What is a spiritual journey?

What is a spiritual journey notes on wisdom

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What we regularly think of as a spiritual journey or a spiritual life is actually just a significant change in belief, ethics, and morality. This creates a significant problem because it means we have failed to understand the message of the Gospel. And instead have fallen into the timeless trap of focusing on behavior modification and continuous improvement. So the very thinking and behavior that is supposed to bring us closer to God ends up keeping us from really knowing Him. 

This ethical reformation in our hearts and minds can be very good and often a necessary part of a spiritual journey, but it is only part of it. If we fail to move past beliefs and behaviors, then we end up stuck and fail to experience true spirituality. Our understanding of ethics and morality is ultimately based on our knowledge of good and evil, not our union with God. As a result, most of what we know as modern Christianity is based on the knowledge of good and evil, not the knowledge of God. The goal of all spirituality must be union with God. This union cannot be attained through even the best morality and ethical living. In fact, the ultimate end of true ethics is simply the person of Jesus Christ. The full and true embodiment of ethics. 

This all brings us back to the Garden of Eden. We so often look at this Genesis story as just an explanation of our origin. But there is so much more to the story; it is, most importantly, the picture of all of our spiritual lives. We were made for union with God, to walk with him in the cool of the day, living in childlike freedom, dependent on God, surrounded by abundance. But then our desire for control led us out of union with God and cut us off from the abundance of the garden. Now our journey is back to union with God through relinquishing the control that we tried to take of our own lives that got us kicked out of the garden in the first place. A real spiritual journey is a journey of transformation. A return to childlike trust, living in a place of abundance with direct experiential union with God. 

Just stop for a second and think how wonderful that sounds. 

Ultimately, when humanity ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of Good and evil, it was because man desired to be like God. What he accidentally did, though, was say that he wanted to occupy the place that was God’s to occupy in his life. Do we not all struggle with the same thing? Even though we love God, more often than not our backward thinking leads us to occupy the seat, the throne, that is designed for God in our lives. We are all Adam and Eve, humanity that has tried to take control of our lives instead of trusting God. The unfortunate reality is though, that man cannot get himself back to the garden. He wishes to ascend to the heights of heaven, to return to union with God, but the only way up is to go down, total surrender to God. Death to the man who knows good and evil, so that the man who knows only God can be reborn. 

Now consider that when Jesus began his ministry, the first thing that he went about saying was, " Repent, for the kingdom of God is here.” Repent means change your thinking and go a different way. The kingdom of God is His reality, superseding what we think of as reality, our daily lives. Then, when Jesus died on the cross, what he was making available to us was union with God again. The veil to the holy of holies was torn. When man kicked himself out of the garden by seeking his own power, he was cut off from God. When Jesus died on the cross, and the veil was torn, union was made available to us once again. The path to life in the kingdom was opened up.   

Every time Jesus talked to the Pharisees, He was pointing out how they think their ethics and morality will bring them into union with God, but in reality they are serving their own ego. This is exactly the problem that Dietrich Bonhoeffer highlights so well in his book Ethics. When we know good and evil, then all we know is good and evil. We cannot know God and good and evil. As Thomas Aquinas said, “Good is what all things desire.” The goal of all ethics then should be to lead us out of the knowledge of Good and evil so that instead of judging Good and Evil, right and wrong, we only know one thing, God and His will. 

“The Pharisees is not an adventitious historical phenomenon of a particular time. He is the man to whom only the knowledge of good and evil has come to be of importance in his entire life; in other words, he is simply the man of disunion. Any distorted picture of the Pharisees rob's Jesus's argument with them of its gravity and its importance. The Pharisees is that extremely admirable man who subordinates his entire life to his knowledge of good and evil and is as severe a judge of himself as of his neighbor to the honor of God, whom he humbly thanks for this knowledge.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer. 

So if ethical and moral reformation in the name of Jesus is not a real spiritual journey, then what is? Simply put, complete transformation. When humanity kicked itself out of the garden, it was cut off from its birthright as children of God living in union with Him. A real spiritual journey is a return to the garden, a return to our birthright. But we weren’t born in the garden; we were born into our false selves, born into brokenness. What Adam and Eve got in exchange for their birthright was the knowledge of right and wrong. That's literally what the serpent offered them, and that's what they got, that's what we all have gotten. Instead of being born into union with God, we are born into the knowledge of good and evil. Instead of being born into the garden, we are born into disunion, lack, and fear. So what humanity has done for thousands of years is try to leverage our knowledge of good and evil in order to get ourselves back to the garden. But of course that doesn't work, it's impossible. 

Then Jesus enters into this world where man has been trying to return himself to the garden and He opens up a door, He makes a way. He says, “Come and follow me.” “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one gets to the Father except through me.” And “Pick up your cross and follow me”

So where exactly was he taking us, the Father, of course, but more specifically, what is the path He invited us on? To be born again, not of flesh but of the spirit. A new creation in Christ Jesus. He invited us out of the birthright of the knowledge of good and evil and into the birthright of the knowledge of God. We must, however, leave behind the knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong, if we are to step into our true birthright, union with God. 

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” (Luke 9:23–24; Mark 8:34–35; Matthew 16:24–25)

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God... That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” (John 3:3, 6)

When we start to understand the spiritual life as a return to the garden and union with God, then it changes everything. The biggest question then becomes, how do I go on that journey? Unfortunately, most Christian teaching and practices are built more on the knowledge of good and evil than the knowledge of God. Despite the best of our intentions, we still end up being the Pharisees. When we try to understand the teachings of Jesus through the lens of the knowledge of good and evil, then we end up creating religion. It appeals to us because we can understand it and evaluate how well we are doing at it. The real spiritual journey that Jesus invites us on is discipleship. 

As John Ortberg points out in the preface to Rankin Wilburn’s book Union with Christ, most Christians see discipleship as an optional category for spiritual overachievers. But when we study the teachings of Jesus, and we understand this idea of the return to the garden, then it becomes clear that discipleship is not optional. Organized religion has somehow propagated this kind of thinking, but it is simply a lie. There is nothing in the Bible that should lead us to think discipleship is optional. 

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15)

Discipleship is the journey to become like Christ. If that can't be achieved through ethics and morality, then how exactly do we do it? Jesus himself chose to speak in metaphors and parables, so I will highlight a few that speak to this and share how I understand them. 

He said that we must “pick up our cross,” which is a powerful act of voluntarily accepting and participating in our own death. He also said that we must be “born again,” which is a picture of death and rebirth, which is transformation. 

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” - John 3:3

Jesus said, “Repent for the Kingdom of God is here.” As I already pointed out, this means change your thinking; the reality of my kingdom is here. That speaks to a complete paradigm shift for our view of reality and how we live our lives. He said, "blessed are the poor in spirit…  those who mourn… those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” These all speak to humility and recognizing our complete and utter dependence on God. He said, “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.” I don’t think He is telling us to blind ourselves but instead to eliminate anything in our lives that feeds our ego and self-obsession. 

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” - Matthew 6:21 

Our lives follow whatever we value most, and Jesus called us to kingdom treasures over worldly treasure. He says, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33). Anxiety, fear and hoarding happen when we take our self-preservation into our own hands, rather than completely surrender ourselves and seeking his Kingdom above all else. 

So another way of saying all of this is that He has called us to embrace our own need to die and be born again. To have a radical paradigm shift and change in thinking so that we can follow Him and live in His Kingdom now. We are to humbly embrace our complete dependence on God, so we can exchange the treasures of this world for the treasures of his Kingdom. When this kind of transformation happens in us, we have come to the threshold of connection with God. Because the things that keep us from union with God are not our sinful acts, but our desire for control and obsession with self-preservation. In other words, our long history with the knowledge of Good and Evil is the barrier to our truly knowing God. Our unwillingness to die and inability to see our need to die is what keeps us stuck in the land of the Pharisee instead of entering the promised land. 

The Bible is full of so many stories that reiterate this timeless truth, but we continually fail to see it. We continue to believe that our ethical and moral living is the path to the garden. A full spiritual journey is a return to the garden through transformation. It is a recovery of our birthright and exchanging our control through humility, death, rebirth, and rebuilding our thinking. It is exchanging the false self that knows ideas about God for our true self that lives from union with Him. 

If we taught this kind of understanding of the Gospel, then the Christian church would look very different than it does now. Instead, what we have chosen to teach is a watered-down gospel that allows us to have eternal life without picking up our cross. But without death, there can be no rebirth, so instead of experiencing the eternal way of living now in the kingdom that is at hand, we labor in good works and long for the eternal life that begins when we die. We have chosen the religion of the Pharisees built around the teachings of Jesus instead of accepting the great invitation to discipleship. We call people to follow Jesus but not to be truly transformed so we accidentally just lead them to a set of beliefs, morality, and ethics, not the cross. So much of Christian teaching is based on judgment, the knowing Good and evil, right and wrong, eating from the tree of the knowledge of Good and evil instead of eating from the tree of life. We have been deceived by the serpent just like Adam and Eve were in the garden, and it is all so subtle and sleight of hand. 

Questions to ponder:

• Do I truly believe that union with God is the purpose and end goal of my spiritual journey?
• Do I believe that transformation is necessary in order for me to be able to experience union with God?
• Do I recognize that any effort to pursue union with God through the knowledge of good and evil is futile? 

- John Walt