Desire for God and the Things of God

The Relationships between Christian Spirituality and Morality

For many Christians, spirituality and ethics are in separate mental and experiential compartments. Spirituality may be understood as an inner experience, while ethics is focused on decisions or positions on issues. Both of these views reduce spirituality and morality in Christian faith and practice, and ignore the centrality of desire for God and the things of God as key focal points for spiritual and moral formation. These aspects of Christian formation must be located in their scriptural and theological contexts in order to understand more fully what God desires for human life. This focus on desire provides content and context to Christian spirituality and morality. We are drawn outward to focus on God and the good of others while we learn to embody virtues, such as compassion, courage, self-control, gratitude, humility, and hope. Practices are crucial ways by which we learn to incarnate our ultimate desire of love for God and for what God desires in the pursuit of justice and goodness for all creation. In so doing, practices enable us to more fully integrate spiritual and moral growth in the processes of our desire for God and the things of God.