Chapter 2: The Top Ten Symptoms
of Emotionally Unhealthy Spirituality
Diagnosing the Problem.
The top ten reasons of emotionally unhealthy spirituality.
- Using God to run from God. This involves immersing yourself in seeming Christian activities as an attempt to run away from other issues.
- Ignoring the emotions of anger, sadness, and fear.
- Dying the wrong things. God does not ask us to annihilate our identities.
- Denying the past’s impact on the present. Our past lives will continue to impact us even after we become Christian.
- Dividing our lives into “secular” and “sacred” compartments. Research shows that Christians lead essentially lives that are not different than their secular neighbors. That is a very bad witness.
- Doing for God instead of being with God. Our activity for God can only properly flow from a life with God.
- Spiritualizing away conflict. Jesus’ life was filled with conflict. Conflict is inevitable.
- Covering over brokenness, weakness, and failure. The Bible is full of examples of saints who were broken, or weak at times. We are all broken. There are not exceptions.
- Living without limits.
- Judging other people’s spiritual journey.