"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."
Mere Christianity
This short article is to address the pernicious trap of making spirituality more spiritual than it is, of driving a wedge between being human and being spiritual. Perceiving spirituality as something separate from the physical will lead headlong into the death trap of always having to validate your faith by another or a newer spiritual experience, or by a new and more concentrated effort. This effectively removes the "rest from striving" that should be ours based upon the truth of justification by faith alone. It robs us of our humanity and makes spirituality completely esoteric and of little practical good on the earth. It is also my contention that it makes "ghosts" instead of real people. It creates an insipid spirituality that sees no connection between dirt under the fingernails, hearty laughter, an evening with Mozart and Merlot-and the death and resurrection of Christ. I believe it was the C. F. Allison who said, "Jesus was crucified between two thieves and likewise the Gospel is always crucified between two thieves, on one side, the thief of legalism and on the other the thief of mysticism. Legalism says I must do the good and abstain from the bad in order to earn the favor of God. Mysticism says I must experience in order to earn the favor of God. Both thieves essentially drive a wedge between my humanity and the enjoyment of the favor of God. The thief of legalism does this by suggesting that human pleasure is a bad thing. So I’m stuck between either denying a significant part of my humanness in order to earn the favor of God or denying God in order to be completely human. The thief of mysticism does something very similar in that it makes me perpetually unhappy and restless with the mundane. I most always work to escape the normal in order to get to the spiritual. Christianity asserts that experience is valid but its never experience minus life, its experience intertwined in the very fabric of life-birth, death, diapers, dinner, wickedness and worship.
Additionally complicating our ability to perceive this description of false notions of spirituality is a basic misunderstanding of the biblical definition of sin. Luther said (paraphrase) that there are two devils. There is the red devil that we all know to be the devil. He tempts us to commit fleshly sins such as lying, stealing, cheating, lusting, gossiping, and the like. We recognize him as the devil and we do our best to steer clear of him. But there’s another devil, the white devil, and he is far more dangerous than the red devil. He carries far more people to hell than does the red devil. This white devil tempts men to commit spiritual acts and attempt to sell them for righteousness. In other words, the white devil appeals to what we consider our moral ability. Another way Luther addressed this was by saying that the curse of the Law (the ten commandments) is that it demands of you what you cannot produce. No matter how virtuous you are and how much you do, the Law is always present whispering, "It’s not enough, you must do more." But Luther deemed the great villain the Devil’s whore. The Devil’s whore responds to the Law’s whispers, "You must do more" with, "Here’s how!" In other words, the voice of the Devil’s whore and the voice of the white devil are synonymous. Sin is not just the "bad" things we do but is certainly just as much the "good" things we do attempting to earn God’s favor. Sin is attempting to be god.
The reason this complicates my ability to perceive just how pernicious making spirituality more spiritual than it really is lies in the fact that my greatest sin is usually my religious striving, my noble efforts to climb the ladder up to God. Therefore, I tend to see my greatest sins as virtues when they are really nothing more than my response to the voice of the Devil’s whore. No wonder I am always in the trap of trying to transcend the physical, to become something more than I am, of never being able to rest in the finished work of Christ. The gospel rightly understood is power strong enough to make and keep me human because it makes me forsake my attempt to be god, to control my own fate. It gives me the strength to rest in my humanness, to be silently awestruck by Jesus’ word, "Tetelostei", and to wait in faith and hope for what God promises for the future.
The roots of this problem are embedded in the historical philosophical division between the secular and the sacred. This division whispers: "The eternal cannot break into the temporal." The physical, if not bad, is at least neutral." "Spirituality is not physical, the physical is not spiritual." In order to make myself better, I must escape or transcend my humanness. Again, my options for escape or bettering myself are either the mystical thief or the moral thief. The problem with either thief is that you are made into a slave. Because if you seek improvement through experience or performance, regardless of how much you accomplish, how do you know when you’ve accomplished enough? Essentially what is going on in either or both scenarios is that you are trying to crawl out of your body. So my goal becomes to escape the physical. God cannot be found in the common and mundane, I must escape the earth. I must transcend the physical, I must leave behind the fact that God completely "descended" in the flesh, that he assumed my humanity and when he "ascended" he took it all the way to heaven, thus affirming my humanness and giving me back the earth. In short, I must work in some way to make myself presentable to God rather than accepting and resting in God’s work for me.
Wendell Berry was in some sense asking the question, which is most God-grace or nature, the physical or the spiritual in the following assertion--- "....we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances will hardly balk at the turning of water into wine—which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is turned into grapes."
My point is that we tend to see the miracle as the "more" spiritual. Again, this is due to the fact that we don’t see the creation as spiritual. God couldn’t be in the normal; he must be in the extra-normal. In order to get to the spiritual we must escape the physical. God must come down in some greater way than He has already come down in Christ. These very notions have historically led to the Biblical concept of grace being redefined. If the spiritual goal is to escape or transcend the body, which is at best neutral, then "grace" is enlisted as a "power" to help us do that. All I need is an infusion of grace to help me transcend my humanness. Grace is now understood as competing with nature. The heart of the gospel is removed from the objective and historic acts of God in Christ and grace now operates as a spiritual influence in the heart of the believer and justification is made the consequence of sanctification. (I’m made right with God by new and fresh infusions of grace). Grace must be infused in order to eradicate nature (which is bad) and this process is what makes me "feel" justified before God. Again, the bane of "justification by spiritual work" has asserted itself. In this view, one is forced to trounce upon nature to make room for grace. However, the Biblical concept of grace is the gift of God revealed in Christ once for all delivered to the saints. He has "come down" historically and completely. All that’s left for me to do is believe it! But grace understood this way is at the same time much easier and much more exacting. It is easier because it says, "You don’t have to work; all the work has been done." "You don’t have to "climb up" to make yourself acceptable to God; God has come all the way down to make you acceptable to Him." But this reality is much more difficult to believe because it announces the death knell to religious striving. It offends my sensibilities and the suggestions of the white devil. It kills my attempts to be god by ascending the spiritual ladder myself. In this sense, Grace destroys the unnatural (man’s attempt to like God), man’s refusal to be natural. It reverses Babel, negating the necessity of man to ascend the spiritual ladder. Grace thus makes us what we are intended to be, human. Rather than grace perfecting nature by infusing what was lacking, it perfects nature precisely by delivering us from the curse of sin, which often expresses itself in trying to do and be what only God can do and be.
We have affirmed the fact that Jesus’ work on our behalf both kills and gives life. It kills by telling us that everything has been done to bring us to God, there is nothing left for us to do. Romans 6:1-7. 1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3 Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. 5 If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin-- 7 because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
What is this teaching? It is teaching that when Jesus died we died. Notice that Paul’s line of reasoning is: If grace is really completely unconditional and free won’t people simply abuse it by running up a sin account? Paul’s answer is, "No, you died to sin." Well, how are we to understand this affirmation? There has been a lot written about our union with Christ in His death and resurrection and as a consequence of our union with Him the position we now enjoy. But is that all that Paul has in mind when he affirms, "you died to sin"? Couldn’t the argument still be made that I might abuse my privileged position afforded by my union with Him in His death and resurrection by running up a sin account? Certainly. So Paul must have something more in mind here. What is it? It’s what we’ve been saying. Christ’s death killed sin (I died to sin) precisely because it kills every attempt on my part to do what only He could do. It kills sin in me because it is the final indictment against my religious striving. Now we can understand Paul’s reasoning-"If you comprehend the death of Christ, how could you continue to sin? Because comprehension of his death kills sin." (v. 7 because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.) So it is the death of Christ that kills our "ladder climbing" and brings us "down to earth". Comprehension of His death on my behalf (grace) rather than tempting me to run up a sin account, continues to kill me, but at the same time gives me glorious life. How so? That’s what I want to address now.
The work of Christ on our behalf believed by faith not only kills it also gives life-it resurrects us. How so? It gives life precisely because it kills our religious striving as we’ve already explained. When I’m freed from acting in the place of God, I’m freed to be human. Another way to say it is: Being born-again is not being infused with grace so you can make yourself presentable to God. Being born-again is being freed from the attempt to have to be God. This is always by faith in the declaration of free justification. Only when I am cured of my supernatural ambitions to do myself what God has already done completely, can I begin to be at home in the natural. I’m not born-again to some esoteric notion of spirituality. I’m born-again to the earth and the earth is born-again to me. I receive the earth back as a gift and rejoice in all its beauty. When by grace I am killed of my "ladder climbing", I am resurrected, and the curse is reversed. I receive the earth back as a gift.