Life: Spiritual vs. Physical

I read through 1 Chronicles 2 this morning. The thing about 1 Chronicles is that the first 10 chapters is a bunch of begats…for you non-King James folks there is a bunch of lineages. Occasionally you come across a bit of an interruption where a little more detail is given, although it is not quite clear why – at least from the context. Today there were a couple, but one of them struck me more intensely than the others. “3 The sons of Judah:
Er, Onan and Shelah. These three were born to him by a Canaanite woman, the daughter of Shua. Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death.“

As I’m taking this class from Hope International on the Holy Spirit I’m thinking about how in non-Western culture since the time of Christ there is no separation between the physical and the spiritual. There is a continuum whereby all things are understood within the context that there is a balance and sometimes a struggle between the physical and spiritual. I see this everywhere in Africa. In the West we have what my professor Dr. Timms calls the “excluded middle.” It’s an empty space really, a chasm of sorts in our mind that keeps our spiritual life spiritual and our physical life, well, physical.

It’s why we, who lead the Church, have such an issue with people segmenting their lives so that Jesus comes first on Sunday and maybe on Wednesday evenings or when we are desperate, but there is no continuation of that life in any other part of their day, our day. We even segment the spiritual life and have come up with terms like: “prayer life” which is different than our “quiet time” which is different than our “volunteer time.” We fail to see the connection that is intrinsically there between what we buy and who we are…whose we are. We fail to see the connection between what we eat, what we throw away, what we watch on TV, listen to on our iPods, or pay to see at the movies with who we really are and the impact that those things have on our lives…our spiritual lives.

So, what does 1 Chronicles 2:3 have to do with this? Good question, and I’m glad you asked.

I answer with a question…How did they know that the Lord killed Er? There is no mention of the supernatural events that took place that snuffed out his life. I think if Er would have lived in Western culture an autopsy would have been done to determine the cause of death and whether they found an enlarged heart, a burst appendices, or arsenic in his blood-stream, or nothing at all the last thing they would attribute his death to would be God. It’s dangerous, really, how little we understand or give credit for the ability to breathe to God.

However, the further I go down this road with Jesus the more I am beginning to understand that I need to begin to bridge the chasm between my lives so that I see the spiritual reason for why I am experiencing physical difficulties, and I need to see it clearly in the lives of others in order to give them the truth that they desperately need, that Jesus came to give you eternal life to live NOW in every moment of every day! And while I still am not there, nor am I sure John Wesley is right in that we can get there in this life, I do know that there is the opportunity to live my life more in that reality.