Eugene Peterson went home to his Lord this past Monday, October 22.
I spent two weeks with Eugene at a retreat center in southern California in October 1989, where he taught “Spirituality and Ministry,” my first intensive course in my Doctor of Ministry program at Fuller Seminary.
Sitting at his feet for those two packed weeks, as well as talking with him personally while taking a walk together, cemented my impression that he was just the leader and mentor pastors like me needed. This class was long before he became a household name in the evangelical world and decades before he published his bible paraphrase The Message that has now sold 20 million copies. In fact, much of the material he shared with us those two weeks I recognized in his later books.
I discovered he had a unique way of doing in person and through his writing what every good pastor does—holding our feet to the fire to truly live as Jesus lived without compromising biblical truth, yet gracefully doing so in ways that ultimately encourage rather than condemn.
During the course, Eugene spoke about reading all of Dostoyevsky’s novels until the great Russian became his “ally”—someone far removed in time and space whom we come to know well enough that they become a sounding board for us.
I had already decided CS Lewis would be such an ally and had determined to read everything Lewis wrote. After those two weeks in 1989, I found Eugene Peterson as my second ally.
Looking up from my desk, I find 16 of his books on my shelves, well short of the 30 he has written but enough to immerse me in his thought so that I could often answer the question: “What would Eugene Peterson say or think about this?”
A Pastor’s Pastor
While the fresh language of The Message helped me and millions of others hear portions of Scripture as if for the first time, Peterson’s ruminations on Jonah about what it means to be a pastor or spiritual leader is the one I have repeatedly re-read.
Titled Under the Unpredictable Plant, it is a warning and corrective for the many pitfalls I tried to avoid throughout my career—often, I’m sad to say, unsuccessfully. Peterson’s prophetic voice about chasing glittering fancies of what the world deems “success” (a significant temptation for me) and focusing energy in the wrong places are timeless.
During my years on the faculty of the Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology, I regularly taught a class called “Pastoral Theology and Leadership” and built the course around this book. It captures the realities and dangers of pastoral life so well that it spoke to pastors from a far different culture and worldview than my own.
In remembering Eugene this week, I searched my book Paradox Lost: Rediscovering the Mystery of God and found several major themes where he has stretched and influenced me. Below are several quotations from the book, with Peterson’s quotes highlighted in red.
The Mystery of God
Peterson is always inviting. As an early chapter introduces the idea of the mystery of God, Peterson describes such a mystery with his customary light touch that invites exploration:
As we begin to explore this “known/unknown” paradoxical landscape, Eugene Peterson reminds us that God’s mystery is not frightening: “There are necessarily many mysteries that we will never comprehend. (A god you can understand is not God.) But they are good, light-filled mysteries, not ominous evil-tinged mysteries.”
Earthy Reality
Peterson never tires of reminding all of us—especially me as a pastor—that our spiritual lives are necessarily grounded in a particular time and place with all its gritty reality. It’s easy focus on “big ideas,” but God dwells in the ordinary details of everyday life. As I wrote about Jesus’ storytelling, he brings this point home:
As we have seen, many of Jesus’ stories offer shocking, paradoxical choices that make us uncomfortable. Open-endedness pulls us into the story. We identify with characters and are vicariously forced to make our own choices. It is an error to draw points, lessons, or principles from Jesus’ stories; too often we kill by dissection. Instead, we should seek the same dramatic impact they made on their original audience. Jesus’ goal is never idle contemplation, but up-on-our-feet response.
In discussing Jesus’ storytelling, Eugene Peterson believes Jesus does not care much about telling abstract truths about God but rather “intends to get us involved, our feet in the mud and our hands in the bread dough, with the living God who is at work in this world. This is why Jesus tells stories, not to inform or explain or define, but to get us actively in on the ways and will of God in the homes and neighborhoods and workplaces where we spend our time.”
Against Sacred vs. Secular
One of my life-long battles has been against a false “spiritualizing” dualism that separates reality into opposite spheres labelled “sacred” and “secular” as a way to believe God cares much more about some people and activities than others God cares about others. Peterson has been a faithful and welcome ally in this battle, constantly reinforcing that God cares about Everything.
Echoing Abraham Kuyper, Eugene Peterson challenges all the above dualisms:“The Kingdom of God that Jesus announces as present here and now is not a religious piece of the world pie that God takes a special interest in and enlists us, his followers, to partake of and be filled with, a world that specializes in prayer and worship, giving witness and doing good deeds. No, it comprises Everything and Everyone.”
Imagination
One of Peterson’s great services to me (and many others) is understanding how we are tempted to live our spiritual lives depending on our own willpower, with preachers like me loading folks down with heavy exhortations to “try harder.”
Peterson’s consistent focus instead on the power of imagination has been tremendously meaningful to me; I want to follow his example however I can. His statement about willpower as a “sputtery engine” is a special favorite of mine:
“I repeatedly encounter imagination as I read through the corpus of Eugene Peterson, one of my favorite guides into the wild landscape of Scripture. In book after book, Peterson lifts up imagination as an essential ingredient of spiritual growth. Two sentences have especially stayed with me: “If we want to change our way of life, acquiring the right image is far more important than diligently exercising willpower. Willpower is a notoriously sputtery engine on which to rely for internal energy, but a right image silently and inexorably pulls us into its field of reality, which is also a field of energy.”
Whether in person or in his books, I experienced Peterson as an explorer, always pushing boundaries and trying to move, as CS Lewis described it, “Further up and further in.” I want to be that kind of explorer as well.
In the end, Eugene Peterson was a faithful small church pastor who became famous because his integrity to his calling was the example so many of us desperately needed, and still do.
