Last night I was sitting with my future wife talking about what we had both read in our last personal devotionals, when she looked at me and said, “I don’t think faith and works in the Bible have ever really been separated.” To be honest I sat there for a while and amazed at my future wife’s proclamation I begrudgingly said, “I think you’re right.” The reason I was so apprehensive to agree with what my fiancé had just said was because I realized not for the first time, but yet again, how messed up my own life was. How I had somehow fell fallen victim to that which I hated, separation.
In the long process, in which I am just one person among many who continues to seek to discover why the church in the United States lacks so many disciples, I have come to two conclusions. The first is the dualism separating the spiritual from the physical, which despite what some might believe has plagued the church rather than helped the church. I do not say this to start some debate about the separation or lack there of between the body, spirit, and/or soul, but just to discuss what duality taken to the fullest extent has done to our church community. Secondly, there is a lack of individual understanding among people today, which is directly related to dualism. Thirdly, consumerism has been allowed to breed because of both the first and second issues, but is not necessarily a result of them.
In the simplest terms dualism is the separation of two different parts, one from another. In a Biblical spiritual mindset, dualism did not exist when it came to how the spiritual affects the physical. This is why when Jesus came he did not just speak and work in spiritual terms, but worked to heal and restore the physical. In the world of Jesus, the spiritual and physical where directly related, which is why in Jesus’ world someone was not “mentally-ill,” but possessed by a demon. Take the story of the mute man in Matthew 9:27-34, who was thought to be demon possessed, not just mute for physical reasons (I am not saying that a demon did not cause this man’s muteness, I just using this story for the sake of proving my point). In today’s word things are interpreted differently, mute persons are mute because of physical reasons, not spiritual reasons, thereby separating the physical and the spiritual from each other.
This dualism plays itself out in more practical terms as well; for many across the country, what happens on Sunday morning at church has little to no affect on their life outside of the building they meet in on Sunday. As one mom recently said to me, “it is hard trying to balance religion, school, and sports.” In a first century mindset this sentence would have never been said; in fact, if someone said it they would be labeled philosophically crazy. Religion was not something to be balanced amongst the rest of one’s life; religion directly affected one’s entire life. Take what Peter says in 1 Peter 1:13-16,
“13Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. 14As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. 15But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; 16for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy."
As Peter sees it, once someone has been given grace and become a child of God, one is no longer to “conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance.” The grace of God literally changes the reality of that person who was not, but now is a child of God, and now they are to “be holy, because I (God) am holy.” Peter does not give a suggestion from the pulpit, but outlines an expectation of the reality that he expects followers of Jesus to live like. Think of Saul before he became Paul, when Jesus showed himself to Saul on the road to Damascus; this event changed everything in Paul’s life, even his name. Throughout scripture, name changing is a sign of a spiritual transformation that has taken place. Think of Jacob in the desert before he meet his brother Esau; after Jacob wrestled with a man and declared that he “saw God face to face,” his name was changed from Jacob to Israel (Gen 32). These experiences with God changed the identities of both Saul and Jacob, just as our spiritual experiences with God should change our identities; yet for many it does not.
The reason for this is because somewhere down the line people begin to separate different aspects of their life from one another. Even marketers have picked up on this reality, which is why the slogan, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” makes so much sense to people. As sad as it is, most people are already practicing this type of separation out in some aspect of their life. Whether it is who one is at work vs. at hour or who one is at school vs. at church. At times, it might not even be very apparent. A person looking at porn usual employsthe ability to separate the reality they create in their minds from their everyday life in order to escape into a new world for a little while. Duality allows us to separate different aspects of our life in order to allow ourselves to become comfortable with the reality we have created for ourselves. The issue with dualism is that it disconnects aspects of one person’s life from other aspects of that same life, allowing a person to almost operate as different individuals in different instances. This can create, and has created, a scary reality for many in today’s world. Yet for our purposes, dualism allows people to disconnect what happens in a worship service from the rest of their life outside of their worshipping community.
Next week we will see how dualism also interacts with identity and consumerism, in order to finally see over the next couples weeks, how the church in the United States might work to create a discipleship culture.
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