mysticism. Spiritual formation gurus like John Mark Comer and other modern mystics might not be quoting Marcus Aurelius, but you’ll hear names such as Brother Lawrence, Julian of Norwich, and John of the Cross.

John Eldredge, of Wild at Heart acclaim, has joined the chorus of those promoting Christian mysticism as the way forward for disenchanted modern believers. In his book Experience Jesus. Really: Finding Refuge, Strength, and Wonder Through Everyday Encounters with God, Eldredge invites Christians everywhere to become “ordinary mystics” and, by doing so, to live the life “God always intended [us] to have . . . It will prove an absolute rescue to [our] faith” (xxi).

According to Eldredge, becoming an “ordinary mystic” is the only way to combat being a “Disciple of the Internet,” a problem he perceptively defines and illuminates. But as insightful as Eldredge’s diagnoses of modern challenges to spirituality are, it’s worth asking, Why do so many evangelicals find mysticism appealing? Eldredge’s mysticism is likely less an essential aspect of Christianity that we’ve lost than it is the resurgence of themes from historical Pietism and early modern liberalism.

Ordinary Christians or Ordinary Mystics?

Eldredge says, “Discipleship to the Internet has shaped your soul to expect immediate answers to your questions; given you a deep suspicion to all forms of mystery; fueled your addiction that the ‘practical’ is the real stuff of life; while eroding your confidence that you can know anything for certain because yesterday’s facts are savagely overturned” (1). And so Christians must learn to live with one foot in the material world of information and reason and one foot in the unseen spiritual world. Ordinary mystics live in both worlds intuitively, according to Eldredge. Through their example, we can find guidance on how to get out of a materialistic, information-based mindset and get “back into the fullness of the life of God” (217).

So how can Christians become ordinary mystics and experience Jesus?

At this point, readers might expect a technically defined and narrow sketch of Christian mysticism or what it means to be an “ordinary mystic.” Christian mysticism, after all, has a long and convoluted history in the church with eccentric figures and different schools of thought such as the Dominicans, Franciscans, Benedictines, Carmelites, and Cistercians.

Eldredge instead drastically broadens the term to mean that every Christian prior to the Enlightenment could have been called a mystic. The list would include Jesus, the prophet Ezekiel, and the apostle Paul. Eldredge argues, “When we understand mysticism as simply the daily experience of God and his Kingdom, we can say that mysticism is the normal Christian life” (5, emphasis original).

The bulk of the book outlines how normal Christians can experience God and his kingdom in daily life. So far, the book sounds like usual evangelical fare. Yet Experience Jesus is ironically modern in the way it prescribes formulas for achieving spiritual growth.

Mysticism and Technique

According to Eldredge, modern people have a hard time accessing Christ’s benefits because the average person is “a functioning materialist, trained to be so from the moment of birth” (157). Mysticism is thus necessary for Christians to become attentive to God’s presence in daily life.

Yet for all the lamentations about the bare practicality of modernity with its internet searches, mysticism has often functioned as a kind of spiritual technology. If you do certain spiritual practices, you’ll have predictable results. Historically, mysticism tended to assume the philosophical categories of Middle Platonism and later Neoplatonism, which said that God is on a higher continuum than man, attainable via spiritual techniques. Therefore, through practices like negation and other ascetic means, mystics could ascend to God within themselves if they followed the prescribed process.

Mysticism has often functioned as a kind of spiritual technology.

Similarly, though Eldredge describes mysticism as being mysterious and spiritual, he can’t seem but to speak of it in terms of efficiency. Describing the effectiveness of one of his personal written prayers, he says, “It helps, my skeptical friends; it works . . . mightily” (74). Elsewhere he writes, “The Blood [of Christ] and the River [flowing from the temple in Ezekiel 47] are very powerful substances for the cleansing and healing of trauma. This is especially true in the trauma of spiritual attack, which can be terrible. Washing it away works” (157).

Eldredge prescribes his own prayers and spiritual practices throughout the book. He notes, “I often need to [call down Fire and Glory from the Lord] after a rough night of attack, to make sure there aren’t any lingering spirits still around. . . . Try it. You’ll see” (167). When spiritual exercises are prescribed and mixed in a kind of regimen that “works,” it ironically smacks of modern techniques and protocols you might find on . . . the internet.

Normalizing the Exceptional

While Eldredge originally claims the goal is for everyone to become ordinary mystics, he also alludes to the idea that we can develop into “mature mystics” (32, 78, 108), those who can ostensibly experience God even more than ordinary mystics (194).

He describes Scripture less like the revelation of God and his plan of redemption and more like a collection of texts that model the kinds of experiences many mystics should expect to have. So Paul’s encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, Isaiah’s vision of the heavenly throne room, and John’s visions in Revelation are what mystics can “literally” expect to experience (209, xix). He asserts,

I know several mystics who have “been” to the [heavenly] City as well, or seen it, or been given a vision of it. The mystic doesn’t really care. Remember—if you allow for mystery, you can experience God in many ways. If you demand the latest scientific proof of it, like a faithful Internet Disciple, you won’t enjoy much at all. (211)

Eldredge encourages Christians that they don’t need to understand all these practices to benefit from them. He discourages asking for theological clarity and seeking reasoned answers. “Be a mystic, friends,” he writes, “don’t get stuck in the mechanics” (135). This doesn’t sound much like testing the spirits, as Scripture instructs (1 John 4:1).

Eldredge might think he’s channeling the mystics of old, but much of what he advocates for sounds closer to early modern liberal theologians. As Friedrich Schleiermacher wrote in On Religion, “My heart is properly cultivated . . . and is not left to wither under the burden of cold erudition, and my religious feelings are not deadened by theological inquiries. You must seek these heavenly sparks that arise when a holy soul is stirred by the universe, and you must overhear them in the incomprehensible moment when they are formed.”

Mystics Don’t Need the Church

Another major concern is what’s missing in Eldredge’s vision for mystical practice: the church. Corporate worship, the preached Word, and baptism and the Lord’s Supper seem to have little place in Eldredge’s experience of Jesus. The only time he mentions church in the book is when he refers to its “impotence” (158).

Corporate worship, the preached Word, and baptism and the Lord’s Supper seem to have little place in Eldredge’s experience of Jesus.

Before there was a crisis of internet dependence, there was a crisis in philosophy and theology that caused 18th- and 19th-century Christians to doubt whether they could be certain of God’s existence. Modern theologians like Schleiermacher abandoned the usual means of piety, worship, and theology for more direct and immediate means of knowing God through, you guessed it, mystical experiences.

As Roger Olson summarizes in The Story of Christian Theology, Schleiermacher believed that the “essence of religion lies not in rational proofs of the existence of God, supernaturally revealed dogmas or churchly rituals and formalities, but in . . . the feeling of being utterly dependent on something infinite that manifests in and through finite things.” The desire to be spiritual but not religious has ancient roots and has never entirely disappeared from Western culture.

In a distracted age, mysticism at least recognizes the problems stemming from having a computer in our hands at all times. But we don’t have to perform mystical practices to experience God’s presence. That’s what living by faith and not by sight is all about. Even though our spiritual experiences ebb and flow, God still promises to meet us through his Word, his sacraments and ordinances, and his church. In Experience Jesus, Eldredge addresses an important problem with discipleship, but he points readers in an unhelpful direction.