Hunger: Satisfying the Longing of Your Soul

Jon Dybdahl, Hunger: Satisfying the Longing of Your Soul. Review and Herald, Autumn House, 2008.

There is a renewed interest in spirituality among Seventh-day Adventists today. An example is Jon Dybdahl's book, Hunger: Satisfying the Longing of Your Soul. It is illustrative of a tendency I've noticed among many Adventists who are excited by "spirituality" and "spiritual formation"--though he is writing to an Adventist audience (the book was published by the Review and Herald, and distributed through Adventist Book Centers), he seems deliberately trying to avoid discussing specifically Adventist contributions, concerns, and authors. The Sabbath and the Second Coming are strikingly absent, as is the Adventist understanding of the nature of man, the health message, the Adventist practice of "the ordinances," "the morning watch," Sabbath School, prayer meeting, testimony meetings, camp meetings--traditional elements of Seventh-day Adventist spirituality. Ellen G. White, the most important and most widely read spiritual author of the church, is mentioned only in passing.

But something more foundational is also missing. Christian spirituality, I would argue, must be Trinitarian, joining through the Spirit in the prayer of the Son to the Father; Christian spirituality means living the new life in Christ through the Spirit sent by the Father. It is rooted in God's self-revelation and giving of himself in his Son, in the incarnation and the cross, and in the joyful expectation of his return in glory. These concepts are all strangely absent. "The key role of the Holy Spirit" isn't mentioned until p. 135.

Christian spirituality is grounded in grace--but Dybdahl doesn't mention grace until p. 119. Prior to this, the focus is on us and our actions striving toward God, rather than on rooting ourselves in his grace which has been poured out to us in Jesus. Dybdahl disparages the historic Christian creeds as "doctrine," but they all focus on inserting our experience into the Trinitarian narrative of grace: God created us, gave us his Son, sustains us by His Spirit.

Dybdahl writes from his own sense of hunger, and suggests he didn't find what he needed in traditional Adventist spirituality. He says, "People assumed that I should pray, but they never required me to read a book on prayer or meditation" p. 15). And yet I wonder--in his "20-plus years of [Adventist] education" did no one ever suggest that he read Steps to Christ--not even the chapter, "The Privilege of Prayer"?

Dybdahl refers to a "double longing" of God for us, yet the focus is on our "striving," our "hunger," our "thirst," and not on God's grace, his feeding us, his quenching of that thirst. Some of his critics have branded his spirituality, "Catholic," but I could not help but contrast his description with this from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

2560 "If you knew the gift of God!"⁷ The wonder of prayer is revealed beside the well where we come seeking water: there, Christ comes to meet every human being. It is he who first seeks us and asks us for a drink. Jesus thirsts; his asking arises from the depths of God's desire for us. Whether we realize it or not, prayer is the encounter of God's thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him.

2561 "You would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." Paradoxically our prayer of petition is a response to the plea of the living God: "They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water!" Prayer is the response of faith to the free promise of salvation and also a response of love to the thirst of the only Son of God.

I find it puzzling that in the chapter on worship, which draws lessons from the Old Testament, he doesn't mention the sanctuary--a central theme in Seventh-day Adventist theology. Nor does he mention the call in Revelation 14 to worship the Creator. Nor does he explore the experience of the Sabbath. He says nothing about the communion service. Worship here seems to be a matter of reaching out to God; God's reaching out to us in Creation and Redemption is mentioned only in passing. Absent is the concept of God coming to us in Word and sacrament, which was the heart of the Reformation theology of worship.

The chapter on repentance, confession, and forgiveness focuses on human psychology--I would have preferred a theological focus on the cross of Christ.

Dybdahl's introduction of so-called "inclusive language" (God as Mother) is jarring, without context (p. 47). It places greatest emphasis on Jesus' passing similes and downplays his consistent address of God as Father (and ignores the Trinitarian implications: Jesus speaks of God as Father because he is that Father's Son). [1]

His discussion of "Eastern and Western Meditation" (p. 61) is overly simplistic. Much historic Christian spirituality is rooted in a Neoplatonic world view, going back to such texts as "The Cloud of Unknowing" and Pseudo-Dionysius' "The Celestial Hierarchy." This is the basis for a spirituality of ascent--and that's what Dybdahl tends to describe.[2]

In discussing "visualization" (p. 64) I wish he would have done more to warn against some popular techniques, such as guided visualization, that are forms of self-hypnosis. Also, I think he should have taken the opportunity to reference Ellen White's counsel to "spend a thoughtful hour each day in contemplation of the life of Christ" (Desire of Ages, p. 83), to show that this is already part of the Adventist heritage.

In speaking of community and small groups (chapter 7), he might have mentioned those ways in which Adventists have experienced community, such as in Sabbath School, at prayer meeting, in their practice of the Lord's Supper, in testimony meetings.

The chapters on fasting and simplicity (8 & 9) would have been a great place to discuss Adventist teaching on health, on simple dress, on fasting from worldly amusements.

Chapter 10, "Why No Urgency?" would have benefited from a discussion of the Advent hope, and the Adventist understanding of Laodicea (which would have fit splendidly with his theme).

Chapter 14, which discusses spiritual classics and autobiographies, would have been strengthened by reference to Adventist classics such as The Autobiography of Joseph Bates, Life Sketches, and Steps to Christ.

The book gives the impression that Dybdahl, frustrated by some of his spiritual experiences as an Adventist, is eager to share with us books and techniques that have helped him. But he does not appear to have integrated his new learnings with his experience and knowledge of Adventism. Nor does he take care to show how some practices that may seem new and unusual are not unknown to Adventists.

But I know of a different side to Dybdahl. I heard him give a series of presentations last summer. I went in apprehensively, wondering if those talks would be more of the same. They were not. There, I heard an emphasis on grace. There, he integrated his new suggestions with an appreciation for the Adventist heritage and the context of those to whom he was speaking. It was almost as if this book and those talks were written by two entirely different people. I wish this book were more like those talks, and I hope Dybdahl takes the time to revise this volume thoroughly--he does have some worthwhile things to say to Adventists on the subject of spirituality.

[1] For more on this question, see Alvin F. Kimel, Jr., ed. Speaking the Christian God: The Holy Trinity and the Challenge of Feminism. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1992.

[2] A good history of Christian spirituality is Jill Raitt, ed., Christian Spirituality. Three volumes. New York: Crossroad, 1987.