Spirituality revisited
it's not so spiritual after all
I don’t know what it is about me but I like contrarian points of view. Or, failing all-out contradiction, something that is deeply counter-intuitive. There’s something that contradiction provokes that makes me feel alive.
A topic that is ripe for contradiction and counter-intuition is spirituality. My wife and I have both, in our own ways, spent our lives circling around this question. What is spirituality? And is there an answer to that question that has a material and practical effect on everyday life?
There are four major influences on my thinking in this area.
Firstly, Christianity. I spent the first thirty years of my life exploring various flavours of Christian belief and practice, from the deeply conservative to the wild and whacky.
Secondly, Friedrich Nietzsche. The German philosopher, deeply atheistic and anti-spiritual. I suppose, given my penchant for opposition and contradiction, this was an obvious leap: Christian faith to atheistic materialism.
Thirdly, sci…
