What Does Spirituality Mean to Me?

Everyone is on a spiritual path; most people just don't know it.

This article appeared on Desh - Videsh on July 2006 promoting business interests. Most who read that magazine may never opened a Bible or give any serious thoughts as to who is Jesus Christ or their need for a Savior.

The Question

Imagine your doctor says, "You have twenty-four hours left." That question — am I prepared to meet my Maker? — is where my understanding of spirituality starts.

I've lived fifty-eight years as a skeptic. Whatever I see or hear gets filtered through that skepticism first. If something doesn't survive the filter, I walk away from it. So when I ran the twenty-four-hour scenario through my mind, the questions came fast: Is there a God? Which religion, if any, actually makes sense? Which of the people who founded these faiths lived a life worth following?

Temptations of Life

I was raised in a Christian home in India, so you'd think I had it figured out. I didn't. My biggest problem was guilt.

When I was eleven, I visited my sister's house and saw a 1-rupee coin sitting on a table. I took it. The next day, everyone was looking for it, and I said nothing. On my way to school, I spent it on an Indian sweet I'd been wanting. It tasted like gravel in my mouth.

Forty-seven years later, I remember every detail of that afternoon. It was one rupee — small next to everything else in my life: pride, greed, a questionable tax deduction, an angry word, a glance I shouldn't have taken. But the guilt from all of it landed the same way. The problem was my heart, and no one sees that but God. I had no one who could actually fix it, and no way to fix it myself.

If you grew up in India as a skeptic, you know what "going along to get along" means. Church, regardless of denomination, didn't have much value to me next to a real life-and-death question.

What I Chased Instead

Even after moving to this country and worshipping alongside Christians from East and West, I noticed the same undercurrent: material success quietly treated as godliness. The bigger house, the Ivy League kids, the successful career — somehow equated with spiritual worth. I read the Bible and didn't see that math. Job, Jesus, the disciples — none of them were rewarded that way.

So for years I chased the version I saw around me: climb the ladder, build wealth, build a name, keep a positive attitude, hope a few people remember you when you're gone. Being a skeptic meant I never fully bought into it, but I hadn't found anything else to replace it with either.

Finding an Answer

Eventually the searching came down to one question: was Jesus of the Bible actually who He claimed to be? My skepticism needed real convincing — that He was God, that He died on the cross to take on the punishment for my sins and everyone else's, and that the guilt I couldn't shake could actually be removed. Over time, I became convinced. Whatever other Christians did with their lives, Jesus was my only real answer.

Once that faith broke through, life started meaning something different. I stopped getting up to accumulate or impress, and started asking each morning how Jesus would want me to live that day — how I ran my business, treated people, even drove on South Florida roads. It became an ongoing conversation, like a friend correcting a friend.

It took a long time to get there, partly because I was turned off by so many Christians whose lives looked no different from anyone else's. But once you've tasted a life like that, it's like drinking daily from a fountain that never runs dry.

Where That Leaves Me

Everyone faces the same basic facts of life — birth, death, joy, loss. And everyone, in a quiet unguarded moment, has felt that same guilt and shame. One day we all face the question of how we lived. For me, having a real relationship with Jesus was my answer to the twenty-four-hour scenario, and the way out from under that guilt.

So whether I have twenty-four hours or forty more years left, it makes no difference to me now. A man devoted to God once put it this way:

Lord, it belongs not to my care whether I live or die, to love and to serve Thee is my share, for this Thy grace must give.

If life be long, I will be glad that I may long obey; if short, then why should I be sad to soar to an endless day?

So that is also my prayer: to obey and please the God who created me and died for me on the cross 2000 years ago, to take my wrongs, guilt, and shame, and prepare a home for me in heaven.

If you've read this far, you're probably a skeptic too, and maybe Jesus is still more of a puzzle to you than an answer. I'd only ask you not to take my word for it — go examine Him yourself. Pick up a Bible and read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Those four books will tell you what you need to know.

Selected quotations:

"God made me for Himself; I am restless until I find rest in God." — Augustine

"Come unto me, all who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to God except through me." — Jesus Christ

"For God so loved the world that He gave His Son, so whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life." — Jesus Christ

"I am coming soon, and my reward is with me, to repay all according to their deeds." — Jesus Christ