After spending my first year in Bible college, today I felt like sharing something spiritual. Yet spiritual things should really be practical, because otherwise what is the point?
Also, since you as my reader may be anywhere on the spectrum of beliefs, I thought I should make this simple. Believe it or not, the point of spirituality is to arrive at truth which achieves a practical result in our lives.
At a basic level this could include scientific pursuits, yet as a Christian I am going to expand the scope of this post beyond scientific philosophy and the benefits / detriments it achieves. To begin, we have to address truth itself.
Truth?
A man once asked, "What is truth?" Upon much reflection in my 20's, it came to me that truth's existence is self-evident. If someone says, "Everything is subjective, there is no truth!" How can that statement be true? If it were true, then truth exists and the statement is illogical. Meaning, the exact opposite of that statement is truth, "Truth exists."
It really is that simple. Truth is real. We can come to this conclusion in many ways. It is important to take notice then that "truth exists" is not a physical observation. Nowhere in nature can you physically observe that truth exists. This idea of truth's existence, is then a self-evident principle which we can realize is true, but we would also conclude its reality is non-physical.
The Quest for Truth
In terms of practical spirituality then, we are seeking those nuggets of realizations about underlying truth statements which are non-observable.
In searching for truth, we have to have some metric for testing statements. How these tests are designed, largely determines if we are going to find truth or deception.
Finally, truth hopefully then produces a practical benefit to our lives once we realize and believe it.
Exploring Avenues of potential Truth Statements
I, myself, traversed through atheism, agnosticism, new age spiritualism, into new age Hinduism before becoming a Christian. The journey lasted from about ages 18 to 28.
For many people, they have not begun such a journey, or they have simply inherited what their culture/parents believe.
Many religions espouse God exists. Some make God monotheistic, others make him pantheistic or polytheistic, and there are many others. Some religious beliefs say God does not exist. And many people wrongly think, "I'm not religious."
"Religion" vs. "No Religion" ... it's the wrong perspective!
My statement about truth is really the correct perspective rather than being religious or not: "Truth vs. Non-Truth" is the better perspective.
As I discussed before, the point of spirituality is to arrive at unseen truth principles which exist and are self-evident. The purpose of religion was to arrive at these unseen truth principles. Whether religions were correct or not is contingent upon whether their statements actually match truth itself.
The religion that says "all is subjective" excludes itself from truth due to the statement it makes. That type of religion failed to arrive at truth; they arrived at a logically false statement.
From here then, the real question is not whether we are religious or not. The real question is, "do we believe truth exists, and what is it?" In this search for truth, it may be beneficial to learn what religions espouse, and then figure out if what they taught was actual truth or non-truth concepts.
Doing this is not simple. It takes time.
Possible Shortcuts in the Journey
- Not all religions are the same. People who knew very little about what various religions believed and lived, wanted to craft a "let's all get along" mentality by creating a lie that they are all the same. To the people in such religions, who believe them on a daily basis, there is a drastic, life-changing difference between the different belief sets. This attitude of "they're all the same", comes from an uninformed person. If we believe truth exists, then there demands of us a differentiation from A and B. Mutually exclusive principles cannot be considered "the same thing" if we still wish to espouse truth as a real thing.
"... most religions have superficial similarities with fundamental differences." - Ravi Zacharias
- Spiritual Experiences must always be tested against the truth reality which cannot be physically observed. Why?
An Example: A magician does some fancy tricks, and tells you a couple things about your life that he could not have known, and then claims to be God because he knows these things. That statement that he is God has to be tested against something. The reason it must be tested is because if later we find out the magician had just read your mail in the trashcan; that indicates he was faking the statement.
If we extrapolate this example to spiritual experiences we can see why testing statements against truth is required. Spiritual Experience XYZ happening to you, does not necessarily mean that experience is true. Likewise, it does not mean it is false. Hence, we must have a measuring stick for truth. This measuring stick should likewise be applied to what other people say. Sounding smart does not make your statements true. Truth demands more than sounding smart, it demands you be correct about what you are saying.
- "Ok, I believe there is a God, or at the very least I am considering it." When I reached this point, I took a bold step. At this point in my journey, I was even unsure if such a God that exists could / would hear me. I was also unsure if God was really there. To solve this dilemma, I went out on a limb. I asked this God (even if he was not there) to start explaining things about his nature to me. The reason I could ask this was as follows: 1) If he was not there, or not listening, or not powerful enough, then certainly, I would receive no response 2) If he was there, I would receive a response, if he was willing and powerful in a way that could help me 3) If he was there, there was zero possibility of me figuring out God on my own, because I am a finite being trying to find truth about God with only human abilities. Him providing the truth was kind of implied, if he expected me to know anything at all.
For me it was an ideal situation. Like an experiment. Either it would work or it would not work, but certainly a result should occur over time.
I think where many people fail in asking God to reveal himself is that they make it an immediate activity "Right now, or nothing!", rather than a prolonged experiment where they are flexible to learn. I took the later, where I expected this information to be given slowly, over time, and it was. I fumbled the information, and misunderstood it for years afterward, but I was still getting the information.
The point of this article, and I hope I helped you a little, was not to steer you on a specific path. Many people, I think, have trouble being shoved down a single avenue of thinking too quickly. For me personally, it took years of time reflecting on things to grow where I am today.