Is Life Truly Just Spiritual?
SEELE Faith Editor KB Chakela challenges us with the idea that as Christians we can either be becoming more like Jesus or more religious…
I was having a conversation with an ex of mine recently about healing and growing in the things of God (yes, I spoke to my ex…lets save the judgement for later). As we spoke, something became very clear to me, many Christians can be deeply spiritual and yet remain terrible human beings. They are prayer warriors who read their Bibles diligently, some even walk in the miraculous, yet when it comes to empathy, emotional intelligence, compassion and basic humanity, they struggle and don’t even realise that they are lacking in those areas.
Hear me out.
Many of us have been taught if a man or woman prays, serves in church and knows the Word of God, then they automatically qualify as marriage material. But somewhere along the way we started noticing that being spiritually mature does not mean emotional maturity. Many of those same spiritually mature Christians are bad communicators, unwilling to take accountability, lacking kindness and often deeply wounded.
The Bible has never hidden the reality of the struggle between spirit and flesh, the Apostle Paul in Galatians 5:17 (NIV) “For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh…” and also honestly admits in Romans 7:19 (NIV) “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” These two verses show that tension and conflict that exists between a renewed Spirit and the soul of man. Even when your spirit longs for God, there are wounds, habits, fears, trauma and broken patterns within the soul of man, and if left unaddressed continue to influence our lives.
Spiritual deliverance is important, I believe this wholeheartedly, but so is healing the soul.
Healing does not just happen through prayer alone, it requires intentionality, it requires repentance, forgiveness, taking accountability, and yes, where necessary counselling. We have to do all this in order to confront past hurts, making daily decisions to break destructive patterns that keep sabotaging out lives. God certainly has the power to heal us, nothing is impossible for Him, but deliverance is a process, we cannot pray away trauma but refuse to address its roots.
We cannot ask God to change our character and behaviour while being simultaneously committed to habits that keep producing it. Too often Christians become spiritually mature while being emotionally stunted. They know spiritual warfare but don’t know compassion, and if we are being honest with ourselves, no matter how spiritual we are, if we fail to love people well, we have missed the very point of Christianity entirely.
God created human beings in His likeness, which means that humans are also three parts: body, spirit and soul. God reveals Himself as God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (The Holy Trinity) and no one facet of God is more important than the other, the three are one the Bible tells us. Likewise, as human beings, we cannot place importance on the Spirit while neglecting the body and soul, hoping our spirituality will somehow overflow and fix everything else broken in our bodies and soul.
That is not wholeness, that’s a disability in my opinion. All three facets of humanity need to work together as one, which is God’s design
For as long as we continue saying “life is only spiritual” and only focusing on the Spirit, we run the risk of producing Christians who know spiritual principles but do not resemble Christ. And this should concern us.
This is not an argument against spiritual growth, quite the opposite in fact we should strive for the things of the spirit, we should desire intimacy with God. But let us remember what truly distinguishes us from the kingdom of darkness, which is also proficient in the things of the Spirit. What sets us apart is love, humility, kindness, grace, etc. these are evidence of Christ within us.
God in His Trinity has always maintained that the three are one, which is the very definition of biblical wholeness, and so maybe the goal is not to just be healed in the spirit but to be whole, maybe the goal was never to just be spiritually mature but to be Christ like.
And lastly, if becoming more spiritual has not made you more patient, compassionate or more human, the real question we should ask ourselves is: are we becoming more like Christ or are we simply becoming more religious?
TRENDING
