Spiritual AG1

Recently, I read an excellent article by Freya India about Christian content online. She very helpfully warns against the temptation to make spiritual disciplines like prayer and Bible reading just more stuff to do on your phone.

But I don’t know, lately I’m beginning to feel as if Christianity has become another thing to do on my phone. Now I need my faith fast and convenient. I can pray as I go. I can stay prayed up. I’ve got a Streak going.

There is real danger here for those who have found themselves coming to the faith in a technological age, but that isn’t my story. Many churches, like the one which I pastor, are filled with wonderful people who have been following Jesus quietly and humbly for decades. In some cases, their testimony predates the advent of television. They remember the wars.

India rightly sees the danger of Christianity becoming convenient, particularly among her own demographic. For many, however, the temptation is the same; it just looks different.

If you watch Youtube or listen to podcasts, at some point, you’re going to hear about AG1. It’s a green powder that takes ordinary tap water and turns it into something resembling pond scum. It’s been endorsed by the likes of Hugh Jackman and Lewis Hamilton and Andrew Huberman. The premise is that if you drink this, you’ll have more energy, never get sick, be able to drop a deuce when you need to, and eliminate stress. It’s like having all of Holland & Barrett in an easy, water-soluble powder. It’s sold as a shortcut to a healthier, happier life.

Whether our spiritual practice is mediated through apps on our phones or in the context of the gathered people of God on the Lord’s Day, we are at risk of mistaking the means of grace for the gift of grace. Or rather, of mistaking the sign for the thing.

Communion becomes a top-up, a sort of spiritual pro-biotic that we take to ward off spiritual incontinence. Prayer becomes a mindfulness practice with no greater goal than managing a faulty amygdala. Corporate worship becomes thrill-seeking, waiting for the next octave-jump to mediate to us the Holy Spirit who already dwells within us. One need not scroll for very long to see Bibles being turned into colouring books and scrap books.

What is necessary to remember in all of this is that aesthetics are easy. They’re controllable, attainable. It is easy to make a practice look attractive, but then we end up looking no different to Pharisees. A Christianity which is mere supplement and aesthetic experience is a Christianity that rejects the reality of the need for the church. It is a false Christianity, reducing the gospel to me and Jesus while ignoring everything the fact that Jesus said you’d know his people are his people by their love for one another. If Bible study is reduced to an aesthetic experience, a mere scrapbook pretending to be spiritually active, we run a real risk of being washi-taped tombs.

If we are to avoid these downsides, our option boils down to this: remember that the means of grace are only means, not ends.

The answer? Believing that God is real and living like it.

And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)

This may seem like an obvious one. If I’m a Christian, of course that means that I believe that God exists.

R. Paul Stevens asks this question in an article of Christian practice:

Might not the most pernicious heresy in the church today be the disharmony between those who claim to be theologically approved but live as practical atheists?

I spent a few days at the Expository Ministry Conference at Cornhill Scotland and Peter Adam opened my eyes to something profound as he taught of “deadly deism vs. thankful theism”.

He asked us, ‘When was the last time you prayed, “Give us this day our daily bread” apart from the Lord’s Prayer?’

In the busyness of life, it’s very easy to just get on with things. Here in the West, in general, people experience a level of luxury and comfort that was reserved for royalty until surprisingly recently. We have (expensive) working electricity, flushing toilets, hand soap, grocery stores full of food that you didn’t grow.

As the people of God made their way into the Land of Promise, the warning wasn’t to be on the look out for dangerous animals, but to remember the Lord who had rescued them out of slavery to bring them into that good Land.

“Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock, who fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end. Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day. (Deut. 8:11–18)

The means of grace are the road, the path, the sign. They are a means of remembering the Lord your God.

Communion is merely a bite and sip (never dipped) unless it is received with faith that Jesus died and was raised for me and for the Church. Prayer is not mindful unless it is done with a mind full of the God to whom I pray. Corporate worship is merely a “holy” football chant if my heart and mind are not turned toward the God of whom and to whom I sing. And my Bible, as it takes on the marks of study, is merely another book if I am not being changed by what I read (James 1:22).