Thursday, October 11, 2007

Everything Is Spiritual

Rob Bell recently gave a lecture tour entitled Everything Is Spiritual. I'm going to talk about that in a moment, but here's a clip which really gets to the heart of the matter...This is only a short clip from a longer talk by Rob Bell, available on DVD soon. He makes an interesting point and a perspective I'd never thought of before, but which makes a lot of sense.

Everything is spiritual - Physical world, spiritual world, what goes on in our minds, its all a reflection of God. Its all part of being spiritual. All of it.

Rob says we are 'integrated beings' - 100% physical, yet 100% spiritual. A fusion of both realms. Jesus was 100% God and 100% man. Its almost a mirror image of that. Everything we do impacts the spiritual realm and physical realm in different ways. The physical is what we see, the spiritual what we don't see. So two different things, integrated as one.

It makes sense too. Why would God separate the physical from the spiritual? Aren't we one living organism in the image of God? Physical and spiritual are merely two elements of who we are - we are 100% both and one impacts the other. One doesn't exist without the other.

We tend to compartmentalise our lives don't we? Into the mental, spiritual, physical and practical, amongst other things. Everything has box it fits into. We often put our relationship with God merely as part of our spiritual life. Apparently. But to me, that appears like its limiting God. It appears like God is boxed up.

What we eat, what we do with our bodies, what we think, what we do, all impacts on our relationship with God. All the abilities we have are from God. There is so much evil and pain in our world, and the enemy is at work in very real and practical ways. Surely it makes much more sense for it all to be spiritual as well as physical, for it to all be linked together as one.

The physical is an element of the spiritual, just as the spiritual is displayed though the physical at times, all united in one in the human being. Spiritual warfare makes more sense when it involves more than just what we term as 'spiritual'. We are doing spiritual warfare every time we say no to temptation, every time we do something good. When we live like Jesus, we are doing spiritual warfare. The physical impacting the spiritual. So you see, its all integrated. One effects the other.

When we do things with out bodies which hurt God, when physically we sin, we do something harmful in the spiritual world. A married couple making love is often talked about as more than a physical act, its a spiritual one of two people becoming one. Its talked about like that in the Bible. Why wouldn't other physical acts have an element of the spiritual at the same time? Its all integrated.

Sure, there is aspect of spiritual warfare, involving prayer and speaking out scripture, which goes on mainly in the spiritual realm, buts its acted out and procaliamed in the physical too. The enemy is out to ruin this world and take us away from God. Whenever we do something opposite and add to the good in the world, and give people a glimpse of Jesus, we are doing spiritual warfare. We are impacting the spiritual realm.

In one of his Nooma DVD's, "Breath" Rob Bell touches on it further



The Greek and the Hebrew words for breath is the same word as the one for spirit.

Its no coincidence.