A Tale of Two Gardens

Christianity as a spiritual path

They seemed like a nice couple. Fresh faced. Smartly dressed. Eager to please. Polite. They wanted to get married in my church, but they neither lived in the parish, nor were they members of the congregation. “I’m afraid we don’t really go to church much,” they said, apologetically, “except at Christmas and Easter of course”. “It’s okay”, I smiled. I knew they didn’t go to church, including at Christmas and Easter.

This sheepish confession, which almost certainly exaggerated their actual attendance, was a line I’d heard many times before, though with declining frequency as the years passed. I don’t suppose there was ever really a time when everyone went to church. But there certainly was a time, and it wasn’t that long ago, when a lot more people did than do today. Indeed, that time was recent enough for many people over a certain age still to have some sort of a lingering folk memory that going to church was normal, something you were meant to do – even if you didn’t.

That notion simply wouldn’t occur to the vast majority of people in Britain today.

It is not my purpose to discuss whether or not that’s a good thing. Rather, the point I wish to make is that this young couple’s statement implies a residual awareness that Christianity has something to do with Christmas and Easter. Now, I’m under no illusions about the fact that for many people, probably an overwhelming majority, the sense that the celebration of Christmas and Easter entails any degree of explicitly religious commitment, however minimal, has all but disappeared. Yet, at some level, even if only unconsciously, the notion that Christianity is Christmas and Easter remains stubbornly persistent.

This is true in an obvious way, at the popular, worldly level, in as much as Christmas and Easter are still celebrated, and in as much as people have some sort of vague folk memory that these occasions have something to do with the Christian tradition. Christmas and Easter may feel more pagan than Christian these days, they may be almost entirely secularised and thoroughly commodified, yet there remains an abiding sense that they should be seen as having some sort of religious significance, typically marked by participation in a communal ritual enacted in a building called a church. For many this may be the sum of what they know about the faith, but that’s not nothing. The enduring significance of Christmas and Easter at the popular level is mirrored by their central importance within the salvation story in theological and sacramental terms as well. Christianity really is Christmas and Easter.

That’s the faith. And it goes all the way down.

The reality of the human condition is that we find ourselves caught between the past we cannot change and the future we cannot control. The Christian faith articulates a response to this predicament in the forgiveness of sins and the promise of new life: the incarnation redeems the past and the resurrection reclaims the future. Like birth and death, each implies the other. Christianity is Christmas and Easter, incarnation and resurrection, forgiveness and hope, baptism and eucharist.

At the popular, cultural, everyday level Christianity is the festivals of Christmas and Easter. At the theological, or intellectual, level it is the doctrines of the incarnation and the resurrection. At the experiential level of personal spirituality it is the forgiveness of sins and the promise of new life. And at the practical, participatory and ritual level it is the sacraments of baptism and eucharist. These dimensions, cultural, doctrinal, experiential and ritual, provide a framework within which to comprehend who and what we are in the world and how we ought to behave in relation to those with whom we share it.

Most people in Britain today, in common with the populations of many post-Christian western societies are neither specifically religious – in the sense of being committed adherents to a particular ‘world religion’, though immigrant populations are often an exception to this generalisation – nor would they necessarily describe themselves as avowed atheists either. The ever-growing category of the religious ‘nones’, especially among younger generations, suggests not so much active hostility towards religion, as casual indifference. Religion is generally assumed, especially in its institutionalised forms (and what other forms are there?) to be boring, irrelevant and untrue. In contrast to the strident tone of the so called ‘new atheists’ – a misnomer if ever there was one, stuck as they are in the debates of the nineteenth century – most people, it seems, just don’t really care all that much either way.

And yet, in my experience, young people are very often more curious about matters of faith than previous generations. Maybe they crave certainty in a world that feels increasingly uncertain. Perhaps they are just bemused at the thought that there are people who actually subscribe to ancient and seemingly untenable beliefs. Whatever the reason, a not insignificant number seem to be waking up to the fact that the supposedly secular beliefs and values they take for granted are in fact part of the fabric of a culture shaped by Christianity.

Our present moment can be characterised as both lacking a shared story and, at the same time, as containing a cacophony of noisily competing stories. Now, as in supposedly more cohesive eras, committed practitioners of spiritual disciplines remain a minority. During the latter half of the twentieth century, a growing interest in eastern spiritual traditions, such as yoga and Buddhism, or so-called new age and alternative spirituality, provided many with a clearly defined ‘spiritual path’. More recently, the widespread cultural turn towards self-invention corresponds to a tendency to curate one’s own spirituality, leading inevitably to a religion of the self.

In all of this, why isn’t Christianity similarly seen as a spiritual path or practice? There are, no doubt, many and complex reasons. The institutional and cultural baggage of the church certainly seems to present an obstacle for many who are, perhaps understandably, put off by the failings of religious institutions, and the ‘problematic’ history, whether personal or societal, they may be seen to represent. There is undoubtedly some truth in the old adage that familiarity breeds contempt. That said, the same can often be said of other traditions too, though this may not always be apparent to the spiritual tourist encountering rarified versions of eastern spirituality divorced from the relevant cultural context. Whatever the reasons, it simply doesn’t occur to people that Christianity is a spiritual path. And yet the first Christians were known as followers of The Way, and the teachings of Jesus clearly do constitute a path every bit as ‘spiritual’ as anything found in any other tradition. We just can’t see it.

Interesting though it may be, my purpose is not to analyse or explain this, or the multiple and complex factors relating to secularisation and diverse currents in contemporary spirituality. That would require several books. My goal is not to explain why Christianity isn’t seen as a spiritual path, but rather to show how that’s exactly what it is.

With that in mind, perhaps we ought to start by looking at what we mean by a ‘spiritual path’ in the first place. A path, any path, implies a starting point, a destination, and movement from one to the other. There also has to be a rationale for the journey, namely a realisation that we want to be somewhere other than where we are. And there has to be a vehicle or process by means of which we get from A to B. So far so good. But what is a specifically spiritual path?

When people talk about ‘spirituality’ or the ‘spiritual life’, they could have any number of things in mind.

For some, spirituality refers to the experiential dimension of a religious tradition; for others, it is seen as somehow the opposite of religion. In very generic terms, it is that which pertains to matters of ultimate concern, meaning and value. Thus, if we’re talking about the ‘spiritual life’, we’re talking about life in relation to matters of ultimate concern, and if we’re talking about the ‘spiritual path’, we’re talking about living in accordance with particular disciplines and practices intended to enable the fulfilment of those matters of ultimate concern.

So, the spiritual path is the journey, or process, by which we go from the less than satisfactory state in which we find ourselves, to a state that is somehow redeemed. It is about the purpose of human existence, namely the problem we need to resolve and the solution we desire to attain. In Christian terms, the problem, or starting point, is our bondage to the state of ‘sin’. This word is a classic example of the ‘baggage’ that seems to get in the way for so many people, yet it is simply a way of describing the human condition, characterised as the frustration of not getting what we want and having to endure what we don’t want. The destination is union with God, or that which is ultimately real and true, which is to say, salvation, redemption, liberation. And the means, the vehicle or path, is the practice of the faith – and, specifically, the discipline of prayer – within the community of mutual support and accountability that is called the Church.

The Christian faith is about following the way of truth that leads to the fullness of life that is life itself. So, when we talk about Christianity as a spiritual path, we are talking about the means by which we come to God, or realise the divine or, more particularly, the process by which we are transformed into Christ-like-ness.

Faith isn’t about knowing all the answers, but how we live with the questions that can’t be answered. And the Christian faith has no less to say about that than any other tradition, including those that seem to be acceptable to many who would otherwise be dismissive of Christianity or see it as a toxic brand.

Faith is trusting that in spite of all appearances to the contrary, human existence does in fact have meaning and purpose after all. This is by no means a certainty. Indeed, it may be that life has no meaning and purpose at all. Yet, we believe it to be the case, because we’re not programmed for nihilism. Either way, what we call ‘culture’, or ‘the world’, is made up of the stories we tell in response to the fundamental questions that bubble up from the formless void, masking primordial chaos with a layer of human meaning.

Who are we? Why are we here? What are we meant to do about it? These are the questions – not that we will ever be able to answer them definitively – that drive the endeavour of being human. And they are questions that can be fruitfully explored with the aid of the maps provided by those traditions we call ‘religions’, and the pathways those maps delineate.

The life and teachings of Jesus have shaped not only our attitudes and the values we take for granted, but the world in which we live. I don’t just mean those societies that are ostensibly Christian: the impact of the Christian revolution has shaped the whole world. But the path he offers to those who wish to follow it is far from easy. It requires us to turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, love those who hate us, and give up everything we have, even life itself.

Yet, in spite of all that, it remains the only journey that was ever worth making.