Although I’ve gone all over the place with this study, I’ve found only vague descriptions of spirituality. Let me humbly attempt my own. Traditionally, people have spoken about five areas of the human life: physical, mental, emotional, ethical, and spiritual. Although they overlapped, you could assign functions to each. The spiritual dealt with meaning and […]
I have written and put aside five essays for this post. Each time I finished one, someone brought up concerns I had not addressed. I finally decided to simply report what friends were telling me, as their questions seemed more important than my intellectual answers. They reveal we are in a period of great change. […]
I started this series hoping to understand what people mean when they use the word “spiritual.” Many who say they want no affiliation with an established religion still consider themselves spiritual. Some theologians predict that churches will become spiritual centers in the future. I found myself getting very uneasy about this and couldn’t figure out […]
Throughout the years, being spiritual has usually referred to experiencing God’s presence in one’s life. When the early church spoke of Jesus’ Spirit living on after His death, they meant more than merely recalling past experiences and reports, more than simply adhering to what He taught during His ministry. They insisted that after the resurrection, […]
I am trying to develop an understanding of spirituality that makes sense in the 21st century. I started by examining what the Bible has to say. When I reached the New Testament, I found that Luke-Acts, John, and Paul make a significant point about Jesus’ resurrection, releasing the Holy Spirit in a new way. Paul […]
If you had asked me a year ago what it means to be spiritual, I would have begun discussing different classifications of life, such as physical, mental, and spiritual. Then I would’ve attempted to describe the characteristics of each. Over the past year, I’ve become increasingly intrigued by the number of people in various situations […]
Spirit is one of the most constant terms in the bible. It is used for God. It is used for humans. It is used to express the relationship between the two. Yet like the air we breathe, it is so prevalent we seldom notice it. In fact, Scripture often portrays the spirit as the air […]
Biblical scholars typically begin their discussion of “spirit” by cautioning that there is no consistent meaning throughout the Bible. They then most often describe how wind and breath are used at the most basic level. This relatively simple perspective uses the wind to describe the presence of God. The first creation story in Genesis begins, […]
I want to lay a foundation for examining spirituality. Mental activity has broken down to support the competing ideologies in our present social conflict. Although “spirit” has always had a multi-dimensional meaning, I felt it still had the potential to bring together diverse attitudes. The aesthetic seemed able to discuss differences without descending into chaos. […]
Remember when I announced I was going to do something on church and society, Lupe and Myron offered some examples that have to be addressed. Lupe pointed to the death of hundreds of people in Pakistan who died of thirst during the Ramadan fast. Myron sent a New York Times article about India’s prime minister […]
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