Without ever being explicitly taught it at home or in my church, I absorbed a vision of the Christian spiritual life, one common in conservative American Protestant circles. In it, the strength of one’s spiritual experiences is a key measure of one’s Christian maturity – and these experiences are normatively positive ones of comfort, joy, and peace in the divine presence. In a blending of pietism with American optimism and informality, Christianity is understood to result in feelings of pleasant spiritual nearness; prayer is understood as predominantly a matter of casual conversation with God. When experiences of spiritual suffering or hardship are narrated, it is typically in the “before” part of a before-and-after story: safely relegated to before conversion or to repentance from a besetting sin. The experience of divine absence is legible only as a failure.

According to Luther, however, a spiritual life that is all brightness and light, joy and peace is not really Christian at all.