For the next few weeks, we’ll be talking about Human Spirituality—what it would mean to have a physically, emotionally, and intellectually-appropriate spirituality. (We might have called it “Incarnational” or “Sacramental” Spirituality, but I like “Human.” It’s more accessible, and better able to address anti-humanness.)
Some ways of being “spiritual” are on a collision-course with Christian doctrines of Creation, Incarnation, and Sacrament (which, if you’re not familiar with the theological landscape, are biggies). And, I suspect, as we digest what God is after in “the redemption of humanity,” we’ll see the problem with those ways of being “spiritual.”
In Eden and in the Incarnation, we see true humanity. Body, feelings, ideas, and soul not “cut off” from each other, but reconciled and whole. If we believe that this is God’s end-game, shouldn’t our spirituality work towards that and not against it?
By Dcn. Adam Salter Gosnell
I remember the first time I visited an Anglican church. It was here, actually, at CTR. Rebecca and I went to the 11 o’clock service and we spent nearly the whole time trying to figure out when we were supposed to do what. Afterward, I remember stepping off the curb into the parking lot and I said to Rebecca, “Buddy [don’t judge me, that’s what I call her], I think they think I have a body.”
What an odd thing for a Christian to say, “Buddy, I think they think I have a body.” But it was the stained glass, the bowing, the incense, even the congregational responses. Some church services, I could be at home on my couch with my laptop. But at CTR, there was something radically significant about physically being in the room. Your guys’ “physical” knob is up on 11.
Up until that point (and sometimes since then), I was tempted to think that the physical and the spiritual were radically separate. In fact, I was tempted to think that there was something “spiritual” about rejecting the physical.
But then I thought about Eden. God beheld all he made and he said, “Behold, this is very good.” He made physical stuff. Our having bodies isn’t an accident. That’s by design. I also thought about the Incarnation, God himself taking physical form. We read every Sunday, “born of the virgin Mary.” (Guys, I was in the Delivery Room when my son Joseph was born. And let me tell you, profoundly, profoundly physical.) God himself, crying, burping, pooping. Ten little fingers and toes.
It’s almost like God intends for the physical and the spiritual to overlap. In fact, with Eden in one hand and the Incarnation in the other, it’s mind blowing that I would miss it, but I had. (And, I suspect, many of us have.)
And so the work began. What would it mean for me to imagine a physically-appropriate spirituality?
Well…maybe at the beginning I cross myself when I pray. Maybe sometimes I’d kneel. (He’s King, after all.) Maybe I’d stop bragging about how little sleep I get. Maybe, when my body didn’t do what I wanted it to do, I’d listen to it instead of beating it into submission with copious amounts of caffeine…
As I started to understand, I was convicted. My Christianity had been anti-physical. The problem with being anti-physical is that it’s anti-human. And, to the degree your Christianity is anti-human, it isn’t really Christianity at all.
[“Buddy, I think they think I have a body” is part one of a three-part series on Human Spirituality.]
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