• spirit
    soul,  Spirit,  Spiritual Maturity

    The Care and Feeding of the Human Spirit

    For most of us, the line between soul and spirit is an amorphous one. In fact, many use the terms interchangeably. However, I believe they are two separate, though not unrelated, parts of our identity. Just as God exists in a trinity, so do we, being made up of body, soul, and spirit. Because of this, I think a quick definition of the soul and the spirit is in order. The soul is the seat of your thoughts and emotions. The soul often receives a bad rap. To behave in a soulish way is Christianspeak for acting poorly. But the soul is an important part of our makeup. We spend…

  • laziness
    Laziness,  Original Sin

    Laziness Three Ways and How to Move Forward

    First up. Could laziness be the original sin? A lot of theories surround what exactly constitutes original sin. Those in the literary fields usually attribute the original sin to the discovery of sexuality, pointing to the serpent as a phallic symbol, but then, those in literary fields usually think everything is Freudian. More ancient commentary on original sin tends towards the idea of concupiscence. That word means lust or desire, encompassing the literary idea and adding a generalized greed for power, knowledge,  wealth, or whatever. However, as I amble along Scott Peck’s classic, The Road Less Travelled, I recently came across this notion of laziness as the original sin. He…

  • Spiritual maturity
    Spiritual Maturity

    Spiritual Maturity: An Attempt at Definition

    Spiritual maturity is impossible to measure. I know. I have tried. When I worked for a small Christian liberal arts university, we wanted to test whether our students gained anything from all the spiritual formation groups, Bible courses, and chapels. I heard other Christian schools were trying to develop similar rubrics, but I never heard of a particularly successful measure. Measuring spiritual maturity is not like measuring knowledge. You can’t simply pass a test or write a paper.  In fact, a fair amount of disagreement exists about spiritual maturity. I think one might need to possess some to recognize it, but I hate even to nail that down. After all,…