Because an appetite for God is easily manipulated into a consumer activity, we need these wise, sane friends as guides and companions. There are entrepreneurs among us who see the widespread hunger for spirituality as a marketplace and are out there selling junk food. The gullibility of the unwary who bought relics from itinerant monks in the Middle Ages – splinters of wood from the true cross, finger bones from the saints, a few pieces of thread from Jesus’ seamless robe – is more than matched by North Americans in matters of spirituality.
We are trained from the cradle to be good consumers. It is understandable that we seek to satisfy our hunger for God along the lines in which we have been brought up. But it is not excusable, for we have clear counsel in the Gospels to steer away form this consumer world: “Blessed are the poor. ”¦ Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me. ”¦ Love not the world nor the things that are in the world.” And our Lord’s counsel is confirmed and expanded in numerous ways by our wise evangelical ancestors in the faith.
Spirituality is not the latest fad but the oldest truth. Spirituality, the alert attention we give to a living God and the faithful response we make to him in community, is at the heart of our Scriptures and is on display throughout the centuries of Israel and the church. We have been at this a long time. We have nearly four millennia of experience to draw upon. When someone hands you a new book, reach for an old one. Isaiah has far more to teach us about spirituality than Carl Jung.
—Eugene Peterson, Subversive Spirituality