signposts

The Spiritual Life. What's that even mean? Everybody's got their own idea of what it's all about. Some people limit spirituality to all that Eastern mysticism stuff thinking it's all about meditating to a higher state of consciousness until you reach ultimate godness or something along those lines. A more popular answer in the church is that spirituality is determined by our private devotional lives. Those people feel they are spiritual when their daily routine includes some form or devotional Bible reading and prayer time. They are content with church attendance, blessing meals, and following an unwritten code of spiritual maturity as means towards a thriving connection with God. The irony befalling their situation is that their goal of self-righteousness is the very thing starving the inner life they claim to nurture.

Jesus spoke to this in Matthew 23. "Everything they do is for show....[They] are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside [they] are filthy-full of greed and self-indulgence!...[They] are like whitewashed tombs-beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people's bones and all sorts of impurity. [They] try to look like upright people outwardly, but inside [their] hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness."

Striving so hard to look righteous on the outside simply leads to a critical spirit, bitterness, anger, and judgmentalism. They must expend so much energy to keep up the facade of perfection, constantly comparing themselves to others who don't match up. Aren't those the very kinds of things we're trying to leave behind by nurturing this spiritual life? Keith Green understood this controversy when he wrote, "Somehow I feel that it would be more pleasing to God if I wasn't 'doing my duty' at all, but I was madly in love with Him, constantly praying to Him and living off His Word. In fact I know this to be true, but I can't seem to 'give up' my 'devotional life.' I am afraid that my soulish flesh will just take advantage of my leap of faith and turn me into a Word-less, prayer-less monster."

So we must turn our attention about the spiritual from the external to the internal. The spiritual life is just that, the life of the spirit, that very hunger in the soul of man that cries out for more. In our efforts to renew the inner life of the spirit by focusing on the external is like washing only the outside of the dishes, or decorating a coffin. So let's abandon our striving for external spirituality and allow a renewed inner life to transform our public life. This naturally begs the question, how does one go about renewing the inner life, which is exactly where we'll pick up next time.