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As one pastor said to me after hearing that I had a graduate degree in spiritual formation, “Spirituality is just a fad. It will pass in time. Then we can get back to real religion.” If spirituality is a fad, then so was Pentecost, and so are the power of prayer and the possibility of experiencing God. It that is the case, we are in trouble in the modern church, because according to the story of Pentecost, the body of Christ, the church, is supposed to breathe with the breath of the Spirit.
(N. Graham Standish, Becoming a Blessed Church)
Make me a channel of blessing today,
Make me a channel of blessing, I pray;
My life possessing, my service blessing,
Make me a channel of blessing today.
(Harper G. Smyth, 1903)
John Wesley taught three images within the Image of God conferred through the human person. While there is a natural image of the Divine in the human, an image including reason, volition, and freedom, there is, likewise, a political image. Wesley taught that the human being, male and female, was given the responsibility to be the “channel of conveyance” to all creation” (The Works of John Wesley, Sermon 60, “The General Deliverance"). Originally, “all the blessings of God flowed through him” to the other creatures. The political image means being a channel of the benevolence of God to all creatures. Then, the moral image entails the person continuing to receive and impart the blessings received from communing with and serving the Creator.
Notice that I italicized “through” in the first line above. Why? Because, taught Wesley, the image of God consists not in a stable quality or set of qualities but, rather, entails function, or process. If this is the case, then, Image of God is not something we have or have been given. The Image of God, instead, is something we receive, or better, passes through us. We do not have the Image of God, we receive the Image of God only in being a means of Grace, a sacramental sign and means, to creation.
How are we able to manifest this Image of God? Many Christians would say, “Through obeying God.” Yes, but only when understood rightly. Obedience, for Wesley, is not compliance with obeying rules. Obedience is “the continuing openness to welcome life from the creative source, to receive love, justice, mercy, and truth from God, and, as the image of God, to exercise and communicate further what we have received” (Theodore Runyon, The New Creation) Therefore, essential to this ministry of conveyance is openness and receptivity. We are co-creating with the Spirit only as means of the divine energies, not as the source of those energies.
Wesley used a term for this relationship of receptivity and obedience: spiritual respiration. In Wesley’s words this entails “God’s breathing into the soul, and the soul’s breathing back what it first receives from God; a continual action of God upon the soul, the re-action of the soul upon God; … (Works, Sermon 19, “The Great Privilege of Those That Are Born of God”).
Therefore, the dignity of the human vocation is that each person is a point of transference of blessing. To live in sin is to close oneself off, through self-interest, to being a blessing. And, religion can close one off to God as equally efficiently as what we might call wickedness or perversion. Whenever we are open and receptive to God and, thereby, the Spirit is flowing through us, we are being the Image of God.
Yes, this respiration, or mutual breathing with the Creative Spirit, is spirituality in the Christian context. And, the test of spirituality is not principally individual spiritual growth. The test of Christian spirituality is the fact of being a conveyance of blessing. When blessing is owned, blessing ceases. When received blessing is given blessing, then, more blessing is breathed in and through the person as being Image of God.
The first and last word on this life of obedience is not obedience but love. The respiration, or breathing with God, is love. Dallas Willard reminds us, “The watchword of the worthy servant is not mere obedience but love, from which appropriate obedience naturally flows” (Hearing God). This natural obedience, flowing from love, is the contrast between true spirituality and other “spiritualities,” as well as between healthy religion and unhealthy religion.
So, No, not all religion is equal, nor is all religion good for its adherents, regardless of the sincerity of the devotees. Healthy religion will always open to being a conveyance of original blessing.
Likewise, No, we do not have a natural right to believe whatever we want and, in addition, claim that we deserve respect for that choice. Rather, we are responsible to all creation to be a channel of blessing. We find true love in being that means of blessing. Belief is healthy and righteous when it mirrors this original summons to be a blessing people of blessing persons.
Spiritual Exercises
Questions
1. What is spirituality?
2. Refer to the opening story. Do you agree that spirituality is a distraction? Explain your answer.
3. How do you practice openness and receptivity to God?
4. What is obedience in a Christian context?
5. How might one be obeying the Ten Commandments or be noted for living a moral life and not be living a life of obedience to God, according to Wesley’s teaching on obedience?
6. Define respiration?
7. Define blessing?
8. What is the role of love in the Christian life?
9. How were you the Image of God today?
10. What is the difference between “We are the Image of God” and “We are being the Image of God”?
Meditation
Close your eyes. Rest. Relax. Breathe naturally.
Speak interiorly: Welcome, Holy Spirit. I love you.
Then… allow the divine friend to be with you.
Let this friend give to you all that He desires—
allow your soul to be open to receive.
Let any sadness, grief, or loneliness be washed clean in love.
Allow yourself to melt into the divine arms.
*Italicized words in "Meditation" from Megan Don, Falling into the Arms of God.
**Brian K. Wilcox
OneLife Ministries is a pastoral outreach and nurture ministry of the First United Methodist Church, Fort Meade, FL. For Spiritual Direction, Pastoral Counseling, spiritual formation workshops, Christian meditation retreats, or more information about OneLife, write Rev. Dr. Brian K. Wilcox at briankwilcox@comcast.net.
Brian's book of mystical love poetry, An Ache for Union, can be ordered through major bookdealers.
Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors
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