The most menacing and difficult threat to assess in one’s spiritual life is the threat of diminishing returns for the same actions. It happens when the prayers come harder even though you keep your same routine. Or, it happens when we struggle through a generic, vague fatigue in our spiritual practices and can’t diagnose what has changed, because nothing really had. Threats to our spirituality are easy to discern when there have been drastic changes in our spiritual life (like we haven’t prayed in eight days…), but are incredibly hard to discern when it seems as if nothing has changed.
This kind of spiritual threat are often diagnosed by blaming the racket. I played tennis growing up, and something my coaches would always be quick to correct is blaming the racket after a bad shot. I’m sure you’ve seen this if you have spent any time watching tennis on TV: a player makes a poor shot then just stares at their racket in disgust, or even throws their racket at the ground. The racket is not to blame a coach would say: you are. This was not a constant refrain placed upon us high schoolers so that our self-esteem would plummet. No, we needed to hear the bad shot was our fault because if we blamed it on the racket we would never take the time to correct what was wrong with our footing, positioning or swing.
We must always start by looking at ourselves and our actions, whether tennis or the spiritual life. But there will be times that we have been critical of ourselves and found no hitch in the swing or bad footing. Then what?
If we find ourselves in fine working order, but something still doesn’t feel right, it might be time to move on from ourselves to the tools and habits we use.
For the past week I was getting sore and fatigued riding my bike to and from the train station each day. It was something I have been doing for several months now, and yet suddenly this was happening, seemingly out of nowhere. I didn’t blame the racquet. I started by looking at myself. I was being lazy with my cadence pedaling and not getting enough sleep. I tried improving those two things, yet the fatigue persisted. I started stretching more, thinking I was just tight, yet nothing changed. Finally, I decided to look at the bike, and the tires were seriously underinflated. I was so tired because I was pedaling on flat tires!
Sometimes we need to check our body, check our soul but then find we need to inflate the tires. The majority of our spiritual struggles will be caused by our own shortcomings, but we should never be afraid of finding a problem elsewhere if we cannot find it in ourselves.
The next time you are struggling with something spiritually, check your body (Do I have enough rest? Enough nourishment? Enough exercise? Enough leisure?), check you soul (Do I have work-life balance? Am I participating in individual and corporate worship? Am I getting enough fellowship? Am I keeping my spiritual disciplines?), then inflate your tires (Do I need a change in surroundings, disciplines or habits?)
We must constantly check our body and our soul. It’s what being a disciple is about. But sometimes, when the going gets tough, what we really need to do is inflate our tires.