Spirituality – bad word: has been co-opted by New Age spiritualities; promotes generic, Christless mysticisms.
Koinonia – bad word: warm-fuzzy sentimentality conjured by guitar-strumming musicians’ use of tear-evoking group sing-along songs.
Holiness – bad word: self-righteous, socially disconnected, culturally out-of-date.
Communion – bad word: bespeaks sacramentalism, where salvation hinges upon ingestion of flesh and blood.
Sanctification – bad word: a five-syllable word that only a theologian would like; once was adopted as pet term of the holiness movement until they admitted that nobody lives up to it.
We have a vocabulary problem. When it comes to the promotion of Christian discipleship, most of the related Biblical and traditional terms have accumulated the barnacles of negative connotations.
How do you speak of the practice of connecting with God? The word “prayer” still passes muster, except for the fact that, at least in many churches, it’s used mostly to seek healing for loved ones, and in homes, is usually invoked to thank God for a meal, when we also should be thanking the farmers, truckers, grocers, and chefs who prepared it.
Some are comfortable speaking of “best practices” and “spiritual disciplines” – both of which take in such behaviors as stewardship, creation care, showing empathy, doing mission. In so doing, our instinctive need to maintain balance and logical levelheadedness gets better served. The last thing we ever want is to sound or look eccentric.
In fact, many of us get the willies when others talk and act spiritual. We even get smug about it, pinning negative connotations onto them.
I have a theory. We have taught ourselves to sneer when we hear those words, and we have identified them with revolting visual images in order to cover up a basic insecurity that most of us feel about the state of our own souls.
I saw the tendency in reverse in my younger years, when mixing among revivalist Christians. They sneered when they heard words like “academic,” “scholarly,” “educated,” “knowledge.” Having connected with God in palpable ways via their emotions, they thought everybody should experience God similarly. When they heard others speak of God in cerebral terms, they immediately dismissed that — and then to add the rationale that “they have God in their heads, but they don’t have Jesus in their hearts.”
What they were not owning up to was their own insecurity about their lack of scholarship.
We in the Presbyterian tradition feel more secure about our scholarship. All pastors have advanced degrees. Members have one of the highest educational levels of any denomination in the country. But when it comes to the more emotional side of the devoted life, we belie our Scottish roots. Yes, in Session meetings we may fight like a McGregor or a Wallace, but in worship the passions get suppressed.
Well, in public discourse we tend to shrug off the forms of devotion that can be caricatured in pejorative ways. That’s easy. Images of gurus humming meaningless syllables, of enthusiasts spouting platitudinous clichés, and of uptight, reactionary traditionalists flash in our minds’ eyes. In the process, we let ourselves off the hook.
Let’s be clear about this: no Christian practice stands at a more central place than that of praying, engaging in conversation with God. Even worship, the central event in church community life, is guided, energized, corralled, and crystallized by prayer.
We know that prayer sustains us. We know that prayer changes things and changes us. And, pejorative connotations aside, piety, spirituality, koinonia, holiness, communion and sanctification live in the souls of those who pray.
So, as we live into the pre-Christmas, seasonal planning might we also dig into our discipleship? Might we resolve to reclaim our piety, deepen our spirituality, enliven our koinonia, walk in Christ’s holiness, enjoy the Holy Spirit’s communion, and co-participate in the Spirit’s sanctification?
— JHH
