Collision of Psychology and Spirituality

I like to think human beings are like the color orange. 

Can you picture the color orange? 

Breathe in a moment, and imagine the color. 

And breathe out again. 

Want to know my favorite thing about that? 

You probably pictured a different shade of orange than I did. 

Because like all colors, there is a wide spread spectrum to the color orange. Little variations creating spectacular, unique and distinct forms of one item. 

Sounds like people, doesn’t it? Similar, yet different. From the same core ingredients, yet distinct in nature. 

Orange is a collision. It is red colliding with yellow to create something new, something distinct and something profound. 

I love to watch for collisions in life like that. Because a collision of two things is the mysterious both/and, and I repeatedly have found that to be the greatest definition of the Kingdom. 

God living in heaven was not alone sufficient, so God collided His breath with the dust to form man. And when man encountered evil and pain, Creator God could not sit aloof on his throne, so his divinity collided with humanity as Jesus walked the earth. 

Collision requires proximity. 

And we have an all entirely, earth-moving, proximity-seeking God. 

And in knowing that He would soon return to the Father, Jesus extended communion to us. Tangible Sacriment colliding with our body, sinking into the depth of us where His Spirit now dwells. 

The bread and the wine. 

Our invitation home. 

Through the red wine and the golden bread, we are brought close to our proximate God. 

The red and gold, colliding within us. 

The collision of red and gold?

Orange. 

So when some Christians claim that we cannot trust psychology. 

I look inward, and see the orange, where the red and golden collides, and I see the humanity of my being colliding with the divinity of my belonging. 

And I am reassured of the collision of psychology and spirituality in the Kingdom of God. 

That is what we are. 

Spirituality intersecting with psychology is me, as it is you, as it was Jesus. 

And perhaps holding both in the tender both/and of the Kingdom is when we can discover the depth spiritual maturity beckons us into. 

For if we lean on spirituality alone to mature us, we lose sight of our personal nature in which God called, created, and develops distinctly. 

And if we lean on our psychology, then we abdicate a significant depth of our souls that will continually ache for attention. 

Either/or fractures the human soul as it clips the two wings needed to soar. Over and over, I return to the deeply humble and kind truth that the Kingdom of God is both/ands, more inclusive than my heart can understand which is how I know it rests int he Divine’s hands. And into that both/and thinking is the way toward a Jesus-like living. 

Heaven colliding with earth saturates itself within the human soul. And the human soul will do well to steep itself in the intersection of psychology and spirituality. 

I like to think that path forward into personal development and spiritual maturity is paved orange, for the unforced, natural rhythm of trust paves that path. And that rhythmic trust is cultivated in comfortably intimate communion with the both/and King. 

Welcome to the both/and (and often paradoxical) kingdom.