The term “spiritual life” is one that we use often but find hard to define. At least that’s true of most of us.
Willard has helped me in this regard. Building on his discussion of the existence of an ordered spiritual realm, and a spiritual kingdom that centres in God himself, Willard defines spiritual life in terms of interaction with that realm. “A ‘spiritual life’”, he writes “consists in that range of activities in which people cooperatively interact with God – and with the spiritual order deriving from God’s personality and action” (The Spirit of the Disciplines, 67).
A spiritual life, he says, is a life with specific activities – indeed, a “range” of activities. These are activities in which we “cooperatively interact with God.” This is an important statement. Fundamentally spiritual life is about “interacting with God.” It is not about mystical contact with God, nor absorption into his being. It is about “interacting” with him. From the Bible that means such things as trusting him, seeking him, asking him, praising him. These are all intelligent human relational activities – the sorts of things we do in interaction with other people.
Then there is this other feature Willard mentions, namely, “cooperative” interaction. Spiritual life is not blind, unresponsive, or ritualistic. It is the activity of one person with Another, and in a spirit of cooperativeness. When we interact with God we do so in reverence for his majesty, in submissiveness to his law, in devotion to his purposes.
And what’s the outcome of this? There arises a “new overall quality of human existence with corresponding new powers” (ibid, 67). As we approach God and open our lives to him, he comes to live within us, imbuing us with the power of his own life. "A person is a 'spiritual person'" Willard continues, "to the degree that his or her life is correctly integrated into and dominated by God's spiritual kingdom" (ibid, 67). That’s what spiritual life is really about.
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