Messiness and Faith

Life is messy. Faith is messy. Church is messy.

I was thinking about all this, especially since my office in directly across the hall from the staff bathroom.

Sometimes it seems all we humans are is a combination of bad smells, strange noises, and discharges of fluids. Most of the most pleasurable experiences of our lives include a combination of two or all three of these. And yet, in polite human company, we try to deny that any or all of these exist. Think of most of the cuss words you know...don't they have to do with the acknowledgement of our messiness as biological creatures?

Why do we spend so much time trying to deny our earthiness? We cover up with things that make us smell good. We get grossed out when someone passes gas. We feel it impolite most of the time to talk about sex openly. We have surgery to hide our bodily imperfections. Not that some of this is not helpful in helping us to relate, but sometimes I think we go overboard. We want to think of ourselves as somehow disembodied in an emotional and spiritual way from our spirits.

The truth is that we have resurrection bodies as well as resurrected spirits. And to be honest, our spiritual life can often be as messy as our biology. Or, at least, perhaps it should be. Maybe we try to segment our selves spiritually from the messiness of life. So we have our little spiritual life segmented off from the rest of us. Biblically, this is called gnosticism. The problem with this is that a spirit only grows when it is exposed to and encounters the messiness of life.

Think of a flower. How do we get a lot of our plants and flowers to grow. Fertilizer. Very messy. Dirt. Also messy. But it is growing through this messy soil covered with even more messy manure that life thrives and grows. Our spirits are the same way. It is through the messiness of heartache, lonliness, stupid financial decisions, anger, and frustration that we find ways to become authentic, real, beautiful, and faithful.