True Spirituality

I had a deep re-evaluation if I should continue this blog. Blogs, of course, are a dime a dozen these days. I even thought it would be a funny line in a sitcom where someone (like a narcissistic male) says, "You may know of me . . .  I'm the one with the blog." (then the laugh track goes off).

So, I know I come here to just give personal ventilation to thoughts when I know there is no one in my real world in which to speak.   Those often come across as simply criticism of evangelicalism.  Maybe there is a self-center purpose of that, on a psychological level.

Of course I would be the first to say that we all blog, tweet, Facebook with the main drive of trying to feel that what we think, or feel, has value. You tweet, "I stubbed my toe this morning and it hurt" and, if you are lucky, three people will tweet back, "I'm so sorry" and therefore you feel that your life does have some meaning to someone.

But the hard question I had to ask myself was, am I blogging here with a voice that isn't well represented elsewhere?  I have very little time to write and when I do, especially when I use my tiny smart-phone sized computer, I make a lot of typos. Surely others write with more thought and purpose.  There's plenty of good post-Evangelical types of blogs, like Imonk.  They write with careful consideration and much more eloquently.

So here is what I came up with. If I stick to my original intent, to juxtapose the Christian monist view vs dualism, then I may be one of the, if not the only voice. So, I think I need to keep returning to my roots to make this blog have any reason to exist.

This came to mind as I followed ( in relationship to my last post) about new ideas of "doing church." While there are many out there who see a need for a different interpretation of the church, I find that they want to go in a very different direction than me.  They want to go deeper into dualistic thinking, rather from it like me. I found this out first hand when I tried to start a house church once. I thought I had the right ideas. However, all five of the families that came with us were deeply entrenched within the Dualistic-Evangelical way of thinking and wanted more, not less of it.  They saw the spiritual as being mystic.  God was telling each one great (and often bizarre) things through their dreams, through the shapes of clouds and through the fluttering of gastric muscles.

So here is the contrast. As a monist, I see the entire universe, visible and invisible, as from God. It is beautiful.  Part of that physical universe are our brains and emotions (God given).  Reason, while not perfect, is good. So, for us to be spiritual, we don't have to transcend this physical world into another world without matter in order to make sense of life. So, we can call indigestion, indigestion and we don't have to embellish it as the Holy Spirit talking to us.

Do I believe in the supernatural?  Of course I do. But as an honest observer I can say that I have never witnessed a supernatural event.  I don't have to. I can be more honest about things they way they are and still give God praise for it.

I will try to speak with that voice more often.