This week I am writing about an issue that is more about the interior life of the Healthy Liberal Christian. I do this recognizing that liberal Christianity has a poor track record when it comes to spirituality. But if we aspire to practice a version of Liberal Christianity that is “Healthy” as well as liberal, we must consider this mysterious religious dimension.
Let’s face it; the definition(s) of “spirituality” is(are) pretty slippery. Some think of it as being addressed any time we consider “The Divine” (whatever that means). Others think of spirituality as being how we regard our connection to others, to God, to creation itself, and to our own inner being. Then there are those who use “spirituality” and “religious growth and development” interchangeably. In this installment, I am going to see if I can at least help myself to get clearer on these meanings.
My first thought is that “spirituality” actually refers to two different dimensions of human experience, not one. Those dimensions are “spirit” and “soul”. Again, there are those who use these terms interchangeably, too. But they’re not the same at all. Spirit is a high and abstract concept that is sometimes thought to be the direction we must follow to find God. Jesus says that “God is Spirit” and that we should “worship God in Spirit and in truth.” In a sense, worshipping God as Spirit is a way to get out of ourselves, to get beyond our individualistic concerns, to see life through God’s eyes, that is to say, from a perspective that is high and far reaching. We soar with the Spirit.
The other dimension is “soul”. While “spirit” is high and abstract, “soul” is found deep within and may be identical with our very identity. Sometimes I think of soul as the essence of God becoming real in the heart of creation. Genesis tells us that we are created in the image of God, so creation itself has soul. It might help to think about the process of how humans come into being. Egg and sperm join together and create something that is in the image of both but is not identical to either.
(I want to be very careful in using this metaphor. I am not implying that the male essence located in the sperm is the Godlike part and that the female essence located in the egg is the physical world. Such thinking has throughout history been the basis for the subjugation of women in an unbalanced, patriarchal society. I believe that such thinking retards the development of soul.)
Instead, we might think of the spirit as the mind of God and the created universe as the body of God. They unite in this ongoing sacred process to create a multiplicity of unique manifestations of the divine. The task of our spirituality, then, is to promote the growth and development of this nascent soul into its fullness and maturity. It is my observation that this task is greatly neglected in Christian religions of all stripe. Fundamentalism values immature obedience to a paternalistic God and condemns individuals who set out on an unpredictable growth process. And Liberalism, particularly in its humanistic guise, may tend to ignore the existence of a divine essence entirely.
What I’m getting at here is that the place where we find the connection between the divine and the created, where we have the opportunity to promote true spirituality, is exactly at that place we call “soul.”
Our culture doesn’t do a very good job at nurturing the soul, perhaps because healthy, mature souls develop a passion for systemic justice and are, therefore, seditious. Our institutions of higher learning are heavily weighted in the direction of career development, often at the expense of soul development. Our economy depends on promoting our veritable addiction to consumerism. Much of what we buy is made attractive by the promise that it will distract us from facing our inadequate selves, and as a bonus, by the promise that their product will transform us into what the culture needs us to become. This approach has a lot to do with making money and very little to do with promoting the development of our souls. The economic system invites us to change into someone else’s version of who we should be, while the development of the soul invites us to become more who we really are – to be people created in the image of God who strive for fullness and maturity.
Ed Friedman, Rabbi, Pastoral Counselor, and Marriage and Family Therapist identifies several aspects of the well differentiated soul, but the one that sums it up for me is this: “Differentiation is taking maximum responsibility for one’s own emotional being and destiny rather than blaming others or the context.” To illustrate: Our culture of higher education and economic systems offers us a relatively restricted list of who we can become and it exerts enormous pressure on us to select from the predetermined choices. The result is many people who have lost contact with their “souls”, even while enjoying great success in economic or status terms. Jesus reminds us, “When does it benefit you if you gain the world, but lose your soul.” A narrow interpretation means that our worldly selfishness is the “sin” that keeps us from our “heavenly reward.”
From the liberal perspective, I think the situation is more immediate and grave than that. Connection with soul is what makes life actually worth living. Without “soul” we become people who are “making a dying, rather than making a living.”
While differentiation sounds like something that an individual must do for oneself, that does not mean that we have to do it alone. We need a supportive community to help us embark on the courageous search for soul. In some Native American traditions, the person who goes on a “vision quest” goes out into the wilderness alone, but not without ample preparation and ritual within the community. At the end of the quest, the community welcomes the quester back and respectfully receives the insights of the quest and makes use of them in the community. Said differently, we need to be well differentiated “souls” in order to bring health to community, and, in return, the health of the community promotes the differentiation of the individual soul.
It appears to me that Jesus did not teach people to be immaturely obedient. He taught people to be responsible for the quality of their openness to the divine and to life itself. He always empowered individuals to take responsibility and not to attribute their legitimate responsibility and power to him. This is the Jesus we try to follow, no matter how much his teachings may challenge the “common sense” of the culture. This is our “spirituality”. Prayer may help. Familiarity with sacred texts may help. Going to church may help. But none of these remove the necessity for us to take responsibility for our own being and destiny and then to respond to the cultural systems with all the differentiation and maturity we can muster.
Wayne Gustafson
"I love my church because it's sort of like The Wizard of Oz - it's about have a heart and a brain. And courage!"
The United Church of Christ
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