Owen Barfield says; "We shall not be able to save souls unless we also save the appearances". 

 

The "appearances" are the objects of this earthly world, which include our own earthly selves. It is therefore not enough just to "combat" earthly concerns with spiritual concepts of other-worldliness. If our soul is to be saved, these objects must also be saved. Why? Because our bodies are currently one of those objects, and if this fact is ignored, and we assume we can be saved without our bodies also being saved, then we are merely escaping our humanity instead of seeking real redemption. 

Steiner stressed the need to see evil as being twofold: Lucifer and Ahriman are the two extremes on either side. To ignore the world, or replace it with "higher things" is what Steiner would call the Luciferic tendency in spirituality. An example of the Ahrimanic tendency being materialism with its concept of the human being as mere biological machine. 

Christ is the middle way, the balancing of the two polar extremes. He is neither the Ahrimanic materialism of the "this-worldly" nor the escapism to the "higher-worldly" of Lucifer. Hence we can see that the human ego treads between these two extremes, and in the middle is the point at which Christ touches the world. To either reduce the earth-bound ego to material processes, or to escape it completely in spiritual heights, are literally un-Christian paths.