Why Spiritual but Not Religious

SPIRITUALLY HUNGRY BUT DISTRUST INSTITUTIONS

The polls all show that the numbers of those who want to be spiritual but not religious are growing. It challenges the belief that churches are a necessary part of the path to wholeness or salvation.

The desire to be spiritual but not religious builds on some significant changes in our society. A major change probably began with the combined effect of the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, and the Vietnam war. The Kennedy assassination robbed people of the inevitable progress of optimism. The best can be struck down by one crazy act. Watergate demonstrated the corruption of institutions which was expanded by the discovery of how willing our institutions will lie to the public in order to disguise their mistakes as in Vietnam.

All of this and more resulted in a massive distrust of institutions and authority. Just try saying that scientific research has verified and see what type of snickers you get. People distrust institutions and authority but still hunger to make sense out of life. So they seek out alternative paths to truth.

TRUTH TESTED IN THE REAL WORLD

The problem is that a truth that can’t be tested in community soon stumbles and falls. Those who seek spiritual truth but are unwilling to test that truth out in community, can easily fall prey to a narcissistic truth that pleases but doesn’t challenge. We might sense awe on a beautiful star filled night but those stars never say, “Thou Shalt Not.”

The church has demonstrated its weakness again and again, and yet it is a body that continues to put forth a vision of transcendence and community. The very struggle we engage in between our human foibles and a vision of transcendence continues to purge us of false assumptions.

LOVE GOD AND NEIGHBOR IN COMMUNITY

If you can love God and neighbor in the midst of a community of people reflective of the weakness of humanity but grasped by the hope of something better, then you can grow in an understanding of a truth grounded in reality. A church community consists of real people with real weaknesses, but they gather to hear Scripture and pray prayers that confront them with the truth that there is something more. We cannot be saved by becoming more perfect than those around us. History demonstrates that that results in arrogance. We can only be saved by learning to trust a God who can work through imperfect people who never give up on hoping there can be something better.

TRUTH AS AN IDOL

We are continually measuring our disappointment with church, life, and relationships over against an ideal that has never existed. Read the New Testament description of the early church, or even the first disciples and you are not given a picture of perfection. To make an idol out of an imagined perfect church blinds us to the grace of God who continually works through our weaknesses to reveal a transcending truth.