Want To Be More Spiritual?
Be Temporal More Deliberately!
The two natures of a human being, “spiritual” and “secular,” are like two sides of a coin. Remove one side and the coin no longer exists. It’s actually impossible to remove a side from a coin but even if you deface a side it is still a side.
Just like the two sides of a coin, spiritual and secular cannot be separated.
To be clear on the meanings, “secular” is usually thought of as “worldly” or the opposite of religious and connotes something negative especially when characterizing people. It’s the wayward that are worldly. It’s a “four letter word” in religious terms but that meaning doesn’t represent the word accurately.
According to Merriam-Webster “Secular” also means “temporal” as opposed to eternal, which is the way the word was understood a few hundred years back when it was first used. That, of course, means that “secular” is different to “spiritual” but not in a bad way. The two are not disconnected.
Secular speaks of normal human pursuits in this temporal life, some of which effect eternal matters in the next.
The negative connotation, and the emphasis placed on it by Christians, has the undesirable effect of pushing the non-religious even further away from spiritual issues. It grates to be referred to as “worldly,” in the pagan sense of the word, just because they don’t attend church or quote verses from the Bible, especially if they happen to be upstanding people, in some cases more so than those in church.
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All of that speaks to the secular side of the coin. Now for the spiritual side.
“Spirit” refers to the non-physical side of a person and since you can’t see a spirit or touch one physically many people think of it as imperceptible. They describe it mystically and manage it in an other-worldly way.
But here’s the truth. Spirit IS intangible but it ISN’T incomprehensible. Yes, it is evidenced by abstract thought which isn’t easy to explain but it can be explained. Abstract thought is:
The ability to conceive of and analyze ideas that have no spatial representation.
“Value” is an abstract concept. “Marriage” for example – a value in many cultures – is abstract but a wedding or a home or a family is not.
You could say that “spirit” refers to abstract ideas which have concrete expressions in “secular” activities. Like two parts of an epoxy mix, they catalyze, so taking an abstract idea and analyzing it away from concrete expressions – such as enlightenment without studying – is the equivalent of blowing a logical fuse.
All of that is to say that these two concepts are tied together. Putting too much weight on one will proportionately reduce weight in other, an imbalance. Get one out of balance either way and the other will be proportionately out of balance in the other direction. No person is mostly spiritual or mostly secular. They are naturally both, so attempting to neglect one to enlarge the other is most unnatural.
Every person should be as reliable and capable in secular pursuits as they are in spiritual and Christians should model this best. [Read more…] about Spiritual and Secular Cannot Be Separated
Those whose flaws don’t seem to get in the way of their productive lives. Yes, you read that correctly. There are some people who are just as flawed as the rest of us but are too busy developing in other ways they don’t need to bother with resolutions. They start out on the right track and never veer very far from center line. Their progress is steady and obvious and those in that group who achieve celebrity are admired, honored and envied in spite of their apparent weaknesses. These are the people we can learn from.