If you were asked about your spirituality, what would you say? Would you respond with the name of a faith tradition or a denomination? Would you recite a list of doctrinal positions? Would you describe practices such as church attendance, bible study, and prayer? What other possibilities are there? Is your spirituality what you profess or what you live? The Bible declares that the son who worked in his father’s vineyard after saying he would not did the will of his father rather than the one who said he would but didn’t. Are you letting your light shine to glorify me?

Do you think you have me all figured out? Your church may have concise answers to all the questions of the eternal realm, but can the divine mystery be reduced to a list of assertions? Is it something that you can fully comprehend? If I inhabit the heavens and my ways are higher than yours it should make you suspicious that anything you can fully comprehend is an insufficient description of me. You live in an age of rational explanations and find assurance and acceptance for addressing reality this way but there is a reality that does not entirely yield to this approach.

Are you afraid of your shadow? This is a childhood taunt and is not a problem for adults, but could there be a way in which it is a problem through life? Do you have weaknesses, bad habits, insecurities, and fears that have a negative influence on you that you try to keep hidden, from others, and even from yourself? This could be considered as your shadow, and how you respond to it shows whether you are afraid of it or not. Everyone has one and they work as hard to keep theirs hidden as you do. Can you face your shadow and deal with it directly?

Is your faith making you better or worse? Do you find this question disturbing, and think that your faith can only make you better? Yet have you ever met anyone who used their faith to justify a narrow, exclusive, judgmental approach toward others and could only see righteousness and justification in themselves? Seeking to justify yourself is a bad practice in any situation and attaching it to a faith practice only makes it worse. Do you refer to my word as a sword, dividing soul and spirit? Do you use it as a weapon against others or a scalpel on yourself?