Do I Have to Keep a Journal?
Donald S. Whitney
Occasionally
I am asked, “Does a Christian have to keep a journal in order grow more like
Jesus Christ?” Of course not. There is no command in Scripture—explicit or
implied—requiring the followers of Jesus to keep a journal. And while I’ve
written and spoken of the benefits of keeping a spiritual journal, I've never
written or said that the Bible anywhere obligates Christians to keep a
journal. In fact, I have never read or
heard anyone making such a claim.
Moreover, there is absolutely no evidence—biblical or otherwise—that
Jesus kept anything like a spiritual journal.
While we credit the Lord Jesus Christ (since He is a member of the
Triune Godhead) with the ultimate inspiration of all the written Word of God, the
only account of Jesus physically writing anything during the days of His
humanity is when He stooped to write on the ground in John 8:6. That is not to imply that the omniscient Son
of God was illiterate in His incarnation.
For the New Testament refers to Jesus reading Scripture aloud (Luke
4:16), and it is hard to imagine Him receiving an education where one is taught
to read but not to write.
So if
the Bible does not require a Christian to keep a journal (indeed, a person can
be both a devoted Christian and yet completely illiterate), and if Jesus did
not keep a journal, why do I encourage followers of Jesus to consider
journaling and why did I include entire chapters about this practice in some of
my books?1 I recommend to Christians the
discipline of keeping a spiritual journal because (1) something very much like
journaling is modeled in Scripture, and because (2) believers throughout church
history have found journal-keeping so beneficial to their growth in grace. For as
long as I have written on the subject of spiritual disciplines, I have sought
to advocate only those disciplines which are taught or modeled in
Scripture. Without this God-inspired
means of
evaluation, anything and everything that anyone pronounced as profitable for
his or her soul could be touted as a spiritual discipline Christians should
pursue. Apart from a Sola Scriptura
standard to guide Christian spirituality, anything from the trivial to the
heretical could be claimed as equal in value to personal disciplines as basic
as Bible reading and prayer or interpersonal disciplines as important as
hearing God’s Word preached and participating in the Lord’s Supper. And while there may be some intramural debate
among Bible-believing Christians about whether certain practices do have
scriptural support, it is crucial to recognize the importance of God’s Word as
the sufficient means for assessing “everything pertaining to life and
godliness” (2 Peter 1:3).
Can we say, then, that there is a biblical
basis for journaling? While the evidence
for it is clearly not as strong as for a personal spiritual discipline like
prayer, I believe that something very similar to what has historically been
called journaling is found in Scripture by example. In the Psalms, we repeatedly find David writing
things such as, “Incline Your ear, O Lord, and answer me; For I am afflicted
and needy” (Psalm 86:1). Cries like these are not unlike a believer today
writing a heartfelt plea to the Lord in a journal. When, in the book of Lamentations, the
prophet Jeremiah recorded his Godward feelings about the fall of Jerusalem, he
was doing something not very different from the Christian today who types his
or her Godward feelings into a word processor file named “Journal.” Of course, unlike the words of David and Jeremiah
in Scripture, no believer’s writings today are divinely inspired. But the example of these men in writing their
prayers, meditations, questions, etc., provides scriptural validation for
Christians today to do the same.
A
second reason I advocate journal-keeping is because of the sanctifying benefits
that so many Bible-believing Christians throughout history have attributed to
the practice. Jonathan Edwards found the
discipline so helpful that he kept journals or notebooks of various kinds. He penned a diary, a five-hundred page
journal of “Miscellanies” (basically thoughts on theology), and enormous
notebooks with “Notes on Scripture,” “Notes on the Apocalypse,” and reflections
on “The Mind.” A separate collection of
“Miscellaneous Observations on Scripture” includes more than ten thousand
entries made from 1730 to 1758.2 And the
first biography published in America—still in print and still powerfully used
by the Lord—was primarily a missionary’s journal to which Edwards attached a
short biography and called it The Life and Diary of David Brainerd.
I know
only one person who keeps a written record of insights into Scripture, prayers,
significant life moments, etc., on a scale comparable to Edwards. Unlike Edwards, most journal-keepers—whether
they write by hand, on a word processor, in a blog, or some other way—are not
daily journalers. Regardless of the
frequency of their entries, however, they journal because God blesses them in
it and also because it helps them practice other spiritual disciplines found in
Scripture. For instance, one friend has
told me that he tries to write simply “one key thought” from his Bible
reading. He reports that “Some of the
most meaningful, the most convicting, the most ‘blessing’ and reinforcing
perspectives I’ve ever gotten from Bible study have come from my daily
journaling process. . . .God has been pleased to bless this discipline in my
life, far more than [I] can express.”3
As Scottish pastor and author Maurice Roberts put it, “The logic of this
practice is inevitable once men have felt the urge to become molded in heart
and life to the pattern of Christ.”4
So, do
you have to keep a spiritual journal?
Well, if you are enrolled in my Personal Spiritual Disciplines class at
the seminary and you want to pass, the answer is yes. Otherwise, no; journal-keeping is not
necessary for Christlikeness. Many of
the greatest Christians in history have kept journals, and many equally godly
men and women have not. But I urge you
to consider whether you might be among those who would find journaling an easy
and practical encouragement the Holy Spirit would use in your growth in
grace.
Don Whitney is associate professor of biblical spirituality
at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of several
books, including Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (NavPress, 1991)
Spiritual Disciplines Within the Church (Moody Press, 1996), Simplify Your
Spiritual Life (NavPress, 2003), and Family Worship (The Center for Biblical
Spirituality 2006).
Copyright © 2009 Donald S. Whitney.
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1 See
the chapter on “Journaling . . . for the Purpose of Godliness” in Spiritual
Disciplines for the Christian Life and the section of six short chapters on
journaling on pages 94-105 of Simplify Your Spiritual Life.
2
Marsden, George M. Jonathan
Edwards: A Life (New Haven &
London: Yale University Press, 2003)
474.
3 From
personal correspondence.
4 Roberts,
Maurice. “Are We Becoming Reformed
Men?”, The Banner of Truth, Issue 330 (March 1991) 5.