In my last post I introduced a model of Healthy Spirituality. It features two polarities – the Physical/Imaginative, and the Personal/Communal. It demonstrates that Healthy Spirituality is holistic. It pulls together the human experience in all its dimensions.

My six year-old is profoundly spiritual. See him run around my yard with a stick. He darts, jumps, rolls and punches. He defends our household from every manner of evil-doer. The apostle Peter says our "adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour." He had better not show up in our front yard. My son will take him out.

His stick transforms from automatic weapon, to knife, to light saber, to club. It becomes whatever he needs it to be to stand strong against the malicious horde.

It is not his imagination that makes him spiritual, but his stick. That, and his willingness to engage the challenge of the world.

Americans tend to equate the imaginative domain with the “spiritual.” For many the physical domain of sticks falls far short of "The Holy."

This kind of thinking is an ancient echo from Neoplatonism (not that you care). Founded by a 3rd century philosopher named Plotinus, it has roots in the philosophy of Plato. Plotinus taught that the purer form of being is imaginative. The physical realm is something “less than.”

Plotinus' goal was to escape the physical world into the realm of the imaginative. For Plotinus, after death the soul “escapes” the body. It “ascends” to the “higher mind.” Until death “perfection” can be achieved through contemplation -- the awakening of the imagination to the “higher things.”

You can still find this kind of thinking hanging around the church. Many people in our parish think this way. I hear it when I officiate at a burial service and someone says, “So-and-so has gone to a better place.”

Are you kidding me? A better place? What better place can there be than Loudoun County, VA? If we are going to a better a place, we are taking our bodies with us. What good is a better place if you can't jump in the pool and swim because you left your body behind?

When someone refers to the body as "an empty shell," this is not Jesus talk. It is Plotinus.

From a biblical perspective, there is no better place than the Garden of this World God created for the children He loves. The Covenant-Making God of Israel creates the physical world and blesses it. He created sticks so children can pick them up and play all afternoon in the yard without bothering their mothers.

Plotinus taught that bodies are something to escape. Jesus taught that bodies are something to resurrect.

God created humanity with bodies that are good. The human body is something to celebrate. Eat an apple, or better yet, a bowl of ice cream. Taste the sweet. Feel the texture. Enjoy the sense of having satisfied your hunger.

The “afterlife” does not involve the separation of the soul from the body. It is the continuation of life. It is the resurrection of the body. There is no soul, without a body. What we call "soul" is the body in action. The soul is the body engaging the challenges of the world. The soul is the body in action. The resurrection involves apples and ice cream every bit as much it involves the continuation of human consciousness.

Why does this matter?

Neoplatonism denies the bottom half of the Healthy Spirituality model. Who needs technical competence (the Physical/Personal), or industrial organization (the Physical/Communal) if the goal of faith is just for the soul to escape the body?

This false-spirituality is endemic to our society and culture. It makes us divide our lives between "work" and "church," between "earning a living" and "making a life." It makes us look for God on Sunday, but miss Him Monday through Saturday.

It probably serves as the philosophical roots of the parish's continuing financial challenge.

When people come into the church thinking it is about “spirituality” (read the imaginative domain); money has nothing to do with it. After all, the thinking goes, money belongs to the “physical world.” God belongs to the “spiritual world.”

But the deeper truth is that God is the God of all of it. What I do with my money is a deeply spiritual matter. A covenant community thrives in the midst of material abundance. It falters and fails when it fails to be sustained materially.

We are seeing the slow starvation of our Covenant Community. The Lord has provided abundantly for the parish. Individuals stop the flow of blessing when we do not provide the material provision for the Body of Christ to flourish.

The reason? Too many of us are followers of Plotinus; we have turned our backs on Jesus. God loves St. David's Church. But we don't.

My son knows what too many of us have forgotten. A healthy spirituality requires the coming together of the physical and the imaginative, the personal and the communal. Without a good, hardy stick, you just can’t fight off the malicious horde that threatens to overrun the bastion of the Almighty.