The phrase “Do it yourself” or “DIY” began in the 1950’s. It started in the realm of home repair, as people began augmenting their home with low-cost craft-projects. Why pay someone for small-scale construction that you can manage yourself?  Over the years, this trend has become increasingly popular, particularly given the rise of social media.  DIY magazines flood the market, and myriads of DIY books, videos, and podcasts exist on any topic one can think of. Woodworking, cooking, plumbing, gardening, bread-making, all have niche DIY following with a youthful influencer at its head.

You can even find people speaking about DIY spirituality.

Is your faith a “do-it-yourself’ type of faith? Do you allow others to journey with you? Do you speak about your faith experiences to others? Would others be shocked to learn you are a Christian person? Are you a modern DIY-er, relegating your spiritual life to the spiritual sound-bytes of someone you follow on Instagram or Facebook?

It’s easy to view our spiritual lives as completely self-defined. Spirituality, after all, is intensely personal. We treat our faith in a solitary manner; it is about me and Jesus and the bond between us. But biblical spirituality is never designed to be an individual endeavor. Some things in life are too important for us to do ourselves. Some parts of our lives are so fundamental to our health, vitality, and inward transformation, that restricting it to whatever we can muster by our own effort is ultimately a disservice. Our life in God is never about what we can do; it must always be about what God can do through us, and through others.

An amazing scene in scripture captures this idea. The scene occurs In Exodus 18. At this point the journey to the Promised Land is well on its way. Moses has settled into his role as Isreal’s leader, and as reluctant as Moses was to assume the mantle of leadership, he is now someone who is reluctant to give it up. Moses sits alone, day after day, adjudicating Israel’s affairs.  His father-in-law asks why everyone goes to him for advice and ruling. Moses replies, “people come to me to seek God’s will. Whenever they have a dispute, it is brought to me, and I decide and inform them of God’s instructions.”

Maybe I’m reading into this scene, but do you get a hint of pride in this response?  Whether this attitude was forced upon him, or whether he created himself, Moses adopted an attitude of “it all rests on me.” He believed he was the only one to do the work. In essence, Moses lived out a DIY spiritual life, and a DIY spiritual leadership.

To this attitude, Jethro offers an important word. “The way you are going is not good.”  DIY spirituality is fickle and fragile. It leads us to anger and distain, and it will inevitably crumble when we find ourselves pushed past our own abilities, expertise, and strengths. Jethro could see that Moses was heading for burnout and discouragement. The pace of listening to everything, talking to everyone, and allowing no one to come along side him would not only destroy his spiritual life, but it would destroy the community of Israel as well. As Henri Nouwen once observed, burnout is a but a convenient title for spiritual death.

There will always be areas in our spiritual life where we need to grow. There will always be places where God pushes past our own prowess, not so that we can learn a new skill, but so that we can receive God’s work through another. A spirituality defined solely by our own efforts is ultimately narrow in scope and narrow in experience.  

Following Jethro’s words, Moses appoints 70 elders to assist him in his ministry, and in doing so, both his life and the lives of the Israelites are blessed. What might it look like for you to open your spiritual life to others? Instead of a “Do-it-yourself” faith, how might you embrace a “Do-it-Together’ spirituality? Who are the wise sages that you can invite to journey with you? Who are the people to whom you can seek advice, and who are the people that you can ask to join you in your walk?

Our faith is never meant to be privatised.  God calls us together, and it is together that we live as the people of God.