Ten years ago I went through a time of disillusionment with the church, and the version of Christianity I had assimilated through it. I’ve written about this before, and don’t intend to rehash it now. When it was happening, it was sad and disorienting, because I felt I was losing something. But I found that my faith wasn’t being lost, it was being refined and transformed. A decade removed from that time, the blessings and insights from it are still reverberating in my life.

One thing that emerged for me on this side of that “dark night of the soul” is a deeper appreciation for what I consider to be the mystical core of the Christian faith. That is, the mysterious connection between the human and divine, the experience of the mystery of “Christ in you, the hope of glory” that Paul talks about in I Corinthians.

In his excellent book “Answering the Contemplative Call” Carl McColman writes this:

“We need to be like Mary of Nazareth, offering ourselves up so that our very bodies can offer hospitality to Christ. Like Mary and Martha of Bethany, like Zacchaeus the tax collector, like Simon the leper, we are invited to receive God — within us. This is not a mental game, as if we just have to think, ‘God is inside me,’ to make it so. After all, God is everywhere, so God is already inside you (and me, and everyone else) whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not. 

“Therefore the key is to learn how to recognize God’s presence, and, in recognizing that presence, choose to embrace it, respond to it, and love it. And the only reason to love God’s presence is because we love God.”

What I’m finding is that this mystical heart was missing for me. Make no mistake, I was certainly taught about the importance of having a “relationship with God,” and the need for having daily “quiet time.” But this was basically set aside time to read and study the Bible, and then pray. And of course “prayer” was essentially an act of speaking to God in my mind and asking Him to do things for me and for other people. Then I would get confused and disappointed because so often God would not do the things I was asking Him to do.

I think there is so much more going on … so many more depths available in our spiritual life. There is an essential internal work, where I focus on God’s activity of bringing healing and insight and strength to my heart. That is the essence of it: the experience of inner transformation. This is what the Bible calls “sanctification:” the ongoing process of having my own ego laid aside, and the divine nature of the Spirit emerge and live out more fully in my being.

This is what was going on in Jesus’ life when he spent that 40 days in the desert, and when he would go off to lonely places in the night, and in early mornings to pray. He didn’t just sit and make lists of things he wanted from the Father. There was some kind of internal shaping going on. And this internal shaping is at the heart of the experience we can have as Christians. This experience relates to a set of beliefs that we espouse, but it goes much deeper.

Spirituality and Christianity

I know that a lot of Christians dislike the use of the term "spiritual" or "spirituality" because they feel that it empties the Christian faith of its content. They get annoyed by hearing people talk about being "spiritual but not religious." I know this because sometimes I get emails from readers who get annoyed when I talk about "spirituality" too much in my writing! Too bad for them. 

In my interactions with people in 12 Step recovery rooms -- and more recently my work with entrepreneurs and community activists -- I'm often struck by their palpable interest in experiencing a spiritual connection with God, even though they might be confused by or turned off by Christian churches. I think what I'm talking about here -- the mystical core of Christian faith -- is the missing link, and an important key to reaching the next generation. 

I’ve been a Christian for decades, and it’s astonishing for me to realize how much is there that for all these years I just missed. Maybe the mystical core wasn’t being taught in the circles I was in, or maybe it was there, and I wasn’t listening. These days, I’m listening.