Checkout what I've BeenUp2!Jenna and I were studying when a random guy seated directly behind me jokingly said, "Keep studying!" and then asked what I was reading. Considering what I was reading I was hesitant to show him because I wasn't sure how he would react to my reading "Shaped by the Word". He made some comment about how we were shaping our spiritual lives. I thought the awkward exchange was over when he added make sure you have a balance of living in the secular world and the spiritual world because I didn't want to become like the Muslims in the middle east and people in N. Korea who made religion their whole lives. I couldn't let it stop there. I said something about how having full awareness of Christ takes us to a place of wholeness and that the secular world is illusory.* He said you have to have enough of life in the secular if you want to have success in the real world. I told him I don't want what the "real world" has to offer, I'm not here to take and absorb the world like a sponge. Finally he said, "Well I'll leave you with this: Mahatma Ghandi once said, 'Be the change you want to see in the world.'" I made a comment about how I thought that was too simplistic but ok (My ire was getting up and I wanted the conversation to end). And he said "Be the change".
First of all bumper sticker spirituality as well as bumper sticker theology annoy me. I get frustrated with trite quotes. Anyway I was more frustrated that I felt like I didn't have the words to respond. Although I realize a person's mindset will not be changed from one interaction. It made me think about how many people in our society look at spirituality as something you use to season your life almost like your life is a food pyramid and spirituality is the vegetables next to the fruit of healthy living and meat of intellectual engagement. How do you explain to someone the Christian paradigm? That our goal is not to make spirituality a part of our lives but to be lost in it, to completely lose ourself so that Christ will transform us into his likeness, our true self. Christian spirituality is different from religious fanaticism and secular spirituality because it is supposed to be a surrender of the whole not just a component and it is not following stark religious rules and codes, it is about following Jesus Christ who embodies the Law. He who became incarnate to live in the real world so that we don't need to "succeed" in the real world as much as we are free to live and love and be loved. How do you explain these mysteries?
vs.... 
I don't know.
*Note: I probably was not as eloquent as my summary would suggest.
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