To be spiritually healthy, one has to be connected in five ways (connecting with God, connecting with other people, connecting with nature, connecting with the physical world, and connecting with oneself.) This post will consider the first of these five ways. The other four ways will be considered in posts that are to follow.
All too often people take only one aspect of spirituality and assume they are spiritually healthy. That isn’t true because the five aspects of spiritual connectedness are interrelated. To the extent that a person isn’t connected to any one or more aspects of the spiritual, to that same extent they are lacking in spiritual health.
The most commonly thought-of aspect of spirituality for Christians is connection to God. Without an ongoing connection to God, we can’t have a strong spiritual life. However, it isn’t just about believing the right thing, it’s about living our life in the world in such a way that the connection with God is strengthened. Keep in mind that spiritual health and salvation are two separate, although related, concepts.
For Christians, being connected with God means an ongoing relationship with Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. It’s about living the gospel, not just quoting the gospel. Perhaps the single greatest test of whether or not one is living the gospel is what Jesus identified as the greatest commandment. Note that we often see what Jesus said as two commandments. It’s more accurate to see what he says as two aspects of the same commandment. We are to: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”1
It can be argued that loving anything is about loving the “nature” of whatever it is. Thus, loving God is about loving the “nature” of God. One thing that interferes with us loving God is that we tend to reproduce God in our own image. To the extent that we do that, we lose the actual image of God.
When we consider the basic nature of God, there are two characteristics that continually come to the forefront. One is creativity and the other is relationship.
Most people who think about God will in some way see God as a creator God. What is sometimes missed is that everything God created was pronounced as “good.” It was put here and we, as a part of that creation, were put here to oversee and care for creation.2
The relationship part of God is seen in Genesis where God walks and talks with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening.3 God created us to be in relationship with God and being alone isn’t good for anyone. The reason God created woman was because God saw it wasn’t good for a man to be alone.4 God made us in God’s image5 and in doing so he made us to be in relationship.
Christians understand that this special relationship with God was messed up by our actions. In response, God sent Jesus to renew mankind’s relationship with God. That relationship is now sealed by the Holy Spirit. God has acted so that we can be in relationship with God without fear.
If one is to be spiritually healthy then one has to maintain that relationship. That means one has to continue to seek to know God and to walk with God. From the Christian point of view, if one isn’t studying the scriptures on an ongoing basis, then one cannot be spiritually healthy. The same can be said for an active prayer life, not prayer in the sense of asking for anything, but prayer in the sense of communing with God on a regular basis.
If one isn’t loving God to the extent that prayer and the study of scripture are central to one’s life, then one’s spiritual health will be weakened. Also, if one isn’t loving one’s neighbor as oneself, there will be a lessening of one’s spiritual health.
There are things that get in the way of being spiritually healthy. One of those is an attitude that says one has come to understand everything about God. We cannot even fully understand another human, even someone we know quite well. How, then, can we assume we have all the answers about what God is like? To do that is the height of arrogance and the very thing that led to mankind’s expulsion from the perfect world God had made for us, the Garden of Eden
Maintaining spiritual health is a day-by-day enterprise. We will never get to the place where we can say we are done and our spiritual health is perfect and assured forever. At least, we won’t get to that place this side of the grave. We will, however, discover greater peace and greater connection with God the more we seek spiritual health.
Ross T Lucas 