Spirituality is of immense interest to many in our twenty-first century world. The annual Mind, Body and Spirit festivals held in more than thirty-five cities across the world (including Brisbane) is a pertinent reminder that, despite what the media may report, there is a genuine hunger for spiritual things in Australian society at large. While two thousand years of the Christian faith has traditionally confined spirituality to the realm of the professing Christian and the gathered corporate Christian community, in recent decades spirituality has become more mainstream. It has moved from the sacred to the secular. To put it another way, spirituality can now be accessed without reference to the sacred—with spiritual growth likened to personal development; the making of a ‘better me.’ The individual drives or controls this spiritual/personal growth through their own activity.
Removing the God of the Bible from the centre of spirituality has left a spiritual and moral vacuum in Australian society. Like a fat cat with an empty stomach, there is something missing in our rational, secular and affluent society which, while intangible, is very real. Society at large intrinsically recognises this, particularly through the proliferation of New Age material and Eastern mysticism.
This view of spirituality, however, is at complete odds with the Bible. The Bible itself does not use the term ‘spirituality’ but does describe the spiritual person and what it means to live out the spiritual life. The spiritual life involves God’s Holy Spirit increasingly taking control of our lives so that we think, speak and act more like the Lord Jesus (John 3:20-21; Rom 5:1-5). In fact, from the Bible’s perspective, the only people who can truly claim to be spiritual are those who are born of the Holy Spirit, with the hallmark of a spiritual person being that their behaviour accords with that of the Spirit himself (John 3:5-8; Gal 5:16-26). Therefore, being a spiritual person is immensely practical. It has nothing to do with mindless meditation, crystals, visions, chants, or enlightenment. Rather, it is concerned with lives redeemed, fuelled and lived obediently to the Holy Spirit and increasingly reflecting the character of the Lord Jesus.
