Practicing & Malpracticing the Presence of God
Five pastors completely bungled George Fox's search for spiritual direction, but their mistakes point out the essentials of pastoral care.
Eugene H. Peterson
October 1, 1984
Five pastors had a turn at providing spiritual direction for George Fox in the first months of his religious awakening. Each of them blew it. Fox was in his late adolescence when he ran into this discouraging sequence of spiritual misdirection. He does not identify the nature of the trouble that prompted him to seek out the pastors. Sometimes he refers to it as "despair and temptation." It is clear, though, that he was seeking for God. And not one of the five pastors noticed. That the five did badly is not surprising. George Fox was complex. Spiritual direction is difficult, and pastoral wisdom is not available on prescription. Every person who comes to a pastor with a heart full of shapeless longings and a head full of badgering questions is complex in a new way. There are no fail-proof formulae. Fox, who later founded the Society of Friends, tells the story in his Journal. Reflecting on these five unsuitable but representative responses from our pastoral colleagues of three hundred years past, we learn not only what not to do, but their glaring oversights suggest what we must cultivate in order to provide sound spiritual direction. Nathaniel Stephens
After some time I went into my own country again, and was there about a year, in great sorrows and troubles, and walked many nights by myself. Then the priest of Drayton, the town of my birth, whose name was Nathaniel Stephens, came often to me, and I went often to him; and another priest sometimes came with him; and they would give place to me to hear me, and I would ask them questions, and reason with them. And this priest Stephens asked me a question, viz, "Why Christ cried out upon the cross, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' and why He said, 'If it be possible let ...
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