Spirituality is not.....

Before we get into the meat of spirituality, we should look at some of the misconceptions about spirituality.  You may or may not agree with my conclusions and that's OK. Part of my reasoning for putting these up front is that many of these misconceptions were ones that I had.  Think of this as a placeholder.  I don't expect you to totally agree with them right now, maybe ever. But part of being open spiritually is learning how to be alright with being unsure. It is OK to NOT have all the answers.  I realized that many of the ideas I was experiencing went against what I had believed to be true. When you encounter one of these ideas take a "I don't know" approach instead of immediately rejecting it.  In fact this is the posture I would recommend that you consider taking for the rest of your life. God is certainly able and willing to sort those unknowns out for you, sometimes quickly and sometimes more slowly, but he will not abandon or forsake you in the process.

So the first misconception I would like to explode is: Spirituality is not about being good.  For Bible-believing christians this is a difficult one to overcome.  It was implied that to be a good christian you had to be perfect.  One of the problems in  putting so much faith in the scriptures is that there has been a tendency of turning them into a law book.  The Old Testament was a law book, so surely the New Testament was just an updated version. Jesus himself did not even consider being good as something to hold on to(Matt 10:18). If he was not striving to be good, then we should not either. Quit trying to be a good christian! You can't do it and it is wasted effort to try. The only thing you will achieve if you do manage to be good is an enormous ego. Spirituality is largely about shedding your ego, so if you totally want to be unspiritual, then go ahead and try to be good. If you want to grow spiritually admit that you are a sinner and move on. Our sin actually puts us in a position where we need God. It is only from this position of humility that God can work in our hearts to transform us into something useful to Him.