There are many suggestions for how to be a spiritual person. One of them is to make peace with people, animals, and nature. It is a kind of spirituality, but it is not Christian spirituality. On the other hand, some influential televangelists encourage us to have a charismatic spirituality which over-emphasizes supernatural experiences and emotional responses. Sometimes, it is fanatical. Fanaticism means a behavior involving “excessive, irrational zeal” with an obsessive enthusiasm over an interest.

We can find many spiritual principles in various places in scripture, but today I would like to consider it according to the words of Jesus who says that we are “people of light” (Ephesians 5:8-21).

“God is light; in him, there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth” (1 John 1:6). The opposite of a life of light is a life of darkness—carousing, sexual immorality, debauchery, and jealousy.

Light and darkness are in sharp contrast, and according to God’s creation order, God separated the light from the darkness. The definition of the darkness refers to a state lacking light. If there is no light, darkness will fill that space.

Therefore, if we want to live as a spiritual Christian, we should be in His light.

Another scriptural spirituality principle is to “be filled with the Spirit.” Our bodies are not our own but rather the temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). God created us as vessels for His Spirit. If you “speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs and make music in your heart to the Lord, and always give thanks to God” (Ephesians 5:19-20), it is evidence that the Spirit of God is dwelling in you.

In psychology, there is a “broken windows” theory. James Q. Wilson presented the theory in 1982 that “if there is an empty house with an unfixed broken window, more windows will be broken soon.” Eventually, if the interior of the building is damaged, the entire building can be at risk, and, furthermore, it is more likely that it will encourage crime.

The same principle of the “broken windows” theory applies to our Christian spirituality. If the light and the Holy Spirit of God leaves us, the vessel of the Spirit, which is the heart and life of a Christian, is emptied. This will not only lead to spiritual exhaustion, but also various other spiritual problems. Because the empty Christian mind is filled with darkness and there is no more light.

According to constructor workers’ experience, when they build a house, they dig up a deep and wide pit to contain water. But if the pit is empty for a long time, the wind blows up all kinds of waste and dumps it into the pit. If the word of God and the Spirit of God leaves us, we will experience all kinds of spiritual distress such as anger, anxiety, fear, and so on.

In the end, the Bible-based principle of the Christian spiritual life is to live in the light of the Lord and to live in the fullness of the Holy Spirit. And the gathering of these people is a church.

As such, church is a gathering of people of light. So when we, as children of light, dwell in community, the world can see churches as places where light shines. But if the Christians in a church are not of the light, it is no longer a true church. It is just a darkened building. Therefore, churches should be filled with the children of the light to shine in the world like a lighthouse.