Spiritual relativity

Reading last week’s Daily Campus article on the spiritual relativism of our campus (“Spirituality is the key,” 9/19/02), I was reminded of the way I used to view the world. Spiritual relativism, the belief that you can find and define your own spiritual well being, is like a fuzzy nighttime blanket – it feels warm and safe but offers no protection from the real dangers of the world. Spiritual relativism worked for me because no one was left out, no one was hurt and there were no real consequences. All roads were leading to the same place … wherever that was.

Like Ailea Sneller, I clung to the picture of hope painted in random Bible verses, even though I didn’t believe in the Bible, and little pocket prayers you can buy at Hallmark. I reduced God to a vague higher power and only believed in the verses and prayers that applied to my life.

The problem I began to have with the spiritual relativism is that there is no truth to support this flimsy illusion. When tragic events brought my world to a standstill and I was fleetingly able to see my life with an ounce of perspective, I saw that everything I was longing to achieve – a seal of approval from my friends and family, a flawless transcript, a stacked resum#233; and a virtual image of perfection, was all not only impossible, but completely in vain. By the world’s standards, I had no reason to be unhappy. I had the best family you could ask for, a great boyfriend and a promising career in medicine. But there was a void in my life so huge that I remember feeling an aching loneliness even when surrounded by my closest friends.

Finding no comfort in mere spirituality, I was drawn to Christianity. At first I was skeptical of the claims that Christians so boldly made. They not only believed that Jesus is their God, but the God of everything. This was not the whatever/whenever spirituality I was used to. The Christians I knew refused to be labeled “religious.” They explained to me that religion is man’s attempt to get to God by following a prescription of rules, prayers and meditations. Christianity is the exact opposite – God has already made his attempt to reach man.

God took the abstractness out of spirituality and gave us something we could comprehend and relate to – he sent us the human version of himself. While spiritual relativism reduces truth to a matter of personal preference, God compacted his entire being into one person and one truth. He walked on earth 2,000 years ago, lived a perfect life, died like a criminal and was resurrected because he was the son of God, a fact history has never been able to discount.

Now that I realize that the truth about spirituality is not relative, I struggle daily to find my identity in this truth, and not the emptiness that I filled myself with before. One day you will have to make a decision about who this Jesus was, and it is a decision that no one is exempted from. Please don’t settle for the empty lies of spiritual relativism and refuse to acknowledge the greatest act God ever performed to relate to you and me.