Dan, I read your blog page and strongly agree with your argument – there is something unhealthy about a spirituality that is so thoroughly self-absorbed. One way I have tried to address this problem is by recognizing that there are two dominant modes of discipleship or spirituality in the Bible.

i) There is a form of discipleship appropriate to situations of crisis or transition. This is apparent supremely (but not exclusively) in the New Testament when Jesus calls people to follow him into a frightening and uncertain future. At the centre of life is a precarious journey, undertaken in trust that the God did not abandon Jesus will also not abandon those who leave behind security and prosperity in order to follow Jesus.

ii) But the life of the people of God is not always disrupted by crisis. There is also a mode of discipleship appropriate to more settled conditions – the ‘discipleship’ of Israel, for example, during periods of peace and stability. At the centre of life under these circumstances are family, community, work, creativity; there is economic and social stability; there is the expectation that God will ‘prosper’, bless, those who act righteously; there is the routine of worship and celebration.

It seems to me that many of our problems arise because we confuse these two modes of discipleship and the forms of spiritual life that accompany them. In particular, we try to impose the first mode of discipleship, which belongs properly to circumstances of eschatological crisis, on the largely routine and predictable life of the people of God in the West today. We talk (or sing) quite inappropriately of taking up our cross and following Jesus when all we are really doing is getting on with life and turning up at church once a week.

One response, therefore, to the problem that you identify would be to develop a more holistic spirituality that is not confined to introspective and isolationist experiences of worship but which embraces our communal and creative lives. A second response would be to refocus on mission – the calling of God to go out from where we are and be a blessing to others. These tasks will strain traditional evangelical forms of spirituality to breaking point – and in doing so will rescue us from that complacent introspection. But we urgently need to develop an extroverted spirituality that will lead us back out into the world, in order both to affirm our natural existence in community as a gift of God and to be an authentic light to the nations.