Spirituality

Eugene Peterson, author of "A Long Obedience in the Same Direction", is was interviewed in Christianity Today. The interview is titled Spirituality for All the Wrong Reasons.

In the CT article, he summarizes a few thoughts about a misunderstanding of spirituality. Much has been written critical of the trends in evangelical culture toward subjective experience, marketing the church based on "felt needs", tailoring the message to target demographic groups. Peterson seems to have a very down-to-earth take on all of it that is refreshing and at times blunt.

He compares much of the "personal relationship" language of contemporary evangelicalism with gnosticism, the idea that Christianity is somehow distinct from the ordinary, the physical, the moment by moment real world stuff all people have to deal with.

"The New Age stuff is old age. It's been around for a long time. It's a cheap shortcut to - I guess we have to use the word - spirituality. It avoids the ordinary, the everyday, the physical, the material. It's a form of Gnosticism, and it has a terrific appeal because it's a spirituality that doesn't have anything to do with doing the dishes or changing diapers or going to work. There's not much integration with work, people, sin, trouble, inconvenience.
I've been a pastor most of my life, for some 45 years. I love doing this. But to tell you the truth, the people who give me the most distress are those who come asking, "Pastor, how can I be spiritual?" Forget about being spiritual. How about loving your husband? Now that's a good place to start. But that's not what they're interested in. "

Like a number of other folks I have been reading lately, such as Os Guinness, he is not impressed with church growth strategies and believes genuine faith is by its nature countercultural, in that it will always and always should be something different, transcendent, sacred. Says Peterson in probably the most animated line of the interview,

"I think relevance is a crock. I don't think people care a whole lot about what kind of music you have or how you shape the service. They want a place where God is taken seriously, where they're taken seriously, where there is no manipulation of their emotions or their consumer needs.
Why did we get captured by this advertising, publicity mindset? I think it's destroying our church."

I have discussed similar matters with a friend who is a former Pastor and a seminary prof. We have ruminated long on Acts 2:42,43, "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles." Ultimately church is always about the same things, the teaching of the apostles, genuine fellowship or community, the breaking of bread in the Lord's Supper (with appropriate emphasis on confession and repentance) and prayer. As such it can be mundane and routine at times, but still it is necessary to focus on those essential things, regardless of whether they seem relevant or hip.

The notion that "everyone was filled with awe", also seemed to us important. Why? Because if spirituality is genuinely God focused and God blessed, there will be a character to it that is beyond the natural, more than just a strategy or a program can provide, something, for lack of a better word, "spiritual". All our attempts to be relevant, many are beginning to say, are removing the timeless and transcendent elements from church life and from faith. If everything is programmed, if our strategies are all market based, if our message is continually reshaped by the "needs" of culture, something is lost. Peterson continues,

"... if we present a rendition of the faith in which all the mystery is removed, and there's no reverence, how are people ever going to know there's something more than just their own emotions, their own needs? There's something a lot bigger than my needs that's going on. How do I ever get to that if the church service and worship program is all centered on my needs?"

Peterson's interview is worth a read. Christianity is not quite so complicated as we make it. It is usually about doing the ordinary things faithfully rather than trying to find some new way of doing something big. It is "a long obedience in the same direction" and it's effects on the culture and our neighbors and friends is usually gradual, not dramatic.