What’s Wrong With Being Worldly?

Spiritual

Adjective

  1. Relating to or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things
  2. Relating to religion or religious belief

Synonyms: non-material, inner, religious, sacred, holy.

Worldly:

Adjective

  1. (of a person) experienced and sophisticated
  2. Of or concerned with material values or ordinary life rather than a spiritual existence.

Synonyms: non-spiritual, carnal, profane, human.

Antonyms: spiritual

This is one of the most frustrating blog post to write because I don’t feel that I have all of the vocabulary I need to talk about it most effectively, but it’s something I have become quite passionate about over the last few years. I am only speaking of my own experience, fully aware that others may have incredibly contrasting experiences. Whether you share or relate to my experiences or not, I hope it brings some food for thought. 

The aim of the blog post is to encourage us to fully embrace our humanness– something, from my experience, that hasn’t been encouraged well in the Church or in Christianity.

I have chosen to use the word worldly in the title, because being worldly and being spiritual are often portrayed as opposite ends of a spectrum. Growing up in church, I was aware of the idea that if you were worldly, you couldn’t possibly be spiritual, and by extension, those that weren’t worldly, were more spiritual or closer to God.

In the last few years, I’ve come to challenge what we mean by the word worldly- it seems so negative. One of the synonyms for worldly, is human. Worldly can just mean human. This blog is not encouraging people to become focused on only their material existence. What if spiritual and worldly aren’t directly opposing each other and we can be both? What if it’s actually better to be both?

Guru Nanak Dev Ji, in Sikhism, taught, “Before becoming a Muslim, a Sikh, a Hindu or a Christian, let’s become a human first,” I love this quote and I have come to think of it often in the last few years. Before I am anything else, I am a human being. Everything I need, think or feel is directly because, and a constant reminder that, I am a human being first.

Yet, so often, it seems that we judge, criticise or suppress parts of our human-ness. We label emotions as positive or negative, when they are neither. We beat ourselves up for feeling too much or too little, the wrong feeling at the wrong time. We judge our bodies, our thoughts, our feelings, our most basic needs. We feel shame and embarrassment about such basic aspects of being human.

The examples are endless. We continue to go at 100mph even though we are clearly ill or exhausted. We’re hungry but we don’t eat because were worried about our image, or our weight, or how we look eating in front of people. We judge our much needed rest days on the sofa binge watching what we describe as trash, or our simple pleasures in life, that bring us moments of joy. We take 100 selfies before we settle on a photo that doesn’t show our “rolls” or natural lumps and bumps, and we invest in clothes that constantly hide parts of our bodies that we think aren’t good enough. We try not to cry in public spaces, and we slap a smile on our face and say we’re fine, even if we’re not. We hide our disappointments, our failures, and our heartbreak from almost everybody. We can’t even comfortably poo in public toilets- a most basic of human needs! We spend so much time hiding or suppressing what it is to be a human being– when that’s what we are before we are anything else!

Learning to live with a mental health condition that is directly based on access to sunlight; something that is largely managed by my own lifestyle choices regarding my diet, sleep routine, exercise and so on, I have learnt to be okay with my human-ness. Generally, the faith response was to pray for me to be healed of S.A.D- something I don’t actually think is necessary. This is the house that I live in and sometimes, it doesn’t function at its best because of external factors. It’s a complex, sometimes broken, but wonderful house to live in. I am okay with living in this house- I like this house.

Once I started counselling, I became even more aware of my humanness. Jesse, was regularly reminding me to identify my emotions and feelings without judgement. I used to say things like, “I’ve been feeling anxious this week, which I know is stupid.” Or I would talk about an experience that hurt me, and finish my monologue with, “but its fine, I just need to forget about it.”

Both of these are examples of me rejecting my humanness, of not allowing all parts of myself to exist. Of course we always have choices about how we act on our feelings. We always have choices about how we process and reflect, work through and communicate our feelings. But let’s first identify our emotions and accept them without judgement. Let’s allow them to exist.

God becoming human and dwelling among us is precious. It’s a reminder that God felt all human emotions and experienced human experiences.

God didn’t think that becoming human was beneath him- this should empower us to fully engage with our human experiences, without fear, without judgement and without shame and condemnation.

I just don’t believe that God became human so that we would still be living in shame about our human-ness.

We often spiritualise the human accounts in the gospel. We view doubting Thomas negatively and Judas with a distinct lack of compassion or empathy. We rarely talk about Jesus weeping, or feeling scared, and the most famous stories that we could perceive as wonderful examples of the kindness of humanity, we credit it to the divine aspect instead: the woman at the well and the woman caught in adultery are two examples for me of the kindness that humans are capable of, as shown in the man of Jesus. We never talk about Jesus being dependent on another human being to breast feed him, clean his shit up and rock him back to sleep. 

We talk about all the God aspects of Jesus, but not enough of the human-ness of him. Over the last few years, I have become increasingly compelled by the humanness of Jesus.

My hope is that you would allow yourself as a human being to exist in all its fullness- including the uncomfortable, difficult and painful parts. And that as you do this, you would realise the fullness of God’s love for your human-ness. He is not scared or repulsed or put off but it- we shouldn’t be either. As I was planning this blog post, there were a few key areas that in my own life, I have rejected or experienced shame about. I want to encourage you to consider embracing and allowing those things in your own life to exist, without judgement or shame or repulsion.

You know, all emotions are neutral and all thoughts are neutral? They exist within our humanity as a way for us to process and respond to all that is going around us and inside of us. Yet, we throw some emotions into a bad camp and others into the good camp. We feel guilty for feeling or thinking certain things and strive to suppress them as much as possible. In reality, when we are able to acknowledge what we feel or think and why we do, we are then able to process them in a way that is healthy and wholesome.

I can remember a friend sharing a memory she had from her teen years in church- she had been feeling jealous of others in her youth group and when she sought advice and support about this, the adult simply just prayed that the feelings would go away because they’re not ‘of God.’

Jealousy is a perfectly normal human emotions that should be allowed to exist- to be acknowledged and processed and responded to in a way that is healthy. God knows we feel things and he is present when we feel them, loving exactly as perfectly as he always has done. He isn’t repulsed by our emotions- any of them!

One of the most frustrating responses I received when I was diagnosed with S.A.D was to advise me to get prayer for healing. I’ve heard people suggest that Christians don’t have anything to be depressed about because of Jesus, as well as the encouragement to pursue joy as one of the fruits of the spirit. There has almost been an often, unspoken, expectation that this mental ill-health makes someone less spiritual.

Human experiences, all of them, are valid. Maybe we need to allow all of these parts of us- including our ill health- to exist, comforted in the knowledge that God is present.

Equally, to go back to my earlier comment about Doubting Thomas, doubt is portrayed so negatively because it’s not seen as spiritual. In John, Thomas refuses to believe in the resurrection of Jesus until he had seen him for himself, including the wounds of his crucifixion. Jesus did not withdraw himself from Thomas- he drew close to him. Thomas’ doubts were an attempt to find something that would endear him to his faith, not to distant himself. Our doubts should not be shamed or dismissed- they are a real response to our experiences and therefore they are totally valid.

So I would like to challenge you. Take time throughout your day to pause and identify how you’re feeling. Name your feelings without judgement or condemnation or shame. Ask the big questions that play on your mind and allow them to exist. Remind yourself that God is okay with these feelings and these questions. Learn how to take care of yourself, while allowing these feelings to stay for as long as they need. Don’t indulge them. Don’t suppress them. Allow them space to exist where they are. It’s a freeing and wholesome experience to let things be as they are…even the things within ourselves that we’ve forever believed aren’t good. Maybe, especially these parts of us.

My hope is that as you continue your journey through life, you would become more able to embrace all your humanity. That you may learn how to be both worldly and spiritual. That God is both, and so are we.