Back To School
Emotionally UNhealthy Spirituality
2 Corinthians 5:17
September 27, 2009
This new series is entitled, “Back to School.” It is back to school because of the time of year but also because we are going to examine emotionally healthy spirituality. We are going to look at the connection between our spiritual growth and our emotional growth. The assumption behind this is that our spiritual growth or spiritual maturity can be limited by our emotional immaturity. A second belief is that spiritual growth or discipleship of the last century has often focused on the intellectual or mental aspects of spiritual maturity and neglected our emotional development.
Most discipleship seeks to create new or right thinking in order to change our behaviors and our lives. This is both necessary and beneficial. However, the failure to address other issues such as our emotional maturity and our social spheres can leave us stunted in our spiritual growth.
Unfortunately, my education in this area was not due to the church. My church experience with spiritual discipleship has always focused on the mental training. Good and necessary skills to develop and have. Things like scripture memorization, study of scripture, learning basic theological beliefs, learning how to pray and pray out loud, learning bible stories are all approaches and skills that stimulate a healthy mental spirituality. Other skills like meditation, contemplation, and reflection were sometimes taught and begin to touch more of the emotional aspect of our lives but they were usually taught intellectually as a “how to.”
These are very important aspects but for most people they can only take us so far. How many discipleship courses can you take in your life? And the really important question, “How come these practices don’t change my life like they are supposed to do?” All the religious and spiritual school intellectually that you can do just won’t bring us to maturity because we are stunted emotional. So it’s back to school…
A couple was being sent overseas as short-term missionaries by their home congregation. However, their trip was endangered of being postponed because as they neared the date of their departure their visas had not yet been issued. So the church called for everyone to pray and designated the upcoming Sunday as a time for the congregation to pray. They asked every Sunday school class to specifically lift up this vital need.
In the fourth grade class, when the teacher told the students that the missionaries needed a visa and that the class was going to pray for them, one boy raised his hand.
“Yes, Josh,” the teacher said.
“If they can’t get their visa, why don’t they just use their mastercard?”
Today we are going to look at unhealthy emotional spirituality. It focuses on the scripture from 2 Corinthians 5:17 that says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”
We sometimes read this scripture and misapply it. We memorize it and hold onto the promise but we fail to realize that other factors are involved. It is certainly true that when we come to Christ, our sins are wiped away and we are given a new name, a new identity, a new future, and a new way of living. God is no longer a judge but our Father. However, this doesn’t mean that things like the past won’t continue to influence us.
It does mean that when you choose to follow Jesus, you are given the opportunity to begin again. You are to live a new life. It is a new way of living. You turn away from the old way and the rebellion and the me-centered life to live a Christ-centered life. This is a great concept to take hold of. But it is a concept. It is a mental truth. The sins of the past no longer have to drag you down IF (and this is a big, huge “IF”) you are able to let the past go.
But usually even though we want to let go the past, somehow the past often has a hard time letting go of us. So we begin to become new creations when we are finally able to deal with and maybe confront our unhealthy emotional spirituality.
Unhealthy Emotional Spirituality
Now I am going to address just a few of the biggest issues that I see people facing. There are several more. The small group study on emotionally healthy spirituality deals with more of these. But these are several of the biggest issues that we deal with. And I do mean “we.” Because we ALL are on a journey toward wholeness. Part of maturing is realizing that we grow. We don’t really stop growing even though we might experience more health than some and hopefully more health than we used to.
All of us have our issues. Say that with me. ALL of us have issues. One of the markers of emotional health is recognizing what areas we still need to work on and grow in.
The first area that I want to highlight is one that I have already mentioned and that is the past.
• Failure to deal with our past.
Unhealthy emotional spirituality denies that past has anything to do with the present. After all, I am a new creation in Christ. Some of us want to forget the past. We might be embarrassed by the past or the past might be too painful. But ALL of us (and I mean all of us) continue to be influenced by the past whether we follow Jesus or not.
When Paul says that the old has gone, he means for us to not let the past keep us in bondage. However, most people do not deal with the past until they absolutely have to. Because we don’t deal with it and address it and recognize the significance of the past and see the patterns of our past life that continue into the present, we stay trapped by the past. We might not live in the past (although some do that too) but we are trapped by it.
Most of us have come to realize sometimes through our intellectual discipleship training that the consequences of our past sins continue to follow us even when choose to follow Jesus. For example, a life of promiscuous sex that led to one or more sexually transmitted diseases (STD’s) may continue to affect a person even after coming to Christ. Some will have to live with the consequences of having an incurable disease.
Regardless, the past has a ginormous influence over who we are and how we live that without serious work will keep us enslaved in unhealthy emotional spirituality.
• Spiritualizing away conflict
Most of us don’t like conflict. But conflict is all over and if worked out appropriately can actually be beneficial. Yet most churches deal with conflict by sweeping it under the rug. We smooth over disagreements trying to fix them as quickly as possible. Or we just ignore them. We bury our feelings and go on.
Very few of us come from families where conflicts are resolved in a mature, healthy way. Probably none of us do. So we do what everyone else does in our families, our churches, our communities and on TV, we lie. We lie a lot. We lie to ourselves and others.
Here are some examples of unhealthy emotional spirituality when it comes to conflict. These are examples in and out of the church. I suspect there is no difference between so called Christians and non-Christians. We say one thing to people’s faces and then another behind their backs. Sometimes it seems easier and not worth the conflict. I remember being asked by a boss about my opinion concerning a fellow employee. I really felt that the boss needed to do his job better in training this fellow but didn’t want to “upset the apple cart” by saying what really needed to be said. So I gave a vague, meaningless response.
Other examples: we make promises with no intention of keeping them. We blame. We attack. We give people the silent treatment. Sarcasm (my personal favorite) can be unhealthy avoidance of conflict. We give in because we fear being rejected. We tell only half the truth because it keeps our side in the best light or because we don’t want to hurt the feelings of someone else. And frankly, sometimes we just don’t have it in us to confront some people head on.
We say yes when we really want to say no. We avoid and detach. We withdraw and cut other off. Have you ever said your piece venting your frustrations and then run off? That is conflict avoidance because the real work of working through the conflict is avoided. Even finding an outside person with whom we can share in order to ease our anxiety can be a way to avoid conflict.
Jesus did not avoid conflict. His life was filled with it. He regularly challenged the religious leaders. He disrupted the false peace so that he could be true peace.
Just because we come to follow Jesus doesn’t mean that these unhealthy means of dealing with emotional stress just simply disappear. Some of these have become so ingrained into our personalities through decades that it takes years of constant work and vigilance to even began to practice new and healthy ways of dealing with conflict.
• Posing
Someone who poses pretends so that the image or picture that is presented is in the best light possible. Our world is all about posing and creating the best image. Looking our best so that perhaps the wreck inside us won’t be noticed.
Christians present an image of ourselves as strong and spiritually “together.” Inside we feel guilty for not measuring up. We may mentally acknowledge that everyone is a sinner and that no one except God is perfect but we don’t want people to think we are “that bad.”
We pose. We pretend. We put on our plastic masks. We go to “church.”
I saw a commercial recently about a new type of veneer for your teeth that is supposed to be the best yet. What I thought was incredibly outrageous was the claim by one woman (an actress—I’m sure) that this product “changed her life.” I know how improving our appearance can actually improve out self-perception and instill confidence. But that seemed a little over the top.
These are just three issues of unhealthy emotional spirituality. There are several more. I present these as some of the most common that I have observed and trusting that God will speak to each of us to challenge us and direct us as we need.
I can honestly say that dealing with these emotional issues has the potential to change lives. Sometimes radically! My own life has been wonderfully changed because I have been able to let Christ work and continue to work on many of these issues. Will it change your life? It can. It probably will if you are willing to be totally honest and are willing to do whatever it takes. It has made all the difference for me.
But my experience mostly was due to applying these spiritual principles outside of church settings. These are all biblical principles that have their roots in Christians that have developed and applied them. For whatever reason, in the last couple of centuries, Christians especially evangelical-oriented American Christians have disregarded if not shunned the work that is needed to for emotionally healthy spirituality.
It can change you. But it is not an easy path. It is much easier to listen to the stories of others. It is much easier to ignore it or rationalize it away. It is certainly much easier to listen to a few sermons than actually doing the work. Dealing with the past can be painful. God does not want us to go through the pain of the past just to be in pain as some sort of penance. No, God wants us to be free. But in order to be free, it may be necessary to journey through the valley of the shadow of death in order to do so.
I would not be here as a pastor if God had not started me on the journey toward emotional health. In fact, I would not even be alive. I know that it seems to be much easy and softer not to take such a journey. Or at least not serious undertake the journey. But I can tell you that the way of not dealing with our emotional health is much, much harder than we can imagine.
But there are no words to convince you of this. How do describe the tremendous joy of true freedom? There are no words to adequately convey what cultivating emotional health can bring. For some us the benefits are slow and some of us they come quicker. But they are promises to hold onto.
We come not regret the past nor try to forget it. Our fears such as financial insecurity dissipates. Our feelings of insecurity slip away. A peace that seems indescribable begins to permeate our existence. A general sense of well-being and good will becomes more commonplace than not. Our sense of patience, acceptance and tolerance of the faults of others seems to enlarge.
