According to Eugene Taylor, “We are witnessing a spiritual awakening unprecedented in modern times…” [1] These are exciting words until one understands that the spiritual awakening being referred to is highly eclectic and “perceptually grounded in what the experiencer believes is a deeper level of the immediate reality…”[2]Indeed, spirituality is “making a comeback.”[3] Many people appear to be enthusiastically embracing spirituality—although not necessarily within the context of the organized churches.
Psychotherapist David Elkins, in an article titled “Spirituality: It’s What’s Missing in Mental Health,” writes, “… most Americans want spirituality, but perhaps not in religious form. … Many left church and synagogue not because they had lost interest in spirituality, but because organized religion was not meeting their spiritual needs [emphasis added].”[4]
For the participants of this “massive flight from traditional religious institutions into spirituality,”[5] mystical vitality and truth can be found “as much in the Christian Bible as in the Torah, the Koran, the Tao te Ching, or the Bagavad Gita.”[6] Their religious experiences are of the “self-help variety.” [7] They have turned to Eastern practices, new age philosophies, Twelve Step programs, Greek mythology, Jungian psychology, shamanic practices, massage, yoga, “music, poetry, literature, art, nature and intimate relationships.”[8]
A quick survey of the sociological landscape reveals that people are realizing that they have a spiritual side. It is an area of their existence that “neither science nor materialism has satisfied.”[9] So, people are hungry for spirituality. According to John Bowen, “The fact that The Celestine Prophecy, with its strong pro-spirituality, anti-organized religion message, has been on the best-seller lists since mid-1994 indicates the strength of this hunger for spirituality.”[10]
The modern spiritual explorer is offered many options and many spiritual pathways from which to choose. However, not all options are equally valid. Jesus Christ taught that in a world filled with counterfeits there is a definitive, a genuine, an exclusive “road that leads to life” and “only a few find [it]” (Matthew 7:14, NIV).
Ron Dart laments, “We live in an age in which the old paths have been overgrown, the ancient springs have been deserted and the golden string is lost.”[11] In such an age, is it possible to discover an authentic Christian spirituality—the road that leads to life? Dart believes so. He writes, “If we are willing to trek to these ancient springs, we might just find the water we need to nourish us on our own hike through time. … If we pay due attention … we might find the path we need, a path that will guide us to … the source and center of all things.”[12]
[1] Eugene Taylor, “Desperately Seeking Spirituality,” Psychology Today 27, no. 6 (1994): 54.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Carl. F.H. Henry, “Spiritual? Say It Isn’t So!” in Alive to God: Studies in Spirituality, ed. J.I. Packer and Loren Wilkinson (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1992), 8.
[4] David Elkins, “Spirituality: It’s What’s Missing In Mental Health,” Psychology Today 32, no. 5 (1999): 44.
[5] Taylor.
[6] Elkins.
[7] Henry, 9.
[8] Elkins.
[9] John Bowen, “The Spirituality of Jesus and the Dangers of Religion” [article on-line] (Toronto, Ontario Canada: Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship of Canada, 1998, accessed 3 January 2001); available from http://www.dare-connexions.org/spirituality.html#rel%20w%20God; Internet.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ron Dart, “Prophetic Spirituality: Markings for the Journey,” in Alive to God: Studies in Spirituality, ed. J.I. Packer and Loren Wilkinson (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1992), 296.
[12] Ibid.
