Testing Your Spiritual Ph

In Chemical terms all liquids have a pH. It measures the acidity or alkalinity of the solution and is based on the number of ions of a type in the solution. A pH of 1 is very acid and will burn you if it touches your skin. Likewise a pH of 14 is very caustic (alkaline) and will burn you if it touches your skin. Pure water is about pH 7 (actually between 6.8 and 7.2 and is soothing. Both extremes of pH become irritating, harmful and if extreme enough, dangerous.

In the spiritual sense there is a pH. On one hand is the strict adherence to the word without grace, on the other the complete freedom of the spirit without bounds. On the one hand there is legalism on the other lawlessness. On one hand you are rigid and on the other you are flaky.

But there is a medium. It is not compromise. It is balance. It is not straying to one side or the other, it is holding a center course between the extremes.

This is not a course that can be steered without effort. Quite frankly it is easy to stray to one side or the other. I have done it. In fact I can chart a course through my life. Right now I believe I am somewhere near the symbolic 7.0. I I have strayed in recent years it is on the side of grace. But I know from experience that I have strayed enough to be irritating at times without recognizing it. That is where we become our brother’s keeper, we help keep each other way.

So how does this look from a spiritual sense?

Let’s look at the word movement of the 50’s which I was a part of not to be confused with the word movement of the late 70’s that I was also a part of. This back-woods movement came out of the Pentecostal movement of the late 40’s. It was following the spirit with little emphasis on the word. It was tongues, shouting, and making a joyful noise to the Lord and it was good. But as time went on it went flaky,. It deviated from the word to the extent that some of the music of that time I cannot stomach, it was moving, it was stirring but it violated scripture in more than a few places. Ironically some bodies in that time were very legalistic and on the other side. Let’s assign it a pH of maybe 6.0, a little irritating but tolerable. As the word movement of the mid-50’s started to correct these errors it swung through 7.0 and continued upward. The flakiness left but it was soon replaced with rigidity. Soon it became Phariseeism. Let me assure you, I have been a part of this without really knowing that I have been on the pendulum as it swung. Without a reference it is not possible to determine where you are. I went through a similar swing in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Then came the prophetic movement and the movement lost the focus somewhat on the word.