Spiritual Health

This was a topic I heard a lot about last weekend (part of why I didn't blog, sorry). It was a convention of people who minister to students and part of the underlying theme (on purpose or not) seemed to be about how to know a student ministry is healthy.

To get there people talked a lot about what seems like a good measure of health but really is not. When someone asks you how your family is you don't respond with, "We're up to 4 members now", but sometimes that seems to be how we measure health. We heard a story about a student who was at everything for their four years in high school, but five years later didn't believe in God at all. So maybe showing up for everything holy isn't the answer either.

The truth is, it's a messy answer. You can't give a one size fits all diagnosis. The other night Lorie was watching a show and a young man had stomach pains, but he was trapped at a house in a blizzard. Luckily the doctor next door came in, but his answer about what was wrong was perfect. "I don't know." He could give some good guesses but without the proper medical equipment the pain could be anything from gas to a burst appendix, or even something more rare.

It is almost impossible for me as an outsider to look at you and judge your spiritual health. There are signs, like the doctor knowing the pain was in the stomach so it's not a broken arm, but to give an accurate pinpoint we need to be able to look inside, and only you can look into your soul. The key is, don't measure yourself with the wrong ruler, perfect attendance does not equal perfect spiritual health.

But you can tell what's right and what's wrong. To do that you will have to be open and honest with yourself, if you can do it...

T