While we may want to treat the spiritual realm as a safe space to escape from the stresses of the world, we can’t shake the feeling that Someone already lives there. We try to dismiss Him as a vague essence but perpetually feel like He is looking over our shoulders. We are told that our lives are just the result of fate yet feel compelled to say “sorry” and “thank you.” Despite our efforts to go it alone, we inevitably recognize that we need a divine hand up, and even though we may want Him to be a butler, we get this uncomfortable feeling that He is Lord of the manor.

I would suggest that the reason we pursue spirituality is that, deep down, we know that it is not a physical tyrant who calls the shots but rather a spiritual overlord. Unable to define purpose, love, and morality on earthly terms, we instinctively look to the heavens. We sense that the traits that make us unique persons must have come from a unique Person. Interestingly, those traits, which we find inexplicable in material terms, are well understood in relational terms. Our cultural obsession with spirits and angels supports my contention that we believe the spiritual realm is personal. So when we engage in celestial seeking, we are not searching for the Force but rather a missing Person.

Religions that offer vague spiritual essences as the ultimate reality have a hard time explaining why humans are so obsessed with personality. Even the nebulous Hindu Brahman or the Buddhist nirvana still incorporate middle-man bodhisattvas or avatars to give their spirituality some personality. The difference between religion in the East and religion in the West is that the West thinks primarily in terms of ongoing individuality and eternal personhood, while the East sees individual extinction and eternal nothingness. The problem with the Eastern mind-set, however, is that it cannot avoid the human need for personal relationship, and even though they speak of the unknowable Brahman or vague nirvana, they are forced to gain access to it through minor deities that have the attributes of personhood. They cannot escape the fact that any religious system that doesn’t pay homage to human individuality is ultimately hollow. So when it comes to something as precious as our spirituality, we know that it must be based on relationship with a “person.” This, however, is where the spiritual rubber meets the physical road because true relationship must be a two-way street, and we must be willing to woo as well as be wooed.

You must have wondered why the enemy [God] does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons, which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to over-ride a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. (1)

(1) C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York: Time Inc., 1963), 24–25. God is referred to as the enemy because the book is a series of correspondences between a junior devil-in-training and his supervisor discussing the best ways to corrupt humankind.

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