Spiritual Activism

There is nothing more radically activist than a truly spiritual life, and there is nothing more truly spiritual than a radically activist life. If you fight for peace with an unpeaceful spirit, you guarantee that unintended consequences will trump your intended ones. If you struggle fora sustainable economy with unsustainable effort, you guarantee your own failure. The earth’s outer ecology will, inevitably, mirror our inner ecology. So there can be no lasting poverty reduction in society unless we grapple with greed reduction in the soul. If we want loving relationships, joyful communities, and peaceful nations in society, we must cultivate an inner fecundity of Spirit. That, of course, is no argument for passive pietism and quietism; it is, rather, a call to the most costly, radical activism, the one that calls us to be the change we want to see in the world. It is the call to be the light of the world — not merely to complain that the world is too dark. It is the call to be the salt of the earth — not merely to protest the world’s rottenness. It’s fruitless to argue being versus doing: you can’t do what you won’t be.

— Brian D. MacLaren, Naked Spirituality, p. 237

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