Sincere Spirituality

Christianity is a religion with a vast range of possibilities. The one unifying value is a shared belief that the God of the Bible came to the earth to save humanity. While all religion help us contend with the unknown, Christianity gives very practical advice on how to live well that distills to loving God and others.

Our spiritual lives start inside us as decisions, then move outward to the consequences. Since we can only measure results, it’s painfully easy to consume ourselves with the outside instead of the inside. A relationship with God requires we focus on that non-measurable aspect of our inner lives (1 Samuel 16:7) and is the most significant component of daily sacrificing ourselves to Christ (Luke 9:23).

This is never easy, for several reasons.

Risk #1 – Complacency

Anytime we do something, it becomes habitual, which means our soul is not as directly involved in the experience. Therefore, every time we do something we become increasingly less aware of it, meaning the first good decision was the most moral, and subsequent ones are only moral if we work to stay aware of them.

Beyond eradicating our sins, God wants us to must make conscious decisions that develop virtuous habits (Romans 2, 1 Peter 1:13-16). This effort to renew and conform our mind never technically stops (Romans 12:1-2) and is probably the most significant and practical.

The challenge comes through that daily grind of doing the same thing. We tend to want new things eventually, and performing the rituals of a devoted Christian life can sometimes be boring, similarly to how strengthening the body can sometimes be boring. We do reap the consequences of that sort of lifestyle, but it requires patience (Romans 12:9-12).

The only way to fix the boring parts of life is to find creative solutions within those boring components. Find new ways to study the Bible, serve others, pray, and worship. God won’t be offended!

Risk #2 – Over-Identifying with “Doing”

It’s easy to get comfortable with anything we’re doing once we start seeing the effects of our devotion. However, like any other healthy habit, it requires steadily adding to it and maintaining it, and a few days’ lapse is enough to fall back into the old patterns we’re trying to change.

Frequently, if we keep doing something and see positive results from it, we can start identifying with it.

We must also never forget our place in life. We’re all designed for God’s enjoyment (Revelation 4:11), and we are not designed for maximum effectiveness, and any task we perform can be done better by a non-human animal or angel. It should humble us that we have those limits, but we take ourselves way too seriously:

  • We kick around and throw balls as children, then spend good money as adults watching other people kick around and throw balls. We also distinguish those two as if they’re separate.
  • Most wars are over who gets to use a geographical region, even though there’s usually enough empty territory for everyone.
  • Intellectual property disputes are over someone having the right to use someone else’s thoughts, though a thought itself was created from other source material that was not that person.
  • The only sign of mental wellness is a sense of humor, which comes as a product of believing our initial feelings deceive us, but we act on them anyway.

We must never forget our identity is in Christ and what He has done, not in what we do (Ephesians 2:8-10).

Risk #3 – Vague Understanding

It’s easy to hear something, then not investigate it further. However, if we don’t understand what something means, we’re only stockpiling information that serves to boost our ego (and possibly, our reputation) without adding any value to our souls.

Cliché always sits within any religious culture, and 2,000 years of Christianity create the same situation:

  • The word “glory” is an archaic word for “reputation/honor” (1 Corinthians 10:31).
  • The word “spirit” is often synonymous with “attitude” (Proverbs 18:14).
  • Jesus being “Lord” means He’s a “Leader” or “Authority” (Matthew 7:21).
  • Jesus as a “Savior” means He’s a “Hero” (Luke 2:11).
  • “Faith” means “trust”, specifically in God (Hebrews 11:1).
  • “Love” has many uses in our language, so it most accurately converts to “selflessness” (1 Corinthians 13).
  • “Fellowship” means “meaningful human connection” (Acts 2:42).

Further, some words become so inflated by religious implication that they end up meaning very little (Matthew 16:6):

  • “Sanctification” can mean “spiritual separation for God’s purposes” or “separation from the world” (1 Thessalonians 4:3).
  • “Praise” can mean “express public devotion to God” or “devote time to thanking God” (Isaiah 25:1).
  • “Spiritual gifts” can either mean “personality traits” or “God-appointed tools of the soul” (1 Corinthians 14:1).

Further, a Christian culture can broadly demonstrate this lack of understanding when they adopt archaic language and styles without understanding their original basis:

  • Clothing styles that don’t reflect the attitudes of the original wearers (e.g., head coverings without a robe to match it).
  • Identifying each other by words that don’t apply (e.g., calling someone “brother” or “sister”, but without the appropriate lifestyle that would reflect it).
  • Honoring traditions when they don’t understand why the traditions were established.

Generally, the largest sign of not understanding something is through mysticism.

  • Teachers who speak in vague terms or with an unclear choice of words can easily include a performative aspect to their communication style.
  • Mysticism is highly personal, and dependent heavily on personality, but the truth of Christ and the faith is absolute.
  • It’s worth noting that we don’t need to understand something, but we should only act and teach with full authority grounded in what is definitively true (Luke 17:1-2).

God absolutely hates insincere expression (Leviticus 10:1-3), but those rituals are also a necessary component to a healthy Christian journey (Luke 22:19), so it’s worth researching a little.

Risk #4 – Understanding Not Applied

We’ll often understand many parts of our faith, but not actually apply them (James 1:22). It’s easy to do because learning only requires consuming information, but doing something with it requires taking action, and frequently also risks.

We must constantly perform with what we know, then review whether it was the best course of action. A few minutes of self-reflection every day over what we’ve done can create dramatic results in the long term.

Many times, we’ll apply something, and it’ll backfire spectacularly. At that point, it’s likely the time and place to ask if it was loving (1 Corinthians 8:1), but not the time and place to devote more time to learning.

Typically, theological beliefs have a very limited use. The broad one-sentence understanding is the most useful for almost everyone, but then becomes progressively less useful as it becomes more in-depth. Some people are profoundly gifted at understanding philosophical ideas, but the other 85% will do better to hear the gist of the idea and stick with simple rituals of devotion.

If we don’t watch how we’re responding, we can often find ourselves fighting a crusade against a relatively minor matter (e.g., Johannine Comma, Triclavianism) compared to the simple Gospel message. At that point, we’re spending more effort dividing the Body of Christ than building it up.

Risk #5 – How We Look

A church experience can distract us from devotion to God. Part of the reason comes from the devil employing the social mechanism of shame to an unhealthy end.

Many Christians within churches are afraid of the social consequences of not appearing devout, so they simply lie about it:

  • Saying they pray or read their Bible frequently, when it’s more like 1–4 times a month.
  • Discussing the importance that “we” must do specific things, but not taking personal responsibility that they feel compelled by their conscience to do something.
  • Behaving as if they have spiritual gifts they don’t have, or trying to perform while they’re suffering at it (e.g., speaking in tongues).
  • Quoting a Bible verse or other Christian leaders, but using the tone and style of speaking of what they read, without any personalized context that implies they’ve internalized the passage.
  • Using many complex-sounding words to convey a relatively simple idea.

This creates a false standard among the rest of the group, and that false standard can utterly poison a sincere believer’s soul. They’re forced to conclude that they’re not spiritual enough or that everyone is lying, which discredits the few believers who are that devoted to spiritual exercises. They also sin and feed into the culture further if they lie themselves about their spirituality:

  • “There is nothing good inside me apart from Christ” (disregards that God lovingly made them).
  • “Only the Lord, and not me, is ever good” (disregards the call to righteousness and the boldness of being in Christ, such as 1 Corinthians 11:1).
  • “I am the chief of sinners” (something Paul said, who killed many Christians before becoming one himself).

We must practice a simple, sincere means of expression, and stick to it, no matter how well-educated we become (1 Corinthians 2:1).

Risk #6 – Change & Hardship

The motivations to drive someone to accept Jesus as their Master can arise from various places:

  • They sincerely acknowledge their sins and desire to indemnify the situation.
  • They’re afraid of hell and its consequences.
  • They examined and researched the facts as much as they could and concluded Christianity was the most logical faith.
  • They’re searching for meaning and purpose.
  • They suffer hardship, and want freedom from it.
  • They saw the effects of Christianity on their friends or family, and wanted what they had.

However, a Christian will invariably change how their faith operates. Very often, they’ll add more reasons to why they practice their faith. Even conversions as a fashionable trend among peers may become something more authentic, or a pure-hearted conversion in a quiet, desperate prayer might become a renouncement of faith later on.

A relationship with Jesus must withstand all of our seasons, which requires staying diligent and trusting God. This is especially important at specific times when we don’t have a sensible reason to persist, or when the hardship bears down on us heavily enough that we want to give up.

Each Christian has their journey, and those journeys are not the same. Some people will experience the hardship of loss, others will have the hardship of never having. The worst hardship some believers will ever experience may be relatively minor compared to what other believers receive every year.

However, this hardship strengthens us if we permit it, but we must follow our Master to find that strength (John 16:33). Even Jesus felt anticipatory anxiety (John 12:27, Matthew 26:38) and hopelessness (Matthew 27:46).

No matter how bad things get, we can never forget that God is in control.

Risk #7 – Shame

We have many latent sins we would rather not acknowledge, and we constantly deceive ourselves (Jeremiah 17:9). Every Christian’s journey will eventually force them to confront and integrate their “shadow self” as the legitimate desires of their flesh.

We are responsible to own these “shadow thoughts” as our own if we wish to be freed from them (Romans 2:1-11). This is not easy because they’re incessant, and our quest to eradicate them never technically ends in this life (1 John 1:8).

We must also come to realize that there’s a time and place for just about everything (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8):

  • The aggression from rage can also stand against evil.
  • The fear of self-destruction is also the mechanism to wisely manage risks.
  • The sorrow of depression is also the way we feel compassion for others.

One of the most critical ways to let His work run its course is to be utterly honest with ourselves when it hurts the most. If we run from it, religious shame and guilt can push us into hypocrisy instead of self-awareness (Matthew 23:23-32).

Risk #8 – The Rest of the Church/World

Other denominations do things differently. It’s sometimes heresy or a cult, and other times a matter of personal preference. The original Church culture (i.e., a Jewish cult in Rome-occupied Palestine) has been added to, removed, traditionalized, redefined, abolished, and moved around.

Assuming no salvation-ruining heresy that destroys the central Gospel message, all Christian denominations are 40-60% correct, though some of them are more correct than others:

  • Catholics understand the importance of ritual, though they don’t understand the joy and freedom in Christ.
  • Protestants generally understand joy in Christ, but undermine the value of tradition.
  • Pentecostals know how to trust the Holy Spirit, but often have terrible theology.
  • Baptists tend to have accurate theology, but tend not to trust the Holy Spirit.
  • The Hutterites understand the importance of being not of the world, but fail at being in the world.
  • Evangelical megachurches are certainly in the world, but they’re frequently of the world as well.

It’s also easy to get distracted by what the rest of the world is doing:

We must understand that the world will travel its path, and we must travel ours (1 John 4:4-6), which means what they do will be a lot louder and more conflicted than anything believers will engage in. While the world is destroying itself, the meek Christians will eventually inherit the earth through their good conduct (Matthew 5:5, James 3:13).

Beyond what we must do next, we don’t need to know God’s will, and it’s frequently better for our sanity if we don’t know. Simply saying “your will be done” is a tremendous release of responsibility (Matthew 6:9-13).

This becomes increasingly difficult as technology brings society into closer range of influence with each other. Eventually, the prophesied end will come when a global society will collectively project the consequences of their unrepented sins against God, but it doesn’t serve any advantage to our faith to obsess over when and how that’ll happen.

Risk #9 – Self-Conceit

While any of the above are a risk in their own right, self-righteousness is a worse risk than any of the rest because it becomes complete obliviousness to the necessary corrections God would otherwise give us.

Pride is a constant battle, and is a never-ending challenge as we succeed at the rest. In fact, growing in Christ can easily become its own risk of conceit, and is the cause of most church conflicts.

If we don’t always maintain awareness of our lack of understanding, we won’t listen to correction. At its farthest, we won’t even be able to hear God’s direct discipline (Proverbs 17:10).

The only time we can speak with authority on eternity is when we have encountered it directly, and there’s no evidence in the Bible that we have any spiritual authority beyond what Jesus directly imparts onto us (Jude 9).

Conclusion

This experience of walking with God is highly personal, but is absolutely critical for a successful Christian life. It’s not very glamorous, and nobody else but God Himself will typically notice the things we do to strengthen our souls.

While there’s a variability to how we implement it, we need the right attitude about time and others:

  • Focus on the present with joy. Every moment, you have the freedom to communicate with God, and can explore an intimate connection with Him without the extra ceremonial work of ancient Judaism.
  • Look to the future about what you can do today, and as your faith can withstand, but no more. God has the rest of it under control, so release it all to Him.
  • Take the good parts of the past, and try to fix the consequences of the past that affect the present, but release it all to Him.
  • Ignore what everyone else is doing. They have to manage their relationship with God, and after you’ve warned them, it’s your job to move on.

We haven’t “attained” salvation, though Jesus has, and we must run an endurance race, with the finish line being when one of our primary organs fails without a suitable and timely replacement (2 Timothy 4:7).