Breathing

I went to a Christian college. People there had this way of characterizing certain people as exceptionally "spiritual". These were the people who closed their eyes really hard when they prayed and included the word "just" in every sentence, preferably multiple times.

Spiritual leader: "Lord, I really just want to pray for Jim. He just needs you right now. I just think he just (extra Jesus points) doesn't understand how . . just awesome you are God. I just want to lift him up. Just be with him Lord . . . "

Others present, under their breath: "Man this guy is just so spiritual".

I found it funny that we started out every prayer telling God we wanted to pray for someone, as though there were situations where speaking to God did not qualify as a prayer. If felt like we were in a prepetual court room and we told God we were praying when we were ready to be on the record.

"God, please bless my finances"

God: "Sorry, do you want this to request on the books or no? I never heard the magic word."


In Hebrew the word for spirit is 'ruah'. It is believed to be an imitation of the sound of coughing or taking a deep breath. Now, "spirit" is not a different usage of 'ruah', it is the same. In other words, to any who care to not force categories upon the OT anachronistically, to say someone is spiritual is the equivalent of saying they are breathing. The only unspiritual people were corpses. So consider when Paul talks about having a 'spirit of power', this is tied quite specifically to a daily experience: any time one wished to exert force showing their physical power they would 'ru-ah' - take a deep breath. Any athelete knows that power is in one's breath. A boxer's punch is considerably harder when preceded by a deep breath. Or, consider Paul's use of the opposition of flesh and spirit. I don't think this is near as abstract as we tend to make it. You have a body which when breathing is alive, and when not breathing is dead. Thus, the flesh minus the spirit is literally in a state of death and decay. It is reSPIRations that keep one in this state we refer to as living.

God is Spirit, so we are told. To Jews the primary distinction of YHWH against other gods was that he was alive, or was life, meaning he is Spirit (I once heard someone point out that Y,H, & W are the breathiest letters of the Hebrew alphabet). The gods did not breath. They were manifest in idols of lifeless wood and metal, but the God who had no image was indeed the breath that sustained all living things. As Dallas Willard points out, the original Judaeo-Christian idea of heaven was not a mythical land beyond the clouds, but in fact the air which surrounded us. A heavenly being is a one which moves about in the air.

When people had a bad spirit it was often what we would refer to as a cold, or pneumonia, since their breaths were effected. It was believed that something intangible in the air they were breathing was causing them to suffer. Bacteria fit the description. If one chooses to believe instead that it was demons, I respect their right to interpret it as such, but I'm not convinced.

My belief still is that there is more to human experience than molecules interacting. I think that ancient people, before we became concerned with the infinite weight of empirical data, knew the subtleties of existence much more immediately than we do. I don't believe they were in a better position than us necessarily. I don't particularly buy into a degenerative nor a progressive view of history. Still, I think they were better positioned to recognize the deeper connections of existence. Living in the crisis of Enlightenment ideals we have come to realize that in knowing as much as we do have only come up to the limits of human knowledge. Certainly we should seek to know more, but who standing in a library does not feel the degree of their own finitude. Staring at bookshelves, realizing our life would be spent to only comprehend a fraction of the knowledge they represent. Then we realize how even the most progressive and innovative books are only taking guesses at the nature of things which might not even come close to the 'bottom of our rabbit holes'.

In belief in a God who is Spirit, and a spiritual realm we are discussing an aspect of experience which requires our utmost creativity to understand. And more than understand ancient men realized we have an essential need to communicate with it and find our "selves" in relation to it. Foremost is the holistic sense that all things live within and unto an Ultimate Reality, which the ancients found best understanding for in the Monotheistic God. In the highest metaphor they came to see this Ultimacy as the air providing us with the breath that keeps us alive.

This has even more extensive implications in the reformation which Jesus of Nazareth brought to Judaism. The Law which had been spoken through Moses (speaking = an activity requiring spirit/breath) was said to be the way, the truth, and indeed the life. Since it was spoken by God, being imparted by his breath, it was just as vital to life as one's breath. The Law was Spirit (literally: the Law was God's breath) and Truth. Jesus on the other hand, in the face of religion, claims to be all the things that had up to then been attributed to the Law. From that point forward being spiritual, indeed be the breath of God, was redefined. All the laws were made relative to the measure of their life-giving power. Jesus' actions were charactized as those which restored the lowest of the low to humanity. All who were caught in society and religion's oppressive cycles were liberated. Sin was broken. Not sin in the mold of guilty consciences, but rather that which deprives life from others. Quite literally Jesus set out to redeem people from everything that stole their breath, that reduced them to flesh and denied the divinity in them.

The criteria of spirituality is not how one prays or acts during sacred worship times. Instead, it is the degree to which one affirms life in others. The spiritual man is one who by his actions and character shows holiness in the way he treats others. Spirituality is a stance above the unholy social games and distinctions we all fall into. It is a holistic living towards life for all people.