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 was at a men’s small-group. At the beginning of the meeting, before we got into the content itself, the leader asked us to “Check In.” A Check In turned out to be pretty simple: in 3-5 minutes, how are you doing physically, emotionally, spiritually? I happened to go first. So, I talk about “physical”: here’s how I’ve been sleeping, I’m not really exercising, etc. When I was done, next was “emotional,” so I said, “I’m doing fine.” And this leader, in a moment I will cherish for the rest of my life, smiled. And said, in the most loving way, “Fine is not a feeling. But you should try again…”
You have to understand a bit about me to understand the crazy of this moment. When Rebecca and I met, I thought emotions were just dumb. (How often have we heard, “Christianity is about doing what we know is right, over against our feelings.”) I was tempted to think that the emotional and the spiritual were radically separate. In fact, I was tempted to think that there was something “spiritual” about rejecting the emotional.
(Quick aside: In hindsight, I think I treated feelings like silly ideas. Rebecca would say, “This upsets me,” and I’d say, “That’s… stupid.” Dumb move, right? But I’m starting to think maybe we do this all the time. Do you tell your kid, “I hear you’re afraid [feeling] but monsters don’t exist [idea]”? Do you tell your friends, “I hear that you’re anxious about your next life-stage [feeling], but [*insert sing-song voice*] God works all things together for good [idea]! Maybe these too are “dumb moves,” for all the same reasons…)
That night, at small-group, a spiritual authority in my life called my personal-health update into question for being insufficiently emotional. And I started thinking about Eden. Adam meets Eve and bursts into song! Listen, I’ve hummed on the way into work, but I’ve never full-blown, my-life-is-a-musical, burst into song:
“Bone of my bone! / Flesh of my flesh!”
If I were a betting man, that’s… not what I would have expected pre-Fall masculinity to be like.
But it’s not just Eden. What about the Incarnation? Jesus was a terribly emotional man. At one point he gets so upset he flips tables in the Temple! Flips tables! You guys, if Fr Tim was ever, ever, so upset that he flipped a table in the Parish Hall, he’d be fired that day. We’d strike his name from the record and people’d start saying, “Fr Tim who?” (What does it say about us and feelings that Jesus would be too emotional to be our priest?)
If I have Eden in one hand, and the Incarnation in the other hand… it’s almost like God intends for the emotional and the spiritual to overlap. 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 emotionally-appropriate spirituality?
Well… maybe prayer would not have to be beautiful, or theologically correct, or even particularly “spiritual”—only honest. Maybe I’d take regular time to “Check In” with myself emotionally. Maybe I’d do the work, in myself and in others, of hearing feelings and resist the urge to steam-roll them with ideas.
As I started to understand, I was convicted. My Christianity had been anti-emotional. And the problem with being anti-emotional is that it’s anti-human. And, to the degree your Christianity is anti-human, it isn’t really Christianity at all.
[“Fine Isn’t a Feeling. But You Should Try Again…” is part two of a three-part series on Human Spirituality.]
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