Be Blessed in What You Do: The Unity of Christian Ethics and Spirituality, Michael Duffey

This book is about ways of self-discovery and of love as they are understood in the Christian tradition. In theological terms, this book is about the necessary relationship between Christian moral theology and Christian spirituality. We may define "spirituality" as the human movement toward the God revealed to Israel and through Jesus Christ that is manifested in greater wholeness of life through communion with others. The theme in all that will be said about spirituality and morality is their relatedness. Our moral lives are part of a spiritual quest. Spirituality is the companion of moral development.

At times we may feel that spirituality and our everyday lives are poles apart. The demands of the active life and the solitude necessary for contemplation may seem in permanent conflict. Pursuing one may seem to preclude pursuing the other. Resolving moral issues and becoming decent moral actors may seem to place us in a different world of experience from the world in which the spiritual seeker lives. Consider some apparent dichotomies. The commitment to live simply and even renounce material pursuits may seem at odds with focusing one's energies on greater productivity so that more can share in the goods of the earth. Spiritual growth appears to be a luxury for the few whose needs are well met in a world in which whole peoples are hungry and without social justice. These seeming oppositions are challenging. The challenge is not to choose once as the better way and deny the other as an unworthy pursuit but to live within the tension of the two. To decide that one way of life is "too worldly" or that the other is "too utopian" is to code ourselves off from much of reality. OUr greatest growth is to be found in living the tension by holding together these poles as best we can. Whatever anomaly there seems to be between the spiritual life and the moral life will only be resolved by striving for holy worldliness and viewing both holiness and worldliness as part and parcel of what it means to call oneself Christian.