A number of people I know have had recent encounters with strange persons who appear to be on the increase in the ranks of Christians in America. There’s no known genus and species name for these unusual creatures, so most people are forced to refer to them by their collective name, The Superspiritual.
I’m sure at least a few folks out there have crossed paths with this particular beast. For those unacquainted with The Superspiritual, a few of their traits stand out:
- They have a tendency to get up before the sun and have incredibly long quiet times that rival those of the great saints of old. In fact, the saints of old were pansies compared to these folks.
- They’ve memorized large swaths of the Bible—and in multiple translations. Ask them to quote a specific passage—they’re dying to share it with you.
- They have an answer to every possible theological question anyone might have. The best of them will offer multiple perspectives given by a chosen set of favorite authors. Always a very narrow selection of authors. Come to think of it, those authors always agree with each other on everything, so there isn’t much variation of perspective when you get right down to it.
- Their library of Christian books, if sold on eBay, could feed a hundred AIDS orphans in Africa for a decade, though it is doubtful they’d ever part with those books. Go ahead, try to snatch one out of their hands. (Fast reflexes, eh?)
- If they own a business, that business will be founded on, run by, and ever beholden to “Christian principles.” Those principles appear to include making as much money as possible by any means available.
- If you’re a heathen—meaning you’re not as spiritual as they are—you’re held at arm’s length until you ARE as spiritual as they are. (Good luck! Typically it’s taken decades for them to reach their own peculiar nirvana.)
- “Christian practice” is defined as going to church on Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, Wednesdays nights, and at least a small group or two on a free night. Oh, and there’s a number of church boards to sit on, too. Christian practice is critical for enhancing one’s standing in order to maximize #5 above.
- They talk, talk, talk about family values, and you can’t help but think they’ve got the insular family thing down to a T, seeing that no one else associates with them. Just don’t bring up their middle child in conversation.
- They do an outstanding job of telling you what the Bible says we should be against, but stumble a bit when pressed on what the Bible says we should be for.
- They have a way of making anyone who stands near them feel oddly guilty.
Sound familiar now? Certainly you’ve met one of these folks.
As to #2 above, their memorization skills are indeed impressive, but The Superspiritual seem to have mentally misplaced a few verses. Consider the following verses that routinely get overlooked:
And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.
—Luke 6:31 ESVFor judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
—James 2:13 ESVAnd he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
—Matthew 22:37-40 ESVIf anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
—1 John 4:20-21 ESVMy brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?”
—James 2:1-4 ESVWhat good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!
—James 2:14-19 ESV
All joking aside, I’m growing tired of hearing stories about people afflicted with the disease of Superspirituality. And it truly is a disease because it infects impressionable people who come under the tutelage of those already diseased.
- What explains the Christian businessman who fires employees to cut costs rather than examine the careless way in which he doles out company money to ministries in order to get on their privileged donor list?
- Or an upper-middle-class church that splits over outreach to a Hispanic neighborhood because the people they sought to evangelize in that neighborhood had the nerve to actually start showing up in the church on Sunday?
- Or a radio ministry that promises a helpful book that can aid those who are struggling with long-term unemployment and its resulting financial ruin, but when calling in it’s a mandatory $30 “love gift” for the book—which Amazon sells for $8.99?
- Or the Christian company that requests a prospective employee twice fly out for a job interview, only to later fail to reimburse the prospect for the plane flights or even bother to give her a follow-up phone call about the job?
- Or the Christian organization that exists solely to help people with one specific kind of problem, but who gets a client in further trouble by failing to file critical paperwork because they were too busy preparing for a big evangelistic outreach they sponsor?
Don’t those just rip your heart out? What should be done with folks who have every appearance of being paragons of Christian virtue, yet they purposefully ignore the most basic aspects of the faith?
What would happen to us as a Church in this country if we spent the next year doing nothing that even vaguely resembled Superspirituality, instead simply doing unto others as we would have them do unto us? How hard is it to ask ourselves whether or not we like to be treated as badly by other Christians as we sometimes treat others?
I don’t think The Superspiritual ever ask themselves that kind of question.
A number of years ago, a friend, noting the sheer number of trivial things I know about highly useless topics, congratulated me on having filled my mind with so many facts. My response to him? I’d trade it all to be able to know the Bible inside and out.
Today, I realize that this response was Superspiritual. In reflecting about this issue of Superspirituality, it occurs to me that the less Superspiritual answer—and the one closer to the heart of Jesus—is this: that I be able to put into practice the amount of Bible I already know, rather than simply marinating my brain with it.
I mentioned this in a post last week, but what is the point in correctly learning and handling the Scriptures?
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.
—2 Timothy 3:16-17 ESV
The end goal is good works. Good works are always others-centric. If we’re not putting into practice the things we already know, investing ourselves in the lives of our brothers and sisters in Christ, in the lives of the poor and needy, and in the lives of the lost, then all that Bible knowledge we’ve crammed into our craniums has no outlet. It puffs up our heads and leaves no room for our hearts.
The lost around us will argue our facts and figures, but they find it hard to argue when they’ve had a serious illness strike their household and we show up on their front porch with a homemade dinner. They used to refer to such selfless benevolence as “the milk of human kindness.” Trust me, folks; that’s “meat,” not “milk.”
James says this:
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
—James 1:27 ESV
And we already know that all the prophets were reiterating the same message of God: God desires that men love Him and love their neighbor as themselves.
Superspirituality is all too easy to catch, but there’s a way to avoid its disease. If we surrender ourselves lovingly to God and give of ourselves to our neighbors, there’s not a lot of us left over for that awful virus to infect.
Have a blessed week! And please show the love of Christ to someone this day who might not otherwise experience it.
{Image: Major apologies to the artist who crafted the icon of Saint Columba}
I promise my series on "Unshackling the Church" WILL continue, but I cannot write the next installment, which deals with community and fraternity, unless I go back to what is basic. Milk.