I find that there's a real balance to be struck that your average Christian does not understand, which is really too bad since Scripture cries out that we seek it. Jesus came first and foremost to heal us spiritually, but in the same way God does not leave us to fend for ourselves physically. Matt 6:25-32 tells us not to be anxious about anything because God loves us more than the birds of the air and lilies of the field, yet ends with with verse 33 which is near and dear to many of us here... "But seek first the reign of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." Both the spiritual and physical are important to God

While I agree with the author about churches obsessing on the mechanics of church, I would disagree with the statement that, "It was largely about spiritual salvation and growth, praying for people, and religious codes of conduct." As I have lamented previously on this website, what many might call "spiritual salvation and growth" is much more cultural in nature than it is Christian. There is a set of standards and behaviors that Christians are expected to adhere to, which look frighteningly similar to Western cultural values. I've often struggled to find Christians who want to talk about sin and salvation, which is core to our Christian faith. I guess that I've never been one to believe that obsessing over making the worship service perfect was a great use of time

Yet I also have to wonder about churches that take the opposite approach and dedicate themselves to only providing for the physical needs of the community in which they live. Here where I live near Seattle, churches are big into taking care of the homeless, sometimes to the exclusion of all else. It would be difficult from a spiritual perspective to call them churches as they focus on very little in Scripture other than Christ's command to feed the poor

Where I think the lack of balance comes into play in this whole equation is in our collective lack of understanding that our physical infirmities can be directly tied to the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden. I recently spent 16 days in the hospital in which I had my right foot amputated due to a severe foot infection. Nothing could have made a better statement to me of the effects of sin than those two weeks. It's not as though God was punishing me for specific sins as some might believe. But I couldn't escape the fact that we all live in a fallen world, and that only by the grace of God that any of us has hope for the future. An eternal future full of the grace of our beloved Savior

I guess my point is that there is a middle ground in all of this. To focus solely on the spiritual is to miss the point of God's daily mercies in our everyday existences. Watching a limb rot away before your eyes as I recently did is a sobering reminder of the fragility of our lives here on Earth. We need God to survive. But to say that all of the ills that we face will be somehow cured with a clean pair of socks and a hot meal is to miss the point as well. As the human race, we are where we are today because of sin, and to help someone in need without sharing the hope that God has placed in us for the future is missing the point when it comes to the Christian life