Spurious Spirituality

Any form of spirituality which doesn't recognise the powerful presence of evil in the world today is a false path. Any approach to God which ignores the pronounced spiritual evil of the present time is not just deficient but ignorant and not just ignorant but very possibly part of the evil itself, either directly or through a kind of coercive absorption. If you don't recognise this it may be that you too are on the side of evil, even if that is only passively so, and that is because of a spiritual lack within you.

What an 'unspiritual' and unloving thing to say! We should tolerate many different approaches and no one of them is better than another if they all seek the same end. So it is said. But this is the problem. People have been so disarmed by the thought of love and kindness that they forget that God's mercy must always be accompanied by his justice or it is just sentimentality. Love needs truth or it is not real love.

So many people who think of themselves as spiritual, and who may indeed practise some kind of spiritual discipline, have no awareness of modern evil, and even consider some of its aspects positive goods. This is because instead of submitting the self to God, they try to make that self emotionally and psychologically comfortable or enlightened without repentance. For repentance you need to be able to see yourself as the fallen sinner you are. These are emotive words but the fact is there is no spirituality without repentance, and repentance requires a ruthless honesty with oneself. You are not seeking to gain something (the true motive of many spiritual seekers), but to redirect the will.

Are the teachings that promote unity, love and doing good to one's neighbour part of a grand spiritual deception now in the 21st century? That may seem an absurd idea but half-truths are often worse than outright lies because they use the sweetness of the apple to smuggle in the putrefaction of the worm. They use the legitimacy of truth to veil a hidden corruption and the corruption here is that we can separate goodness, light and love from their source which is God or Christ. We cannot.

There is no genuine spiritual awareness without the acknowledgement that we of ourselves are nothing. All is from God and God is not an impersonal cosmic energy that we can tap into and exploit if we look deeply within ourselves, but the living, breathing God (yes, God has breath, what do you think spirit is?) who is our Creator. We are not the source of any love we might feel. That derives from God and if its source is not recognised then, guess what, it is not real love but a cheap facsimile of it.

When I was a worldly adult I thought like a worldly adult. I spoke like one and I reasoned like one. But now is the time to put away the grown-up things of this world and become as a child. What are we looking for? Peace, love, happiness or God? We will only have the gifts of God in the full and real sense when we have God himself and to have God you must want him more than his gifts. Motivation is key.