The most dangerous spiritual addiction

superficiality is the curse of our age

Forty years ago Richard Foster opened his instantly classic spiritual guide Celebration of Discipline with these prophetic words “ superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.“
Superficiality Is, indeed, the curse of our age. these words are, if anything, even more true today than they were four decades ago.
While it seems counterintuitive to welcome pain, it is essential to our well-being and survival--alerting us to the need to attend to injury, illness, or loss. Like all mammals, humans are designed with a neural system that closely links physical pain with social/emotional pain, a “broken heart” utilizes the same neural pathways as a broken arm or leg. our natural instinct is to seek pleasure and avoid pain.. however, as the only mammal designed in the image of God, human beings are capable of experiencing and processing pain at spiritual levels. Beneath the surface.
Depth and superficiality exist as poles on a continuum. Movement on that continuum is defined by one’s capacity to feel and make good use of the spiritual pain that comes from facing our own sin and the brokenness of the world.

“Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.”

― Eugene O'Neill

We are born into a world that is broken, at odds with its creator. by God’s grace We mature, spiritually, by both mourning that brokenness and participating in God’s plan for mending it, restoring Shalom. Those who are unable or unwilling to enter the spiritual deep end of life’s pool must remain in or regress to the fragility and superficiality of spiritual infancy They demand immediate comfort and satisfaction. They cannot acknowledge their own inadequacy. They cannot tolerate tension, paradox or complexity, they flee from anything that brings discomfort and they construct elaborate illusions to make themselves feel safe and comfortable. By cutting themselves off from deeper realities they remain spiritually weak and underdeveloped, requiring others to accommodate their superficiality. If possible, they surround themselves with other spiritually shallow people who will not challenge them to mature and will both affirm that theirs Is the right and reasonable way to be and join them in judging those that disagree. This enables them to believe that rather than the weaker brother or sister that easily stumbles they are actually superior.
Spiritual superficiality is an addiction because, like substance abuse, it fosters habituation and dependency. By never facing painful realities the shallow person does not develop the strengths to face those realities, perpetuating a vicious cycle.
In Celebration of Discipline Foster demonstrates that promoting spiritual depth requires more than theological or Biblical education, it requires spiritual formation. Without attention to such formation we remain spiritually shallow, focused on image management over substance. Like the religious leaders that Jesus exposed, the surface may look clean and proper while inside we are filthy.
American evangelicalism is in desperate need of a focus on spiritual depth over superficiality. Almost every day there is a new story of a prominent individual or organization that has been plotting and bullying to prop up their glittering surface image and keep hidden their shameful secrets.