Animate Faith 2,Religion, Spirituality is not enough...

Note: I am currently taking the church I pastor through the Animate: Faith curriculum (wearesparkhouse.org).  I am using some lift-outs from the facilitator guide and participant journal in my blogs and teachings.  If something sounds smarter than usual, that’s probably why…  If you would like to know which things are from the Animate resources, you’ll just have to buy them!  You won’t be disappointed!

Have you ever considered yourself spiritual but not religious? Why or why not?  What is it about organized religion that turns people off?  What makes being spiritual but not religious attractive?  According to most research, 90% of the people on the planet believe in a divine being and make sense of this belief through some kind of organized religion. So why do people tend to reject “organized religion”?

The term, spiritual but not religious, has been with us for several decades now.  All by itself it makes a statement.  In my experience, when people use this term, they want to convey that they believe in God (or Higher Power or some other term), but do not feel the need to incorporate religion into their practice of faith.  Here in northern California, I believe identifying oneself in this way is the new normal.  I think there are many more people who see themselves as spiritual, but not religious, than those who would first identify themselves as Christian.  This is a shift that is sweeping the Western world. 

When I was a pastor in a small town in northern Illinois, some people would use this term, but not many.  It was more of a fringe term then, reserved for those who would use the term boldly to make a statement about their fringeness.  Not anymore.  Now, especially here in the Bay Area, you are looked at differently if you identify yourself with church and Christianity.  This has massive implications for how we engage the culture, by the way.  Whereas there was once at least subtle support for religious practices, there is none now.  Worse than none, actually – there is negative association with religion and being religious.  The reality is so pervasive that some evangelism strategies seek to distance Christianity from religion!  Religion is about rules.  Christianity is about relationship.  Religion is about what we do, whereas Christianity is about what has been done.  You may have heard this or read it in a tract.  But is it helpful?

Why is this worth thinking about?  Because the cultural current is guiding people to simply embrace the spiritual but not religious mindset not only as normal, but also right.

If you are on a quest to discover and relate to God more deeply, looking to religion may not even hit your radar.  And that brings us to an important question: If you were a plant, what stage of spiritual development would you say you are in? Just a seed or mature plant? Growing or wilting?

If you are reading this, it is likely because you are wondering how Jesus engaged this question.  You look to Jesus as an expert on getting life and faith right.  Was Jesus spiritual but not religious?

The truth is that Jesus was deeply religious from the very beginning of his life all the way to the end of it (and beyond).  His deeply religious parents presented him at the Temple as an infant according to Jewish religious tradition.  Jesus certainly went through the religious paces as a Jewish boy, and when he became a man, he stuck with the religious tradition that so powerfully shaped him.  He attended church (synagogue) religiously.  He went to Jerusalem to celebrate various Jewish religious feasts.  He so valued and knew the Jewish religious scriptures that he was invited to speak at church a lot.  To suggest that Jesus was not religious is to showcase ignorance about who Jesus was and how he lived.  And he never suggested that his followers do otherwise.

Some of you may be freaking out at this moment, because you really don’t like or want to identify yourself with religion.  You may even feel a bit betrayed by me, because you know that I have shared passages from Jesus about his distaste of religiosity.  Doesn’t that qualify him as being spiritual but not religious?

Take a few minutes and read the following passages (chapter:verses), all from the Gospel of Luke.  Luke 9:1-6; 11:1-4; 11:37-44; 13:22-30; 14:1-6; 17:11-19; 18:9-17; 21:1-6; and 24:13-35.  What do we have in this assortment of verses?  How do these passages help us assess where Jesus was in relationship to the spiritual but not religious dialogue?

Anyone can find God alone on a picturesque mountaintop, hiking trail, or the sunset. The miracle is that I can find God in the company of other people who are just as annoying as I am. – Lillian Daniel

Take a look at Hebrews 12:1-2 (New Revised Standard Version): Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.  What if we thought about religion – the great cloud of witnesses – as the framework on which our faith grows? It holds us up, helps us make sense of our experiences, it connects our story to the stories of the past and the stories of the future. How would that language change the way you think about religion?

It’s pretty easy to play by the rules of a religion in which you write your own script. Much harder to find meaning in the words of a book that we did not write for ourselves, from a very different time. – Lillian Daniel

Jesus loved his Jewish religious tradition.  What he didn’t love was religiosity.  He loved the rhythm and connectedness that the Jewish religious framework provided.  What bothered him was the abuse of religion to control and manage people in ways that constricted the Spirit’s flow into the lives of the people who needed that flow the most.  When Jesus pops his cork in Luke’s chapter 11, that’s what he is upset about – not religion in general.  Jesus knew that deep, vibrant, meaningful, transforming, healing, non-self-centered spirituality is developed through religious practices.  That’s why he maintained them.

By the way, I have been part of many church services where there was so much focus on being religious that there was little room for the Spirit.  I think that form of religiosity puts a kink in the hose through which the Spirit wants to flow.  A “dead” worship service should be an oxymoron.  Deep religion doesn’t cause that death, though – it rather facilitates the life and health and beauty God wants to usher into the world.

How have you put work into your religious tradition?  What kind of pruning or fertilizer do you need to put down roots and bloom in the Christian tradition?  Maybe it’s time that we begin confessing and proclaiming that we are deeply spiritual and deeply religious because that is the way toward a deepening relationship with God.

The beauty of a long tradition is that it is bigger than anything we could do by ourselves. These days it is somewhat countercultural to suggest that one might possibly benefit from the company of others in the life of faith. Particularly those who have gone before us in faith… I wanted more than just an intellectual epiphany… something with a longer shelf life than my own latest opinion. – Lillian Daniel