spiritual reality

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I’ve been talking a lot about ‘spiritual reality’ these days. I find it necessary to remind myself and others that we believe there is a reality to our spiritual lives, our spiritual needs and our spiritual existence. And understanding that that reality is real is in danger these days. You see, I believe that our cultural world really doesn’t know that we are spiritual being. We are physical being, fashionable beings, sport-fan beings. We are economic agents, consumer agents, and controllers of our health through exercise, diet and habits. We are acknowledge to have lives of the mind, to learn, to study and even to contemplate the universe, but not too seriously, please. We can be philosophers, but not spiritual.

But do we have spirit? Can there we any way we speak about spirit as a real dimension of our total being any more?

(We might ask - what is spirit? I am thinking about the connection with the divine being - in a good Lutheran framework - the part of me that relates to the law (is convicted of sin) and the part of me that embraces the good, great gift of grace (knowing I am loved in a profound way by the divine). So being a spiritual being recognizes that conscience is connected with something beyond or more than societal standards. So being a spiritual being recognizes that ‘self-esteem’ at the deepest level has more to do with the divine acceptance than familial, societal or cultural dynamics.)

The usual “I’m spiritual, but not religious” stance becomes pretty pale and anemic against the Biblical and churchly spirituality of the past. For myself, I know that I’m not just referring to the ‘spiritual’ values of peacefulness or serenity (or acceptance or ‘love’) when discussing Paul’s letter to the Corinthians with bible study. Paul is thinking and pressing for transformation, real changed behavior and hard choices to be made by that church. He sees the issues as ‘spiritual’ - important for salvation.

And for him, the only important arena is ‘spiritual’ - the arena of the right divine-connectedness. All those other dimension of life - sexual, economic, liturgical, judicial that he comments on are relativized by this concern for the ‘divine-connectedness.’
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