A note to a friend about both / and spirituality

Why is spirituality tricky?

There's a big bunch of material whose basic strategy is to withdraw folks from this realm into the presence of God for a time with the expectation that this then charges us up to return to the world (which may be seen as a hostile and godless place). At first glance that may sound good, but taken to extremes, this is an essentially escapist spirituality.

You are smart enough to see the basic flaw. Experiential spirituality that becomes escapist easily trends towards a dualism in which creational reality is seen as evil or unimportant. Some spiritualities fall right into that nasty little hole and essentially deny the outside world. Of course, that will be to varying degrees and there are times in which withdrawal to seek God is totally apt and has great Biblical precedent (think of Jesus ducking off for a night of prayer away from everyone and everything). And there are some people for whom withdrawal into experiential spirituality is a natural disposition. That’s fine, but there’s a need to nudge such folk back to a ‘both / and’ relationship with God in which we both withdraw and engage.

(And, of course, there are others of us who need to be nudged away from our primarily objective spirituality and encouraged into the experiential and relational element.)

A better way is generally to cultivate a grounded and world spirituality in which our relationship with God arises from, is conducted within, and is directed to the everyday world in which we are called to live. This is the spirituality of an ‘engager’ who takes the created world seriously as the place where we must relate to God. Indeed, we may ask if it’s worth holding a faith that does not push us to meet and be with God in the creational greys in which we live and move and have our being.

But you are also smart enough to know that all this is another one of the both/ands with which the Christian faith is littered. A purely worldly spirituality needs the complement of experiential relationship with God and a purely experiential spirituality needs the complement of worldly groundedness. Thus Jesus occasionally withdrew, but then he returned to engage with his father’s world and will.

Whatever the mix, its good to apply this test: does this spiritual resource or practice help me know and know about God more closely through prayerfulness and the Scripture, be more Christ-like in an everyday sense, and does it equip me to engage with the world in active discipleship and service?