If you're answer is somewhere outside, there's a pretty good chance you have a naturalist tendency in your spiritual experience.
I should tell you that I scored a "9" (out of 30) under the Naturalist temperament on my Spiritual Temperament Assessment. So I am by no means and expert. In fact, I tend to be more like Spongebob Squarepants in his Ode to Life Indoors.
Despite the Naturalist temperament being my lowest score in my assessment, I have had a number of "naturalist experiences." I love the mountains. Unfortunately I don't get the opportunity to go very often, but I have lots of memories there. In my childhood, we would often take week long trips to camp in the mountains of Colorado. My wife, Sarah, and I took our honeymoon to the Enchanted Circle of New Mexico visiting the bustling mountain town of Red River. The next year we visited New Mexico's other ski center, Ruidoso. There is nothing quite like sitting outside, peering through the tallest pine trees I've ever seen (hey...I'm from West Texas...trees are a special thing....), drinking coffee, wearing your comfiest sweatshirt, and getting invested in a good book. Not to mention the rain in the mountains is other worldly. The high elevation makes the thunder seem like you are right there in God's front yard. It's thin space. Heaven and Earth are a little closer...literally and figuratively.
If you are a naturalists, there is probably some physical space you go to in hopes of experiencing God. Maybe it's taking a walk around your local park. Perhaps it's a vacation to the coast or the mountains. Maybe it's having a cup of coffee out on your back porch watching the sun set. Regardless of where it is, Naturalists have the innate ability to experience God through nature.
Naturalists experience God in His cathedral of creation (Sacred Pathways, 36). Naturalists can have a deeper experience of God digging in the garden than any church service could ever provide. They would rather be out on the lake, taking a hike through the forest, sitting in the deer blind, or swimming in the foamy waters of the ocean. For them, there is no place closer to God than being out-of-doors.
Naturalists in the Bible
You know the Bible is just chock-full of Naturalist examples. And honestly, to me that makes a lot of sense. Don't forget that the Bible was written thousands of years ago in the context of agriculturalist society. There were no iThings to keep them indoors. There were no emails to check, social media sites to peruse. The people of the ancient world were outside...doing stuff. It makes perfect sense then that God would use His creation to speak to His people.
The Creation Story is one of the threads that connects the whole of the Bible. The story of God begins in a garden and when God completes all things it is restored. As you move through the Bible, God was revealed to Moses through the burning bush, and then later parted the Red Sea, made the nation of Israel wander in the desert, and then gave them a land flowing with "milk and honey." Joshua would later experience a similar miracle as God would stop the flow of the Jordan River. A fun task for a Naturalist would be to thumb through the pages of the Old Testament (heck...just go through Genesis) and count the number of times God is revealed in "the wilderness."
I believe that creation is important to God and speaks to His nature in very physical ways.
One of my favorite passages of Scripture comes from the final pages of the Bible in Revelation 21:1 ff. In this passage is the grand finale of God's good work. The Revelator says, "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away." In this vision, God has recreated the earth as He initially intended it to be. And I believe that it will be an earth with all the physical wonders and majesty that it possesses even today, only times 1000000000! For the Naturalist, I think that is good news.
Thumb through the Psalms and you'll get a similar experience as the writers point to the wonders of creation as evidence of, and in comparison, to God's work in the world. A few that come to mind are Psalm 23, 29, 84, and one of may personal favorites 95.
As we have mentioned, Jesus is the ultimate example of all of these temperaments because he was the most holistic person to have ever lived. We see the naturalist temperament exhibited by Jesus in a number of ways. Like his ancestors, Jesus lived in a agriculturalist society unhindered by technological distraction. Jesus, being the ultimate teacher, often used things of the earth to as visual aides to his message such as sheep, seed, birds, and lilies. He also used a mountain and a plain as his pulpit.
The imagery continues deeper into the New Testament with the use of water in the sacrament of baptism. I have a number of friends that were baptized in the streams of a flowing river or just off the shore of the Pacific Ocean. I think there is something incredibly powerful about the act of baptism being performed out in "the wild."
Dangers of the Naturalist Temperament
In our class time, we took note of a few of the potential pitfalls of the Naturalist temperament listed by Gary Thomas in his book Sacred Pathways. One danger is individualism. The Naturalist must always remember that Moses came back down the mountain! Jesus spent time away in order to recharge for ministry among the people. The danger for the Naturalist is that they disappear into nature and become a woodland hermit named "Plays with Squirrels" (a Boy Meets World reference for all my readers who were children of the 90's).
[You're welcome, 90's child.]
The second potential pitfall we noted from Thomas' list was spiritual delusion. Like a number of the more "mystical temperaments" there is an opportunity for the Deceiver to turn our experience away from God and make it something it's not. Thomas suggests that every spiritual experience received in nature be tested by the truth of God. Discernment provided by the Holy Spirit is our only true guide.
Lastly, naturalists must protect themselves from the heresy of Pantheism. Pantheism skews our view of God by saying that "The earth is God." A contemporary example would be the James Cameron film Avatar. With a discerning spirit, the Christian Naturalist can pull from a number of things in this movie like conservation and care of the earth that can deepen our understanding of God. However, a diluted view might lead us to believe that earth, itself, is a god and we end up worshiping "Mother Nature" rather than "Father God." The Bible tells us the "earth is the Lord's and all it contains." [Psalm 24:1] Naturalists should always understand that creation is a vehicle by which we can experience God, it is not God in itself.
Practices
While we will be looking at spiritual discipline in the second half of this class, I want to be able to give a few practices to you that might be helpful in your daily interactions with God as we move through each temperament. So whether you're a dominant Naturalist, or one who desires to be more in tune with God through the work of creation, here are some suggestions:
1) Take your Bible outside and read it!
2) Schedule daily/weekly walks or hikes. Take the opportunity to pray (with your eyes open) and ask that God allow you to be more aware of His work through creation.
3) Make time in your week to do things outside such as gardening, hiking, camping, or going to the park.
4) Plan a vacation to a geographical region different than the one you live in. Go visit the Grand Canyon, the ocean, or stand at the foot (or the summit) of a mountain and think about how majestic and wonderful God is.
5) Visit your local zoo or aquarium and think about the intricacies of creation as you experience the animals God created.
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