On the road with Bosch

A group of us just finished reading 'a spirituality of the road' by David Bosch. An awesome and humble exploration of the kind of spirituality we might aspire to. Bosch uses Paul's second letter to the Corinthians to construct a way of discipleship that avoids the 'us/God against the world' dualism of the pilgrim’s progress model. He suggests that, "the involvement in this world should lead to a deepening of our relationship with and our dependence on God, and the deepening of this relationship should lead to increasing involvement in the world." Being called out of and sent into the world is a "simultaneous double-movement". Not an easy thing to get a handle on when many of us have been schooled in an understanding of spirituality that, at best, is ambivalent about 'the world/flesh' and, at worst, hostile to all things material. Bosch eventually suggests the cross is the most compelling image of a holistic spirituality....he says, "Jesus was never more worldly than on the cross....Jesus never stood over against the world more clearly than here, and spirituality is both of these at the same time." Total identification and radical separation at the same time! wow.