So many people describe themselves as “spiritual” yet reject
organized religion. They believe in some
sort of higher power and that they have a spirit or soul, but they usually must
be very vague or inconsistent about the any specifics in their relationship with
God.
People like Alberto, whom I spoke with while shopping at Meijer’s,
are very unsure of the details because, for a variety of reasons, they reject a
specific way of communicating and describing spiritual experiences such as the
Bible, creeds, or traditions. For
Alberto, it is important to be accepting of all people no matter what they
believe, as he stated several times during our conversation. For others it may be bad experiences with
church or people who claim to act in Jesus name, or general misunderstandings
of the Bible or simply an unwillingness to be held accountable by God.
But what does it mean to be spiritual without religion? In his classic book “Mere Christianity”, C.S.
Lewis tells about an old sea captain who says he experiences God in the
vastness of the ocean. But if our
understanding of God is similar to our understanding of the ocean, then
standing on the seashore, feeling the breeze, hearing the crashing of the waves
and looking out at the horizon is a very different experience than looking at a
chart or map of the ocean, or actually going out sailing on that ocean with map
and compass in hand.
In the 1400’s, before Columbus, Prince Henry the Navigator
never went exploring himself, but he learned a lot by piecing together the experiences
of those who did and constructing the maps that helped explorers like Columbus
navigate the world. His experience of
the ocean may have been dry and theoretical but he helped those who actually sailed
it realize just how overwhelmingly vast and dangerous it is, and yet how it can
carry them safely to specific places.
In the same way, an overemphasis on theology might be too
dry and theoretical for those who’ve had spiritual experiences of some sort,
but if they were to read the Bible, study theology, learn from church history
and practice religious disciplines, they will experience God in ways they never
could by simply being “spiritual” in a vague sort of way.
An overemphasis on being “spiritual” without the benefits of
religion to help us learn from God’s revelation of Himself in scripture or to
learn from the experiences of others can lead us to wander around in the ocean
that is God without ever getting anywhere, thinking we have experienced all
there is.
Paul writes of this balance in 1 Corinthians 2: “What we
have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God,
so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak,
not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit,
explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept
the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness and
cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.’
Let’s not let the extremes of being either too religious or
too spiritual keep us from a healthy balance of both!
See our conversation HERE
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