Growing up in Christian circles, I often heard the phrase, “it’s not a religion, it’s a relationship.”
Empty religion was problematic. At our church, we wanted to embody a vibrant, meaningful faith that impacted Monday through Saturday. For us, the spiritual journey involved all of life. It wasn’t merely a Sunday experience.
The emphasis on relationship was perhaps helpful in some ways. As a Christian, I am in relationship to God through Jesus and the Spirit, and thereby also bonded to fellow human beings who are also children of God [even if sometimes we don’t yet know it!].
If someone were to refer to me then as a religious person, something inside me would react. I had an allergy to being an adherent to a religious tradition or a religious person.
These days I claim the title, whatever that comes with, and I don’t mind.
Honestly, I would say just about all people are religious in some way or another. Here are the Merriam Webster definitions:
1 relating to or manifesting faithful devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality or deity
a religious person
religious attitudes
2 of, relating to, or devoted to religious beliefs or observances
joined a religious order
3 scrupulously and conscientiously faithful
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Does anyone not do certain activities in any given day or week in a faithful manner? I can’t think of anyone I know who does not. Perhaps it’s a religious devotion to one’s professional goals. Money motivates, and rare is the person who does not commit to financial well being.
Perhaps it’s a devotion to a sports team. Or maybe a combination of diet and exercise. Who doesn’t want to be healthy?
Every agnostic I know has a set of ethics related to how to live life well, and a lot of those are very much in step with my own uniquely Christian ethics. Many are universal: compassion, love, kindness, joy, peace, generosity.
Few would disagree that practicing kindness and generosity are virtues to both practice and claim as important in living a meaningful life.
I’ve suggested these areas of strict devotion only to note that everyone – really, everyone – has a set of values both to live by and live into. Sometimes those values are clearly defined. Perhaps far more often, they sit in the background: they are the 90% of the iceberg that goes unseen below the surface. But they are nonetheless guiding principles, and they shape us.
If every day I start the morning with a robust, healthy breakfast, I am shaped.
If every evening I prepare food for my kids, I am shaped.
If every Sunday I meet up with a few hundred fellow Christians and celebrate a good God who has acted in human history for our benefit, I am shaped.
For me, as a religious adherent in the Christian tradition, my moral values simply have a clear source. Through ancient prophets and a canon developed over many centuries, I adhere to the way of Jesus, a Jewish man who I believe lived as the Son of God. Strange as it likely sounds to many, that narrative is a centerpiece in my life. His teachings shape my daily interactions. I fail at following them a lot of the time, then ask for grace to live deeper in the way.
In terms of the unique groups that have shaped over time,
I’m a spiritual being as well – that much is for sure – but religious too. I maintain internal habits and external practices of both spirituality and religion, intertwined. When I meet someone new, I presuppose that I will discover some new aspect of the God who created them. When I am searching for the right words to share an important [or sometimes rather unimportant!] thought, it’s a short prayer.
Jesus had a famous sermon that is often quoted: The Sermon on the Mount. Toward the end, he says do not judge, so that you may not be judged. That’s a popular one to quote! On that same theme of judgment – which is to say, wisely assessing a person or situation – Jesus goes on to say, regarding false teachers in particular, you will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns or figs from thistles? …thus, you will know them by their fruits.
Good religion leads to a beautiful, meaningful life. Bad religion leads the opposite way. What is my religious community leading me toward? Am I further motivated to love and compassion for people who may require my time and presence in their lives? Am I led into generosity? Am I led to care for people on the margins of society? Am I more loving? Am I more sacrificial? Am I more mentally well?
Researchers track this kind of information in the effort of making sense of how religious and spiritual practice shape people. Often, the effects are positive and from what can be measured, religious people are more generous with both their time and talent.
Jesus’s brother, James, said it this way: Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world.
Simple enough. Hard to live out though.
From my 36 years of experience worshiping in religious communities – churches – I can say that for me, there has been far more good than bad. I lament how this is not the case for many, many others. Religious people can do great harm. Religion itself is complicated in that certain principles can have unintended consequences. Shame and self-hatred can be induced unintentionally when grace and freedom are the talking points.
Have I encountered bad religion? Yep! Have I been a part of bad religion? I’m sure I have, knowingly and unknowingly. Have I sought to grow and develop in my spiritual and religious formation? Yes.
God, through the work of Jesus and the power of the Spirit, is indeed chipping away at me. Like a sculptor, God is slowly and painstakingly removing a little piece here, smoothing out places. And year by year, I am looking a little more like the person God created me to be.
God is using religious practices, not just spiritual ones, in the process.
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ben videtich 