Thinking about your spirituality? Wondering if there is something deeper and more meaningful for your life?
You’re not alone. George Barna, the researcher, has unearthed a condition of modern American life:
“…recent studies at our Barna Research Group shows that more
and more people are plagued by a nagging emptiness that is anchored deep within themselves. It is a crises of meaning that affects
millions of Americans.”
Millions of people feel an emptiness and recognize it as a lack of spiritual growth on their part. And so they search for something spiritual to fill that void. Unfortunately, many are searching in the wrong place, their energies being diffused by an errant understanding of
spirituality.
I was recently contacted by the publishers of a web site devoted to exploring spiritual issues for businesspeople. “Would I like to contribute some content?” they wanted to know. Before I answered, I viewed the site. The first article discussed the spiritual feelings the author experienced during a walk in the forest. Another discussed the spiritual
connection he felt with other humans as a result of an exercise in a seminar.
All of the other articles repeated the same themes. Spirituality, according to these writer, was an experience of solitude, an emotion, or a sense of one’s similarity to other human beings, or even a sense of being part of nature.
I declined the invitation. I’m not quite sure what the site was about, but I know it wasn’t spirituality.
The site was another example of the trend to “dumb down” spirituality. Sort of like the political correctness trend. The more general and vague a concept is, the more people you can include in
it, and the less meaning and power it has. Everyone subscribes to the concept of “freedom,” for example. But you see considerable drop off when you link it to “personal responsibility.”
Spirituality at the turn of the century has come to mean, in the common usage, almost anything the speaker wants it to mean. Have a warm feeling as the result of a laugh you
shared with someone? Must be spiritual. Feel a little introspective while out on a sailboat? Gotta be a spiritual experience. Sense a bit of a connection with another human being? You must truly be spiritual soul mates.
Don’t misunderstand my position. These are all valid and valuable moments. However, while all these
experiences, and others of similar nature, may be warm, pleasant and even intuitive, they aren’t spiritual. To call them spiritual is to detract from that which really is spiritual, and to distract people from the search for the genuine article. Provide people with a cheap substitute, and you often knock them off the quest for the better original. The ice cream store won’t sell very much Haagan Dazs, for example, if they give away Dairy Queen.
So, if these kinds of experiences aren’t spiritual, what is? Let’s start at the source. There is a body of knowledge concerning things spiritual available to us. It’s contained in the Bible. The information concerning things spiritual in the Bible is really quite clear, consistent and pretty
simple. God is spirit. Anything having to do with God is spirit –ual.
God has, for His own reasons, lopped off and spread around parts of the
“spiritual-ness” that originated with Him. There are, for example, totally spiritual beings. The Bible refers to them as angels and demons.
In addition, God has imbued part of His spiritualness into human beings. There is a spiritual part of every human being. It’s that part of us that lives on after our physical body dies. It is partially characterized by its hunger for communication with its creator.
We can all relate to that. There are probably few human beings who haven’t had, in moments of solitude and reflection, a sense of the infinite, a hunger to contact God. That’s our spirit hungering for communication with its maker. It is a predictable, naturally occurring event. We are all some part spiritual. And that part longs for completion by communion with its maker, in the same way that a male instinctively searches for a female that will
complement and complete him, and vice-versa. One of the most natural things in the world is to search for God. That’s spiritual.
So, spiritual has to do with our search for communion with God. We grow spiritually when we move toward that relationship with our maker, or more intimate with Him.
Anything else, all the other prescriptions for spiritual growth, miss the mark and detract our spirits from their instinctive destination.
