Over the years, I have lost count of the number of sermons in
which this was the message: "As a Christian, my most important
priority must be my spiritual life - my personal relationship with
God."
The sermons usually go on to talk about the other things which,
wrongly, become priorities for us, and conclude that none of these
things matter if we don't make our relationship with God our
number one priority.
I have come to the conclusion that most of these sermons are
true - in the sense that the theology is correct - but unhelpful.
They end up misleading people.
There seem to be two main problems.
Firstly, we don't handle priorities well.
Secondly, in these sermons, we usually fail to recognise the
nature of a healthy spiritual life.
In, Up, Out
Many churches recognise three aspects of church life. They go
by various names, but often have these three directions acting as
a simple reminder: In (relating to each other), Up (relating to
God), and Out (relating to the world). My present church calls
them "Family, Faith and Community".
Of these three aspects, it is clear that 'Up' is the most
important in this sense: the relationship with God makes
everything we do distinctively Christian. We can build strong
friendships and do lots of good within the local community without
being Christians.
(In passing, I would like to note that almost all the teaching
I hear on the other two areas would work whether or not there is a
God, whether or not you believe in Him, whether or not He is
recognisably the Christian God and whether or not you follow Him.
This disturbs me, but it is not what I want to talk about right
now.)
So, without the 'Up' dimension in place and working, the othe
two areas are rather pointless from the Christian perspective. But
that does not make them unimportant.
Priorities
Most of us are very bad at setting and working with a set of
priorities. Or, perhaps, we are very good at it, and very bad at
modifying our priorities in the light of rules and instructions
other people give us.
This is why some people make so much money from teaching time
management techniques. The courses don't say anything we don't
already know, but we are very bad at applying what we know in this
area.
So I rather suspect that most people mis-hear what is being
said in these sermons. What is (or should be!) being taught
is that we should give the spiritual dimension the greatest
priority because it is the most important aspect.
What is heard, very often (and what, too often, is actually
taught), is subtly but significantly different.
The spiritual dimension is the only important area we
need to consider.
Sometimes, it gets even worse. In sermons about our priorities,
the advertised message is often fine: "My most important priority
must be my spiritual life". But the actual content is often quite
different. There are two common messages.
If we get the spiritual dimension right, the other two
areas will sort themselves out; they will fit into place
automatically.
We are wasting our time if we give any time or energy to
the other two areas.
I believe all three of these messages are profoundly
wrong, and deeply damaging, both to the individual's Christian
life and to the congregation.
We need to make it clear that all three areas are important.
We need to state it and re-state it, over and over again. We often
manage to give a healthy message in our teaching on 'the big
picture' - the "In, Out, Up" sermon, but we usually fail in the
"My most important priority must be my spiritual life" sermon.