When Someone Tells Me That They Are ‘Not Religious, But Very Spiritual,’ I Want to Punch Them in the Face
via How Contemporary Spirituality Makes Us Stupid, Selfish, and Unhappy | RD10Q | Religion Dispatches:
What inspired you to write Dispirited?
The opening line of the book has raised some eyebrows, and some friends felt it ought to go, but it really seemed to capture the emotional motivation for this project:
When someone tells me that they are “Not religious, but very spiritual,” I want to punch them in the face.
Hard…
Of course, I go on to note that I resist such temptations—for reasons of ethics and cowardice. However, this annoyance was something I wanted to investigate. Why did it wind me up so much?
As someone who used to say things like that not long ago, there are days today I wish someone had punched me in the face and woken me up sooner.
What’s the most important take-home message for readers?
That the idea of being “spiritual, but not religious” is, at the very least, problematic. As I suggest in the book, mind-body-spirit spirituality is in danger of making us stupid, selfish, and unhappy.
Stupid—because its open-ended, inclusive and non-judgemental attitude to truth-claims actually becomes an obstacle to the combative, argumentative process whereby we discern sense from nonsense. To treat all claims as equivalent, as valid perspectives on an unsayable ultimate reality, is not to really take any of them seriously. It promotes a shallow, surface approach, whereby the work of discrimination, of testing claims against each other, and our experience in the light of method, is cast aside in favour of a lazy, bargain-basement-postmodernist relativism.
Selfish—because the ‘inner-turn’ drives us away from concerns with the material; so much so that being preoccupied with worldly matters is somehow portrayed as tawdry or shallow. It’s no accident that we see the wealthy and celebrities drawn to this very capitalist form of religion: most of the world realizes that material concerns do matter. I don’t believe that we find ourselves and meaning via an inner journey. I’m not even sure I know what it means. While of course there is course for introspection and self-examination, this, I argue, has to be in a context of concrete social realities.
Finally, I argue that the dissembling regarding death in most contemporary spirituality—the refusal to face it as the total absolute annihilation of the person and all about them—leaves it ill-equipped to help us truly engage with the existential reality of our own mortality and finitude. In much contemporary spirituality there is an insistence of survival (and a matching vagueness about its form) whenever death is discussed. I argue that any denial of death (and I look at the longevity movements briefly too) is an obstacle to a full, rich life, with emotional integrity. Death is the thing to be faced if we are to really live. Spirituality seems to me to be a consolation that refuses this challenge, rather seeking to hide in the only-half-believed reassurances of ‘spirit’, ‘energy’, previous lives, and ‘soul’.
Key sentence: “Death is the thing to be faced if we are to really live.” Hence the concluding song from one of my favorite films, Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain, the similarly titled ”Death is the Road to Awe”:
Only through grappling with death, evil, suffering, and all the other realities of human nature can we live: “While of course there is course for introspection and self-examination, this, I argue, has to be in a context of concrete social realities.”
Looks like I should put Dispirited: How Contemporary Spirituality Makes Us Stupid, Selfish and Unhappy on my reading list…
“Looks like I should put Dispirited: How Contemporary Spirituality Makes Us Stupid, Selfish and Unhappy on my reading list…”
Indeed. It looks interesting.
With the passage of the years I find myself far less annoyed by outright atheists than these “spiritual-but-not-religious” types.
Sounds like Oprah’s “The Secret” bunch, Deepak Chopra and Marianne Williamson. It works really nicely for progressives, since it gives them the feeling of being oh-so-tolerant as opposed to those still “clinging to their Bibles.” None of that old patriarchal stuff for them!
It was fine until he hit the bit about life-after-death; this contradicts just about every non-pagan religion. Belief in absolute mortality will lead to the very things he is afraid of.
One of the things I’ve noticed about certain “spiritual” people; while religion (well, Judaism, anyway) has the purpose of spritualizing the material (sanctifying the mundane); they want to materialize the spiritual, by making the spirit and soul into sort of a source of magic tricks.
And, of course, I need to quote the late Rabbi Yaackov Weinberg – someone who says he believes in God but this belief does not require him to do anything – does not believe in God.
I don’t know how many people remember that the referring to the 80′s as the “me decade” had as much to do with the “self-actualizing” movements of the early part of the decade as with materialism, this according to the article that invented the term.
Glad you liked it! At least in part… Let me know what you make of the book – want to try and write more in this area -and always looking for ideas to work this together with!
D.
Soon as somebody can define “spirit” I’ll let them know whether I’m “spiritual.” Not sure where my spirit begins and my brain chemistry ends.
Spirit means of the Air, breeze, felt, not seen. I see the effects of the movement of the breeze, but cannot see the breeze itself.
I think “spirit” is something that can’t be defined: you have to experience in order to understand it. You can analyze and define all you want, but you won’t understand it any better. It can’t be detected or understood until it acts in/on you. Then you know what it is.
Unfortunately, I am one of those spiritually handicapped people who doesn’t experience anything that can’t be explained by nature, nurture, or hormones. I’m not an atheist. It’s not that I don’t want to be religious, spiritual, or what have you. I just don’t have a talent for it.
A person could walk through the Louvre thinking about nothing but lunch or where the fire exits are and afterward say that art just doesn’t seem to speak to them.
In the rush of life that our society encourages we can pass by a lot, including many things that have led other thinking people both past and present to see more than literally met their eyes. To experience more as well.
Spirituality, like art, can be taken on the cheap (“I dunno, I just like it”) or, with thought and attention be much, much more.
CbD
Thinking one is spiritual is usually a sign one is not. It is a way of experiencing the world, not a set of tenets, not a for sale sign. It cannot be acquired or conferred. To covet it is to lose it – it is the uncertainty principle of whatever an uncertainty principle would be if I could think of such a comparison. I almost had it, then I lost it there… right at the end. Let me see: it is the uncertainty…
To my recollection, anyone I have ever met who was “Spiritual,” but not Religious, was a Loon in some way (sometimes quite subtly, but always present), or had some deep-rooted issue that was troubling them (picture AA and their concept of a “higher power”).
I can’t understand why anyone would have to ignore a desire to punch in the face the person who says “I’m not religious, but very spiritual.” Personally, I have to suppress the urge to smack upside the head, or at least try to shake awake, the person who hears that and nods solemnly and sort of sleepily, as if being spiritual couldn’t ever be anything but a good thing, as if the slave girl St Paul encounters in Acts 16: 16-40 isn’t also very spiritual before the demon leaves her.
Ooops. In my first sentence , I meant to write ” I can’t understand why anyone would have a desire to…..”
Sorry.
I’ve been around a few years, 80 at last count, and still feel grateful that I’ve been able to hang on to most of my faculties, except maybe spelling.
Religion was inculcated into my being the way they vote in Massachusetts, early and often. Then I had the chance to become ‘educated’ at a faith based university, where the masters put a lot of effort into reconciling the required religion courses and the required philosophy courses, particularly Logic. To put sixty odd years into the proverbial nutshell, none of the learned scholars could answer my questions as to why an uplifting idea could produce so much evil in its wake. Feeding the masses and raising the dead do not jibe with the evil actions of the establishment like the inquisitions and holy wars. Also no one could explain why there have been so many groups splintering off from the main stream and why these defections should be so despised.
So, the best course is to respect the religion part of organized religion and hate the organized part. That is why I cut out the middlemen and now go direct to my diety.
I was rather surprised, working in a mortuary for three years and meeting with families that have just lost someone, how many of the elderly have arrived at the same sort of approach. It is my approach as well yet I can’t seem to deal directly with “my” deity since it is impossible for me to comprehend a deity. Having faith in a deity seems to me a “blind” acceptance of something that is impossible to get one’s head around. Any concept a human can form of a supreme being would necessarily fall far short of what a supreme being would actually be. Hence we have religious texts that always project human qualities onto the deity. We end up with anthro-god who is angry one minute, loving the next, then punitive, etc. and it all seems so obviously made-up. The hardest thing to do, and I conclude it to be impossible, is to have any real concept of a deity. Hence, humanity is generally blind in this regard.
You are talking about the reaction of someone who really doesn’t want to discuss this with you. It’s a polite way to say STFU.
valerie,
The problem with that is that so many of them are the ones to bring it up from out of the blue themselves even when you were talking about something else entirely. Are they really that fearful of what their own conscience may be telling them? o_O
I honestly don’t understand why anyone would put any emotional energy into it. What does it matter if someone is “not religious, but deeply spiritual?” Why would anyone care? It’s not as if people who think this way have a monopoly on “stupid, selfish and unhappy.” Plenty of others can be just as stupid, selfish and unhappy with firm religious beliefs or a total lack of any spirituality. As long as a person’s beliefs aren’t actively evil and causing others harm, as with islam and sharia law, then leave them alone.
“What does it matter if someone is “not religious, but deeply spiritual?” Why would anyone care?”
Because it’s a little bit like describing oneself as “Not sexual but really into one-night stands” or “Vegetarian but an enthusiastic eater of red meat”. The line manages to grate on the ear of anyone who cares about the careful use of language and upon the ear of anyone who dislikes hypocrisy both at the same time. <_<
As a citizen, I agree with you. And I think it’s so importantt–whatever our religious beliefs, even if we haven’t any–that we defend religious freedom.
I didn’t mention this before because I assumed everyone already knew. But in case anyone hasn’t heard, there are rallies for religious freedom tomorrow at noon.
You can google “Stand Up For Religious Freedom” to find a June 8th rally location near you.
I hope we all get there.
So how do you feel about people who are neither religious nor spiritual?
Cautious. Such people have no reason not to hurt you or take advantage of you. That’s been my experience with them the past decade. And the religious hypocrites who use religion as a tool to hide their evil so they can better exploit people — they fall into this category too.
(Inadvertently hit the wrong “reply” area below)
As a person who is neither religious nor spiritual (in fact, an atheist) I take exception to that. I can only speak for myself, but I have more than ample reason not to hurt you or take advantage of you; I have my own sense of integrity and morality.
I don’t require supernatural or spiritual intervention to know right from wrong.
“I have my own sense of integrity and morality.”
How’d you develop your own sense of integrity and morality?
Funny. Because I like to punch religious people in the face when they get too nosy about my beliefs!
Proves the point Dave Swindle made at 5:29, in response to #13.
Totally kick butt……’>……….
“…..Finally, I argue that the dissembling regarding death in most contemporary spirituality—the refusal to face it as the total absolute annihilation of the person and all about them—leaves it ill-equipped to help us truly engage with the existential reality of our own mortality and finitude……..”
This…… if you cannot grasp the horror the soul holds towards its own annihilation, you cannot understand Christianity and you cannot understand western civilisation, or any civilisation for that matter. Taking important things seriously is vital if you want to become unstupid, and becoming unstupid tops most forms of accepted wisdom hands down. Well done……..
oh….. just a minor point, a small thing really – atheism doesn’t work. The mind, soul, spirit, being has to believe that it will best its own annihilation, or it will unravel and become undone in the face of it. Then spirituality becomes the wisdom of the hedgehog in that it knows one very big thing, the human being cannot face his own dissolution in death and want to keep living……….
You know, that’s odd. When someone tells me they want to punch someone in the face, I want to punch them in the face.
Charlie, many’s the time I’ve wanted to punch you. But I wouldn’t. (I agree with you now and then – with about the same regularity as an eclipse.) It’s called “temptation,” and it’s something we refrain from. We don’t control the thoughts that flash through our minds; we can only control how we act or refrain from acting.
I am not sure of the author’s experience with Spirituality but I can share mine. Born and raised Catholic, as I got old enough to reason, I found it grossly impossible to do all what waas required of me to remain in a state of grace. I became an alcoholic at 14 y/o and drank alcoholically for 35 years. Coming into AA I found that religion was an institution made of rules by man for man. I no longer had any use for religion, instead, through the reading of many spiritual writers from past and present, I found God within me, I learned of Spiritual Laws which are at work throughout the universe and within ourselves. One of the most important of these Spiritual Laws is the law of Cause and Effect, and when properly understood, explains why I was making such heavy going of my life. I was the ruler of my own destiny, self-sufficiency was how I lived, with disastrous results. These Spiritual Laws taught me how God’s universe works and more important, how I can apply these laws into practice in my life. In doing so I have a deep and profound relationship with God and with Jesus Christ, for God does not make too hard of terms to those who truly seek Him.
AA kept my mother sober. But she found it wasn’t enough to read the Big Book and take walks alone to commune with her higher power. She said she needed to attend meetings. So maybe there is always some need for people to get together with other alcoholics (or sinners). Just sayin’.
The true nature of humans is spiritual first, inhabiting this earthly body to experience life as God intended, with all the joy and sorrow that comes with life. Our body may die, but our spirit lives for eternity. Reading the Bible helps to understand what our true nature is to be human. Christ reminds us in the “Bread of Life Discourse” eat my flesh and you will have life eternal.
I can sort of see where he’s coming from. I’m always irritated by the sneering at “organized religion,” as if there’s something scary about being organized; or something virtuous in being haphazard.
Ritual and sacraments; a holy day: these are things like flossing your teeth. If you don’t have a set time to do it you never get around to it, and sooner or later… no, just sooner, you lose it entirely.
But this bit was a total mess:
…any denial of death is an obstacle to a full, rich life, with emotional integrity. Death is the thing to be faced if we are to really live.
Pretty sure I need that explained further. That’s the excuse people give for giving in to every craving: “You gotta LIVE, man!” That’s the excuse people give for hedonism; for calling any abstinence insane.
If you think that death is the “total absolute annihilation of the person,” then I just have this to say to you: “B’bye.”
Look folks ressurection has never been disproven so on that I rest… that there is life after death and have you not read the many many accounts from people with near death experiences? I would look a few of these books up and really consider it.
This is to me a politically correct attempt at justifying violence against people of faith, which puts one in the same class as a terrorist…..
The author can prove this, of course. Just ask him!
As a person who is neither religious nor spiritual (in fact, an atheist) I take exception to that. I can only speak for myself, but I have more than ample reason not to hurt you or take advantage of you; I have my own sense of integrity and morality.
I don’t require supernatural or spiritual intervention to know right from wrong.
This, and said better than I could.
I liked the post. I would urge the original Moonlight Sonata is the less sugary and more powerful version than ‘Death is the road to awe’.
this reminds me of the I am fiscally conservative and socially liberal statement people hide behind.
It should. I hid behind that statement at the same time I was hiding behind the “very spiritual but not religious.” They’re both idols that gradually died for me.
In the future I plan on blogging about that more. Surrendering to social conservatism and to ethical monotheism is a key step that not all ex-progressives and ex-Marxists take.
You mean we’re all Calvinists now?
Beat the devils out of the children, burn scientists, er, witches, alive, and, uh, kill those rampaging potsmokers!
Bark, monkey, bark. Yours are the very Finest of monkeys.
What does the previous post have to do with Calvinism?
Ya got me.
Human beings have a deeply ingrained superstitious instinct — it’s the way we explain things we don’t understand, which is why the rise of science has meant the decline of religion. They are also social animals, which means this superstitious instinct finds organized expression.
But so long as no one is being harmed by organized religion (and some of them have stopped being harmful), or by unorganized “spirituality,” what’s the harm? It makes a lot of people happy, and probably helps them be better people.
Wow. I’m glad somebody (besides C. S. Lewis) finally said it. Being spiritual is no great shakes. You can be completely evil and be spiritual (see Satan.) Saying you’re “spiritual” doesn’t tell me a damn thing about you, except to suggest evasion and sophistry. It’s a weasel word; it’s moral and spiritual cowardice. Better a satanist, than someone “spiritual.”
The only caveat I can make to the above is that there have been some real spiritual geniuses who were uncomfortable with any “organized religion” with good reason: a Kierkegaard or a Bonhoeffer. But the idea that everyone who says they’re spiritual is a genius of that sort is as laughable as the idea that we’re all Mozarts and Einsteins.
Otherwise, it’s an attempt to claim the awe and good of something without the accepting the responsibility. There’s a lot of that goin’ ’round.
with Kierkegaard and Bonhoeffer: you cited two theologians who were shaped by state- sponsorred religion. They were intimately involved in their very, very, very organized Lutheran congregations. Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor who opposed the Nazis. Kierkegaard was a spineless trustafarian philosopher. His brother became the bishop of their town.
I’m not sure they were advocates of not- organized. They might have just wanted their collars loosened a little, and their tie pulled down, so they could breathe, just a bit.
I know my American experience of getting to choose to attend a church, getting to choose to disagree with a pastor b/c I read a passage differently, getting to attend sunday schools where the people lead them, getting to skip church entirely, or visit another denomination, getting to tell the state to jump in a lake on religious freedom grounds……..all of this is completely incomprehensible to my European correspondents. I have to start explaining America in very simple, very concrete, terms, much less the higher- end abstract terms.
So, I’m not sure they are talking freedom on a scale that America has, or just a little easier going where they live. One lived in a parish house, one dined with the bishop.
Kierkegaard challenged the dead Lutheran Orthodoxy of his day. Bonhoeffer had to go against his own church which had shamefully capitulated to the Nazi’s Reichtheologie, ultimately creating the Confessing Church. And it was Bonhoeffer who, scarcely knowing of what he spoke, once mentioned a hope for “religionless Christianity”. This was of course taken from context and used to accuse him of liberalism, and to justify – among “spiritual people” – the very “cheap grace” he spoke so strongly against not only with words, but with deeds, and ultimately his life. It is in the works of Rene Girard that we get a further inkling of what that religionless Christianity might look like.
Of course, they were shaped by the organized churches of their day. They were both European theologians (Bonhoeffer officially.) What else was there? Both of them, each in their own way, proceeded to go full tilt against it, but within the spirit of the thing itself.
I think C. S. Lewis was a bit uncomfortable with organized religion. I know he attended church regularly. I think he believed that finding, and then regularly attending, a church was something all Christians should do. But I don’t get the sense that doing it was something he much liked.
So then why did he make the effort to regularly attend church?
He seems to have felt that the contact with people with whom he often had nothing in common except Christianity was good for him, if not always enjoyable or easy.
He seems to have felt required to proclaim his allegiance to the faith he believed.
He seems to have thought that while State and Church should be separate, the State would become an enemy of freedom if church society disappeared.
I’ve been putting off finding a church in my area that’s right for me. But I can’t think of C.S.Lewis and feel my procrastination is a good thing. He was really pretty sure church attendance was a necessary part of being a Christian.
CSLewis suffered from an incredible loneliness borne of nearly insupportable snobbishness. He and his brother looked down on his father, for instance- the man who paid for their expensive, polished, schooling. That level of pride, born so deep in a personality- that’s like uprooting a sixty year tree. He was older, and had suffered this tree of pride to grow unchecked for decades. Birds nested in it- loneliness, isolation, shyness, introversion, fear of other people, inability to be hospitable, warm, kind or curious. Church with other people is exactly the heaven that looked like hell that he needed.
When we talk about deadly pride, everyone seems to think it’s pride in good workmanship. It’s pride that looks upon others with contempt. I don’t even use pride- that’s internal- I talk about contempt. Contempt for another created being, molded by a loving God- that’s the Satanic sin. That’s the one that kills the fastest.
Jesus healed ten lepers at once. 9 went home. 1 looked for God. Church leaders always focus on the one guy who said thank you and kept talking to Jesus. Okay- so, did he not have a family to go back to? Is this his big chance to talk to another human being? The other 9 went back to their families, to their pretty good lives- and they resumed having their pretty good lives. They, possibly, had nightmares of alienation, but they also had an encounter with god- so maybe gratitude, and probably kindness for others. And, they probably took up blacksmithing, teaching, fishing, basketweaving, rendering fat for oils- they looked after their kids- they might not have heightened spiritual insights- but they had good, interesting, human lives. We don’t know that they didn’t testify about him, later, when crowds were baying for Jesus’ blood, or trying to kill the disciples. The disciples had to travel: who gave them food and shelter?
Most people imagine themselves as that heroic one who sought out Jesus. I know myself well enough to know I’m in that ungrateful nine. I like going to church b/c I get to hang around people who are nine, trying to be one. I like seeing what they do at nine- it’s still a good life, they are still kind, interesting people.
And, really, that’s a big reason I question the super-ness of “religion-les”- they’re trying to be ones, without thinking- that nine life might be the best possible world for some people. It’s not a life without encountering God- it’s not like Jesus took back their healing- they just had a different schedule.
It’s something I think about a lot. My mom is a mission- groupy. I won’t know where she is for six months at a time- “oh, guatemala.” Okay, I didn’t know where she was for 6 months, but she’s chasing some mountain-top. I will never do that- but my daughter will always know where I am. I won’t agree that she is a better, more spiritual person than me. I think being present and constant and reliable is a spiritual practice, even if it’s washing dishes, or folding laundry.
Odd isn’t it that what we want is often not what we need to grow.
And you’re right about “present and constant and reliable”. I was a good mother to my daughter, but went chasing after what I thought was more important than being accessible to my kids when raising her younger brother. What a waste of irreplaceable, precious time and opportunity. Don’t let anyone talk you out of your insight regarding what matters. Don’t let anything tempt you to forget it.
O K, Now here is a question which has yet to receive a definitive answer,
Did God create MAN .. or did man create GOD?
And as the ‘rithmatic teacher used to say “Show your work”
God created Man and Man has created a series of images to try and understand God. It’s when we focus on any of these images too deeply that we run into trouble. (See #2 in 10 Commandments.)
Greetings:
Living in the San Francisco Bay area, several soviets south of what the locals refer to for some unquantifiable reason as “The City”, I’ve become somewhat inured to this pronouncement, at least to the point where I’ve stopped punching the pronouncers.
My reaction is now limited to a subdued nodding of my head followed by my counter-pronouncement, “Spiritual ??? How nice !!! That’s like religious without the work, right ???”
The claim of being spiritual is just more moral relativism. They do not want to try to defend moral relativism because they would appear foolish so they come up with this undefined term that “only means what they want it to mean”. The reason you want to punch them is that the claim insults your intelligence, they take you for a fool.
Being “spiritual” as opposed to “religious” these days means there are no taboos or self-discipline involved in one’s quest for spiritual “fulfillment.” The only exception might be to be vegetarian or some such silliness. Spirtualism in modern times is utter crap.
That’s mostly how I’ve felt about it. It seems as though those who subscribe to spirituality without religion mostly don’t like the morality that comes with the latter. In particular, the self-centeredness of many spiritual-but-not-religious people makes them seem rather superficial, as how one treat’s one’s fellow man is central to my beliefs.
Punch them in the face? C’mon now, that’s just being mean.
I have to agree, though, that most of the “spiritual but not religious” people are intellectually lazy.
I’m seventeen, so I see a lot of this among young people in high school. They aren’t very fond of atheists because they talk about their unbelief, and if a Christian even so much as mentions the Bible, he or she is a Bible-thumper. “Spiritual” people just want to avoid discussion.
I’m not an atheist, but whenever I think of “spiritual but not religious” people, I respect atheists a lot more because they usually aren’t shying away from difficult questions.
In Huckleberry Finn – Huck notices a few hogs wandering into an empty church at 4 in the afternoon on a Thursday and remarks: “See, hogs don’t have to wait ’till Sunday when they feel the calling.” It seems Twain made a point of how hogs arw more spiritually evolved than the rigidly pious fools who call themselves rwligious. Organized Religion is a crock populated by hypocrites and phonies.
All organizations contain hypocrites and phonies. That’s why religious people often refer to themselves as sinners. Welcome to the human race.
By the way, I’m glad you inadvertently reminded me I want to finally read Huckleberry Finn this summer. Maybe I’ll start it after I finish rereading Animal Farm.
I have been on a spiritual search since I was a teen. Raised in a Jewish family (my mother was quite religious)I spent a god amount of time questioning the rabbi. In the end I concluded that he was a fine man but that he had no answers that satisfied me. Next came eastern religion. (Hey! It was the sixties!) Yoga. Reading the Bhagavad Gita. Etc. Again no satisfying answers. Finally in my early twenties I began an in depth look at the Christian Scriptues and found moral principles that cried out to me that they were “truth.” But along with them came stories ad myths that I simply could not accept as historical. So what was I to do? Eventually I found peace and joy in the universal principles I have found through this life-long search. And, when asked, I started to tell me people that I was, yes, “spiritual but not religious.” Lazy? Stupid? Selfish? Or just honest?
Go on, punch away.
“But along with them came stories ad myths that I simply could not accept as historical. So what was I to do?”
There is much in the bible that is difficult to understand or accept. I believe that God allows for our “unbelief” in these areas. For me, I had to say to God, “I have no human way to accept this.” He said back to me, “That’s ok, trust that I am Good– all will follow.” Not allowing these problem areas to derail my faith has made all the difference in the journey.
I wouldn’t know what I’d call you because you haven’t really told me what you believe beyond that there are moral principles that are true, and these can be found in the New Testament. You sound like an honest person sincerely searching for truth. I guess I’d call you that.
Wait, no Chabis. After more carefully reading what you wrote, I think I would call the type of person you’re describing a righteous man (or person).
But that’s only because I assume people who find peace and joy in the principles they discover in the New Testament are trying to live in accordance with “love thy neighbor as thyself “.
Thank you Ansonia for giving thought to my expression.
Yes, the ‘golden rule’ but much much more.
I was in my early twenties when I first read the Gospels. I think that people raised in a Christian religion have no idea of the impact Jesus teachings can have on someone who had no real familiarity with them. (Well, I suppose some who have been raised as church goers may fall into a similar class).
The Sermon on the Mount was nothing less than breathtaking. “So this is why Jesus teachings shook the whole Roman world” I thought to myself. Now that fact made sense.
I won’t go in to the stories that over time I could no accept as historical truth. My experience is just that: my experience. More important to me is the picture of the universe as a place with spiritual laws – laws as clearly seen as the pull of gravity. Jesus encouragement for his followers not to fear because God will provide for them as he does for the birds. The power of goodness to change hearts. Etc. Etc.
And many of these teachings parallel the teachings of other spiritual masters.
Christians look upon hidden forces and personalize them. They thus experience “God’s grace.” Eastern people see good reflecting back on them and call in “karma.”
Are these contradictions? To the Christian theologian or the student of a specific eastern discipline the answer would be “yes.” But I have come to see it differently. The handiwork of god is as manifest whether one views his works as personal or as impersonal laws of the created universe.
“God makes the rain fall on the righteous and the unrighteous” says the bible. Is that a personal action or merely a reflection of the divine way manifest in creation? Do we need to understand the workings to see, appreciate and work with the divine forces? Was gravity less real before Newton started to measure and explain it? Or put another way, does a outfielder who sees a ball struck by a bat and who judges its trajectory so he can be in exactly the right place when it returns to earth need to be able to explain the math and physics to do so? To do those computations in his head? Or can he not simply practice and develop his natural gifts and be in that place before a mathematician even has time to boot us his computer?
That is what I mean when I say I am “spiritual but not religious.”
CbD
Chabis,
Your comment isn’t just thought provoking. It inspires a sense of peace and wonder. Thanks.
Ansonia
Thank you Ansonia.
The world is a truly wonderous place, is it not? So much to see. So much to learn and share!
CbD
We all live in glass houses. Don’t throw stones and you’ll be safe.