Between the Trees

Thanks to some discussion here and elsewhere, I’d like to clarify what I was saying in the last post. I was not meaning it to be some sort of systematic assessment of the word spiritual in its various uses, and it was not meant to be a theologically-precise discussion of complex issues.

What I was (and am) essentially saying is that when most people in 21st century America (including the girl I was talking to) use the word “spiritual” to describe someone, they mean that this person has a particular disposition toward answering life’s hard questions with some sort of transcendent, mystical explanation. They assume that if the person weren’t a Christian, they would probably be a Buddhist, or a Deist, or meditate every afternoon in a circle of crystals. Its all the same thing. This is most definitely not me. If I weren’t a Christian, I would in all likelihood be Christopher Hitchens or Sam Harris. I am innately suspicious of anything that sounds like spiritual mumbo-jumbo, even if it isn’t. Indeed, some of the reasons I say this are very real issues I wrestle through in living and a child of God.

However, that said, let me offer two definitions of spiritual with which I wholeheartedly agree.
First, we could speak of spirituality in the sense of recognizing that everyone has a soul and, thanks to being an image-bearer of God, is inclined to worship something. I absolutely agree with this idea. I am a spiritual person because my heart seeks to worship something, creating my problems with idolatry. I am a spiritual person because I have a soul, as well as a body, and that Jesus works healing in my soul as he one day will in my body. I am a spiritual person because something deep within me yearns for God and tries to fill it with other things. However, for me personally, these other things are very unspiritual in the sense I was using the word in the last post. They are sex, reason, power over others, money, and the intoxicating sense of feeling I’m smarter than everyone else. These are the sins that plague me, and I am not inclined in trying to meet any of them to appeal to spiritual answers. If I did not believe Christianity were true, I would not be reading Deepak Chopra. I would be reading Sartre and Nietzsche.

Second, we could speak of spirituality as that experience of the truths of God which moves us in our deepest, most intimate being. This is absolutely true, and while I’ve tasted only the most meager crumbs of it so far in my young life, it is essential to being a Christian. We could call this Christian spirituality (with the adjective making a world of difference), or perhaps Christian mysticism (a term I prefer since, while not more precise, at least has some excellent grounding in history). However, there is a key difference between this and the world’s spirituality: Christian spirituality starts with the reality that God really is, and then experiences flow from that truth. When our culture seeks spirituality, it seeks experience and finds pseudo-religious ways to attain these experiences. In Christian mysticism, we seek after and encounter the living God, which then profoundly affects us. The difference is key, however. For the non-Christian, if Jesus doesn’t engineer the experience, they’ll look to some other source. The fact that Christ himself is a part of it is just accidental. But to truly experience God in the way he desires, we start the other way around. Whether or not we have the experience at a given point in time, we cling to the Triune God as the thing which cannot be abandoned. Our spiritual sense of union and communion come from the fact that HE IS, and if He isn’t, then they are not spiritual experiences in this sense of the word at all.

So both of these things are good and needful. I believe them both deeply and truly. But all that said, neither of these things are meant by our culture when it speaks of spirituality. To rearticulate what I said earlier a little more clearly: Christianity is truly true, and this touches our souls and moves our hearts in profound ways. But if it wasn’t, I don’t want what gets sold as “spiritual” in Barnes and Noble. I’ll just have a bottle of gin.