Too many Christians fear the word spirituality; however, all religions essentially are about spirituality. Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus are spiritual people as are Christians. Those Christians who think they have a lock on the spiritual world, don’t like to use the word (spirituality) because it applies to all religions and this seemingly denies them of the “exclusivity” they seemingly think they need. It’s much like the word mystic or mysticism. Let me explain.
A mystic is nothing more than a person who has a “relationship” with the spirit realm: with God! Mystics know God and the religious know things about God! Spirituality if anything is about your “experiences” with the Spirit while religion is about your knowledge of doctrine or theology. Nothing wrong with the latter unless you camp there and don’t move on to the former.
Human life is a triune adventure embracing being, relating, and doing.
We Americans understand the DOING!
We fall down on the BEING alot though as we have it backwards: thinking that doing produces being. Wrong! And then there’s the RELATING part of humaity-spirituality. As a reminder, the relationship part of our being is fourfold: to God, self, others, and creation. By the looks of this planet (and I’m not an Al Gore fan), we’ve totally lost sight of the latter, and the cry of creation in the 8th chapter of Romans.
Isn’t it interesting that in the last two decades Americans have become more spiritually minded while the church has become more politically oriented and socially minded (can you say homophobic and fundamentally right wing- not necessarily right).
Help us get back on track Holy Spirit!
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