3. True Spirituality

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A filthy man walking past a street lamp.

 

Many people have a wrong concept of spirituality. They think that to be spiritual means to wear religious robes and hats, and to carry out religious rites such as fasting, saying prayers and meditation. Many such people have no sense of how sinful they are in God’€™s sight. They do not see themselves as God sees them. They are religious, but they are not spiritual.

The knowledge of God can be thought of as a street lamp by the road of life. Walking in the dark on the road of life, you have fallen into a pool of mud. You get up and clean yourself until you are satisfied. As you get nearer the light, you discover that you are still dirty. You clean yourself further. The nearer you get to the light, the more you realise how deeply the filth has soaked into your clothes. The more you try to clean yourself the more you realise how impossible it is to become clean.

A truly spiritual man realises two things:

(i) That he is extremely filthy in God’s sight. He is so filthy right through to his inner being. In other words, his very nature is sinful.

(ii) That he is incapable of cleansing himself. Try shaving a tiger to get rid of its stripes. Very soon, when the fur grows back, the stripes are there again! If the tiger cannot change its stripes, how impossible it is for man to change his nature!

 

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