What does authentic spirituality look like - in my life as an individual Christ-follower or in the life of a community of Christ-followers? I suggest the following traits bear witness to authentic spirituality in one's life. They are also the marks of authentic Christian community. Sadly, they are often missing in the life of the institutional church. These traits are drawn from Jesus' Great Commandment, his Beatitudes, Paul's fruit of the Spirit, and Paul's remarks about love in 1 Corinthians 13.
The first and most obvious trait is love for God, that is, a love for who God is and for God's ways. The spiritually authentic person is captivated by God's nature of self-giving love and hungers to live the grace-based ways of the Kingdom. This love is greater than the unhealthy form of self-love that lies at the core of our human nature and gives birth to our self-serving ways.
Love for God fosters deep trust in God's faithfulness. This trust or faith is expressed in a spirit of glad dependency upon God. It moves us beyond the delusion of self-sufficiency and the arrogance of self-reliance.
Love for God gives birth to openness and honesty, first with oneself and, then, with others. The courage to live authentically moves us beyond the fear-driven pretense that is inherent to our human nature.
Such openness and honesty are accompanied by humility. Humility recognizes my spiritual bankruptcy, that is, my never-ending dependency upon God and my recurring need of God's grace. Healthy humility also recognizes the gifts and abilities, the insights and understanding, the progress and experience that God has entrusted to me. These God-given gifts are tools for me to use in giving to others in Jesus' name. I call this kind of humility confident humility. Confident humility knows what I have to offer others. It knows that whatever I have to offer is God's gift to me. It acknowledges my dependency upon God in offering those gifts to others.
Openness and honesty are accompanied by self-awareness and self-management. The Spirit guides us in being aware of the anxiety-based reactions and patterns that unconsciously stir within the interior dimensions of our lives. Recognizing and understanding these archaic patterns puts us in a position to manage our behavior through the Spirit's power. Spirit-empowered self-management (Paul's language: self-control) opens the door to change and growth. It places us in a position to choose to move beyond the old ways of thinking and living that were ingrained in us in our formative years (Paul's language: "do not be conformed to the patterns of this world," Romans 12:2).
Self-awareness becomes the Spirit's invitation to turn to God for help (glad dependency). It opens the door to experience again the peace of God that the Spirit gives. Authentic spirituality is marked by the ability to rise above the anxiety and fear that are a normal part of our human experience so that we live out of a deep, recurring sense of God's peace.
The peace of God frees us to experience joy. Joy displaces the negativity, frustration, and anger that arise whenever we are confronted with our powerlessness.
The Spirit's gifts of joy and peace set us free to live out of a servant spirit, i.e., to love others as Jesus loved. The servant spirit gives freely of what God has given me to address the need of others. Its primary concern is the other's growth and maturity.
The servant spirit is filled with and expressed in compassion and mercy. It moves beyond harsh, judgmental thinking to respond to the other with gentleness and kindness. It is patient and faithful, refusing to give up on the other. It gives freely out of a spirit of joyous generosity.
I am sure authentic spirituality has features other than these I have named. But the traits I have identified are all associated with authentic spirituality. They are the marks of spiritual maturity. They are what it looks like to be Christlike. They are what the Spirit produces in our lives when we walk in intentional relationship with God.
May it be so for each of us!
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