I meet more and more real witches and true believers in Odin every day, and well-respected academics have a renewed interest in esoteric wisdom literature and shamanism. Meditation, prayer, and mindfulness apps are hot sellers. Gone are the days when atheistic materialism was the ruling paradigm. “Panpsychism” appears ready to take its throne.

It doesn’t really matter if you know what all of those words mean. “Spirituality” is in vogue these days. It’s a topic we picked up on in a recent podcast episode, and there are three themes that seem to tie modern spirituality together:

1. A deeply felt need for personal meaning and purpose,

2. a hunger for “numinous” (direct, personal) experiences of the transcendent, and

3. a desperate search for ways to integrate my everyday life with my deeply held (religious) principles.

To be clear, I think this is mostly a good thing. There is a collective awakening happening. We are recognizing that our pragmatic materialistic way of life has stripped us all of something necessary.

We long for the world to be “reenchanted.” We’re tired of living only for money or success or fame. There has to be something more!

Indeed! The Apostle Paul agrees! Yet he has a surprising way of thinking about it.

For him, the distinction is not between the physical and the spiritual—between the earthly and the transcendent realm. No, when he talks about someone being “spiritual” as opposed to “fleshly” he is talking about someone who is led by the Holy Spirit instead of being led by our sinful desires or evil powers. For him it’s all “spiritual.” We are either led by the Holy Spirit or by evil spirits (whether internal or external).

For Paul it's a question of the direction of attention. Who or what are we looking at and listening to? Who or what are we allowing to influence or direct us? In Paul’s language a “spiritual” person is one who looks where the Holy Spirit points, listens to what he is listening to, trusts what he tells us is worth trusting, and loves what he loves.

And the Holy Spirit always points our attention to Jesus. As Jesus said:

“I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever. He is the Spirit of truth… [he] will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have told you” (John 14 16-17; 26).

Christian “spirituality” is not a better method for achieving purpose, moral transformation, or mystical experience. It’s the simple act of receiving God’s promises of love, forgiveness, and union in and because of Christ.

The “more” we long for has already come. He has walked the earth and reconciled us to God. Christian prayer, meditation, and formation are not about ascending the ladder of perfection in order to acquire more of God. They are about training the eyes of our hearts to attend to the fact that we already have him. Or rather, that he already has us.