Why the Body, Mind and Spirit Approach to ROC?

I soon learned after planning for ROC that my plans were falling into a body, mind and spirit approach.  I consider “body” as including behaviors, actions and character traits that people display in every day life.  (See examples: Introducing The 5-3-1 Project for positive character traits and Hollywood’s Influence for negative behaviors that need to be overcome).   I consider “mind” as including thinking, reasoning, logic and wisdom.  (See examples: Political Stereotyping and Political Differences pertaining to differences in opinions and Truth and Wisdom pertaining to processing logic).  I see “spirit” as something deeper than the mind that goes to the heart and soul of who we are and what is meaningful and full of purpose in our lives.  (See the example: Truth and Wisdom).  I believe that all human beings have all three of these aspects whether they tap into them or not.  When I thought about our culture, I also knew that we needed to “reclaim” our culture in character; reclaim it in the way we think and reason (both individually and as a nation) and reclaim it in the way we consider the bigger picture (who we are and what purpose we serve as individuals and even as a nation).

My thinking about man having a body, mind and spirit did not start with my plans for ROC.  It came from my experience with faith.  It was an awakening for me that has had profound affects.  My understanding of body, mind and spirit is why I have such a passion for people who do not believe in God.  I know where they are coming from because I experienced it myself.

My Struggle with Faith

I was raised as a Christian and attended 9 years of Lutheran School.  My immediate and extended family members were all religious; so looking back at those years, I certainly would have considered myself a Christian in practice (in “body”).  I didn’t know about a personal relationship with Christ at that time and certainly didn’t feel comfortable asking questions and having doubts about Christianity (even though from about 5th grade on I had plenty of them).

After high school, I spent the next 18 years trying to understand why people believed in Christianity and challenging their assumptions while considering whether there was a God or not and considering other religions.  I spent the next 7 years believing that there was no God and believing that faith worked simply because people thought it would work.  I believed that it didn’t matter what you believed as long as you believed something (which I now did).   I was at peace and happy with my new discovery.

I spent the next 7 years coming to the conclusion that it made more sense logically that there was a God than there wasn’t.  To me, three main things pointed towards there being a Creator for this world rather than an accident and they were a) the order, complexity and beauty of the world; b) the ability of man to keep expanding his knowledge and wisdom and discover things that were already true long before man understood them to be true and; c) the great importance that man places on personal relationships.  None of these three factors point to a “dust particle” or “big bang” in my estimate.  Towards the end of the 7 years, I came to the logical conclusion that different religions couldn’t be true at the same time because they included beliefs that were contradictory to each other, so I started studying a variety of religions to understand what made sense and didn’t make sense about God based on the way I saw the world (as mentioned above).

I spent the next 5 years studying Christianity in deep, logical ways through classes, reading books about it and questioning every Christian that I could.  I considered the Jewish faith because I believed in the Jewish/Christian God at this point, and I wasn’t buying the whole Jesus part of Christianity.  I also used this time at a Christian church to expose my kids to religion so they could make a more informed choice when they got older.

I spent the next 3 years understanding logically that the Jesus part of the story made total sense, based on a) prophecies about Jesus that can be found in the Old Testament; b) the logic of who Jesus was if He wasn’t Lord (which no non-Christian could answer sufficiently) and; c) the number of witnesses to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus that died horrific deaths in far away lands away from family and friends because they 100% understood what they had witnessed. 
 
The part that was astounding to me and still is today is that even after I believed in Christ and understood Christianity to make sense logically, something kept me from understanding prayer, understanding my personal relationship with God and coming to true faith in God.  That something was me getting in the way and wanting logic and thinking to explain everything.  My pastor suggested that I would always have questions that I wouldn’t get answers to, and that at some point I needed to simply ask God to meet me wherever I was at in my faith and help me with the rest.  He suggested I give up my control of needing to understand everything and see what God might have in store for me.

I said that prayer to God (not really fully understanding if He really would hear it), and over the next two months, my faith changed dramatically.  The same questions didn’t stop me anymore from 100% believing in God, and I became comfortable with knowing God had the answers and I didn’t have to have them.  I believed I then gained wisdom from God that I wouldn’t have received before I trusted Him.  I completely understand why people without faith are skeptical about how this happens, but since I’ve been on both sides of this, I feel that I have some added perspective.

My many experiences of doubting and challenging faith and adding on one layer at a time is why I believe that you can know God and experience God at more than one level.  I have experienced Christianity in body, mind and spirit now for 7 years.  Some people might refer to it as being “born again”, but since labels mean something different to different people, I would describe my faith as faith at a deep spiritual level. 

Looking back, in some ways if I could have written my story, I wish that I would have come to believe much sooner than I did for those challenging parenting years when I could have had my priorities more grounded for my kid’s sake; but on the other hand, I feel blessed that I got to experience the different levels of faith.  I have been happy most of my adult life, so for me, it wasn’t that I found faith from the bottom of the pit.  This actually is very common because many people only turn to God as a last resort.  For me, it was because I had a passion for truth and was obsessed with finding it.  The part I feel blessed about is that I knew my thoughts, questions, feelings and level of faith before I said that prayer asking for God to meet me where I was at so I can compare that time to now. Before, I experienced happiness and peace, and afterwards, it was turned into unbelievable joy and the kind of peace that “passes all understanding”.  I wasn’t fooled or tricked into it.  I wasn’t desperate at the time, which sent me in a false direction.  On the contrary, I was quite happy but driven to discover Truth.  I am amazed when I hear atheists describe Christians as people without the ability to think logically.  What they don’t understand is that a large number of Christians study the Bible on a regular basis and “study” means struggle and search and analyze and discuss the words in the Bible as they pray for wisdom.  I didn’t come to faith in Christ out of a lack of logic.  For me, it was because of logic (and some major help from above).  I respect those who are searching for truth about God.  I don’t understand those who lock Him in or out without continuing to explore and learn.

Sally Pitts
Centennial, Colorado