On Being Spiritual but not Religious

About this sermon

You like many other people will likely experience something like an encounter with the divine in your lifetime. Most people, when they experience it, struggle to find words to describe it. Nothing seems adequate to convey how stirring the experience is. It’s experiences like that, I think, that can cause people to look at religions, with their rules and doctrines, as a pale shadow of the thing that they experienced. I imagine that’s why more and more people are describing themselves as spiritual but not religious. Religion is seen as something that suffers from stale formulas that do little to express the rapture of spiritual revelation. In a sense, they’re right. If you were to encounter God, religion would seem like a reduction that comes drastically short of the real thing. It’s like comparing the experience of looking at a map of the ocean to the experience of standing on the threshold of that vast expanse. But here’s the thing. While a map may not be the ocean, it’s still indispensable if you want to know something about it. Religion is a lot like that. It’s not God and it may seem pedantic and trivial in comparison, just as a map is to the ocean, but it can be vital to helping you navigate your spiritual life. Being spiritual but not religious doesn’t mean you won’t have religious ideas or even doctrines, it just means that you’ll have very juvenile ones that thinkers and theologians have tried but abandoned. If God exists and if we want to respond to those profound experiences, than we have to do something with them. We have to interpret them and try to understand what is being asked from us, if anything. The difference between a religious and non-religious response is a matter experience and objectivity. On your own, you have very little of either of those things but in the context of a community or a tradition, you benefit from a collection of experiences and knowledge. Without that collective of knowledge, your operating within your own narrow perspective and assumptions and if the divine does exist, than I imagine it would challenge my own assumptions and present qualities that would be surprising and unexpected. If it wasn’t, I’d be afraid that it was merely my own invention or a projection of MY preferences. But if I encounter something that isn’t conveniently compatible with my own assumptions and way of living, then I can be more sure that it isn’t something that I invented or projected. Every religion proposes doctrines that will challenge your assumptions and preferences. In the spiritual but not religious scenario, there isn’t anything that will force you to do this. There’s a much higher risk of picking and choosing ideas and assumptions that happen to suit your preferences. If you are the only one who defines the doctrines of your personal spirituality, then you’re not really connecting with something outside of yourself… you’re just worshiping your own assumptions. Or put another way, you’re just encountering and potentially worshiping… yourself. Good religion will draw your attention out of your own selfish perspective towards God and a community of people. Being spiritual is something that happens by default. It’s an accident of your existence. Religion is what happens when you put your spiritual reality to work. Please comment with your ideas about the video and if you find it interesting, please share it and subscribe. Twitter: https://twitter.com/briankeepsworth Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brianholdsworthmedia Business: https://www.holdsworthdesign.com