Inside-Out

Watch out for false prophets! They dress up like sheep, but inside they are wolves who have come to attack you. You can tell what they are by what they do. No one picks grapes or figs from thornbushes. A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot produce good fruit. Every tree that produces bad fruit will be chopped down and burned. You can tell who the false prophets are by their deeds.
(Matthew 7:15-20, CEV)

The shell of the passage concerns false prophets. But the nut of the passage speaks a much more practical message: "You can tell what they are by what they do."

Always, life is lived from the inside-out. Insides determine outsides. The internal always seeps out to the external. Being (who you are) always shapes your doing (what you do).

Institutional religious practice has encouraged attendance at services, study of sacred Scripture, prayer as an act of devotion and intercession, and acts of charity as a response of the will to God. To be sure, there is something to be said for spiritual disciplines, the practices that train the will and shape our volition. Repeated actions become habits, and good habits may do a lot of good in the world. But good habits may also lock us into behavioral patterns from which we may never break free in order to swim in the the deeper currents of the Spirit's flow.

Rote, outward practice of religion can hinder one's full development in the Spirit as much as any other rote, outward practice. The fact that it may be a "religious practice" does not necessarily mean that it leads to wholeness and spiritual adulthood.

Most always, Jesus proposes that persons attend to the interior in order to make a positive impact on the exterior world. In this passage, he uses the image of good trees and bad trees. The point is self-evident. The fruit appearing on the tree's branches always comes as a function of the tree's inner state, that is, the health of its roots and trunk. Trees that are healthy produce good fruit. But if the roots or trunk are diseased, the fruit will not be good.

As I've said often in this space, life is lived from the inside-out. When you and I address only the exteriors of behavior and action, we may be able to will ourselves to some positive result. But good fruit, lasting change, is a function of a healthy interior. Being leads to doing . . . not the other way around.

"You can tell what they are by what they do." You can see the inside by what shows up on the outside.

In daily life, when we address some afflictive emotion, knee-jerk response, or addictive behavior that lives within us by trying to deal directly with the problem, we may be successful for awhile. Lopping off the withered branch may eliminate an unsightly part of the tree, but it may not deal with aspects of the tree that are diseased at the deeper core of roots and trunk. For example, if I deal with my anger merely by trying to overcome -- and overwhelm -- the anger, I may gain some respite from it for a time simply by force of will. But in some form, the anger most always grows back. The same holds true for most any afflictive emotion, addictive behavior, or habitual response that lives within me.

The contemplative experiences of meditation, spiritual reflection, and deep inner prayer actually begin to work on the "tree" from the inside-out. These contemplative practices don't attempt to change one's surroundings. They don't obliterate the habit or behavior by force of will. They don't concentrate energies on producing fruit. They work within a different field, the interior field in which one sees the world and from which one responds to the events of daily life. They trust that working on the interior brings about organic change in the fruit that is manifested in the world.