What is the point of the Christian spiritual life? What is the end of spiritual progress? What is progress anyway? These are very important questions that every christian “should” be able to answer if we want to be able to go somewhere or reach something that can accurately be called virtuous. However, in the christian life I find we can easily become distracted from the central theme and purpose of christian spirituality, ending up confused as to what is we are doing, why it matters, and where we are going. It is for this reason that I believe there is always a need to re-focus, to step back, to ponder, and wonder what it is as christians we have gotten ourselves into when we speak of “spirituality”.
Many christians can answer these questions at a general level, but at least in my neck of the woods, often it doesn’t go farther than “to love God, love others, and love life” or performing “random acts of kindness”. I mean, all of this is great, but the problem is that when all there is is a broad and abstract answer for how to live our lives, I will usually opt for doing neither the broad command to love God and others or the way to live it out on a day to day basis. I have found that I simply cannot center my life exclusively around something vague in principal. In my personal experience I have found that if I can’t articulate it, there will likely be an extremely small chance I will actually do it. So this article is mostly for myself and hopefully it will help you. What I am arguing here is that many of us have a theology, but not many of us have a theology of the spiritual life.
So what’s the answer? I admit that my spiritual life is largely unclear and unspecific, but what do I do? This is something I frequently have to do in my life. Think carefully and intentionally about my questions, and what the Bible has to say about them. It’s true that the bible holds these answers for us (yet tradition also holds key answers), but more often than not christians cannot give a coherent picture as to what it means to progress in christian maturity. Taking the time with our picture of spiritual progress, to “put it all together”, will root christian maturity in reality, stimulate growth, and “make sense” of why our faith really matters for us and for the world we engage with the gospel.
Living The Story 