September 28, 2010
House of Spirits
Last week I saw a television commercial for a Vineyard church located in the downtown area of a neighboring community. The pastor and another man were sitting at a pub bar with a half-full beer stein in front of each of them. The minister invited the listening audience to come and join him and his congregation. With a worldly smile he said, “We’re not religious…we’re just spiritual.” Well OK now. I guess if I encounter someone looking for spirits I’ll know where to send them.
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Gail;
-----Before I was seventeen, when I went to church it was because Mom or Dad went to church. Thankfully, I learned and remembered. After I was seventeen I went to church because I went to church, a Pentecostal church. So, from that young age I was always interested in what was the Holy Spirit, what was my spirit, and what was spirituality. At first thought it was simple, spirituality was obviously about the Holy Spirit, our spirits, and the angels and demons and stuff. Whether the spirits and angels and demons existed in some plain or dimension other than our physical one, or whether they had physical substance undetectable in the range of senses God gave our bodies was not as much an issue for my concern as was the other stuff. That stuff was about the interconnection of His Spirit with ours, and what was my responsibility in that interconnection.
-----My mind likes to engage theory. But it also likes to reduce evidence down to its most basic state. So I guess it was only natural that I pondered spirituality as involving the essence of both generalities and specifics. And the Bible bears the idea out quite well. Paul said, “One man esteems one day as better than another, while another man esteems all days alike. Let everyone be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. He also who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God; while he who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.” (Rom 14:5-6) Here we have a good example of spirituality in the illustration of two persons with opposing views being each welcomed by God. Maybe, in an oversimplified purview, the specifics are that one esteems, one does not, one abstains, one does not, and they can not all be right at the same time. Either the day is estimable, or it isn’t. Either the food is edible, or it isn’t. Yet Paul says each one should be convinced in his own mind. How can God accept them both at the same time, when one or the other must be wrong?
-----It is not that God doesn’t care. In general terms, He is more interested in extending to us His mercy than He is in exacting from us behavioral perfection. That is why the principle of Paul’s statements attach to both person’s being thankful for the esteem and eating or the non-esteem and non-eating. God’s mercy will make allowances for our inability to see more clearly than through a mirror dimly when our efforts to see are directed towards God honorably. And this, more than anything, is for what we can be thankful. Our spirituality is based on His acceptance of us through His mercy, not on our minds being convinced of technical correctness.
-----I can see this pastor of the Vineyard church making this spiritually correct message by his beer stein ad. But Paul also said, “Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make others fall by what he eats.” (Rom 14:20). I don’t understand the mechanism of what makes one fall by what another eats. But I accept the fact of it, because the Bible addresses it. “The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God.” (Rom 14:22) In this specific, the pastor failed, indeed, broadcasting his own faith in God for all to see and calling it spirituality.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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