Spirituality: Heavenly or Earthly?

From the start of the Christian movement to the present day, various segments within the Christian community have given expression to a pallid kind of aesthetic, otherworldly spirituality. In popular religious terminology, to be “spiritual” has usually connoted the idea of otherworldly piety. We have been taught that a “spiritual” person is one whose inner eyes are cast heavenward in prayer and contemplation, focusing on the joys of the life to come. To be “spiritual” implies that one is life-denying; it suggests communing with one’s heavenly Creator by focusing upon the invisible realities and eternal mysteries of God’s holiness. To live “spiritually” is often thought of in terms of passive detachment from this person is really consumed with one agenda: to win souls for the kingdom of heaven. All other activity, such as that which seeks to address the physical, material, and social needs of this world, is inferior and lacking in priority.

The above teaching about spirituality derives largely from the Greek understanding of the psyche, the “soul” or “spirit.” The Greeks taught that the psyche is the nonphysical, immortal part of a person. At death it espcapes the body and makes its way back to the world of eternal reality. Though Paul was a Jew of the Diaspora and hence doubtless familiar with the Greek perspective concerning the psyche, he “never conceives of the salvation of the soul apart from the body. Salvation means the redemption of the body of the whole created order as well (Rom. 8:21-23).”

In Hebrew thought, a person is a body-soul. He is viewed as a unity, a single entity, an indivisible whole. To the Hebrews, a person is not a soul or spirit which now inhabits and will at death desert a body. None of the Hebrew terms translated “soul” or “spirit” refers to the nonphysical part of a human being; this is dualistic Greek thinking, which, unfortunately, has influenced our understanding of these English terms. In Hebraic thought, “soul” or “spirit” refers to the whole person or the individual as a living being. It stands for the person himself. “The Old Testament view of man is that he is an animated body rather than an incarnated soul.” In short, human beings live as souls; they do not “have” souls.

[Here he goes into a brief study of the Hebrew words for soul and spirit. The primary point being “Man’s ‘soul’ is primarily his vitality, his life—never a separate ‘part’ of man.” Spirit carries the idea of animation, that which invigorates and brings to life the total person, body and soul. “[True piety] meant to be fully human, every fiber of one’s being alive, empowered in passionate and inspired service to God and humanity.”]

Westerners often define spirituality as denying oneself, being detached from earthly concerns, and being intent on otherworldly values. By contrast, the Hebrews experienced the world of the spirit as robust, life-affirming, and this-worldly in character. Such was the “spiritual” orientation of the Hebrews. So-called spirituality did not come by negating the richness of life’s experiences or withdrawing from the world. Instead, they affirmed creation by finding a sense of holiness in the here and now. There was no division between the sacred and the secular areas of life. It was all God’s world, and it was to be enjoyed without a sense of shame or guilt. In Paul’s words, “to the pure, all things are pure” (Tit. 1:15). As trustees and stewards of God’s world, human beings were to live within it and use it in accord with divine directives. Again, in Paul’s familiar Hebraic idiom, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men” (Col. 3:23; cf. Eccl. 9:10).

Unfortunately, the history of the Church reveals that when Christians have become fixated upon finding the God of that other world to come, they have often missed finding the God of earth and history, the Creator of this world, in the here and now. Unlike the Hebrews of Bible times, who looked up to heaven but kept both feet squarely on the ground, Christians have not always learned so to balance themselves. It is the age-old problem of how we can keep the invisible from consuming the visible, the spiritual from negating the material, the theoretical from eliminating the practical, and belief from making us blind to behavior.

- Our Father Abraham, Ch. 10 “Where The Church Went Wrong” by Marvin R. Wilson