In the end I think those who decry religion in favor of spirituality are more than likely just as religious as those they criticize.
There is a really good discussion about the importance of theology in C.S. Lewis' classic apologetic Mere Christianity. There he tells of an encounter with an RAF pilot who decried the need for theology. The pilot related "I know there's a God. I've felt him out alone in the desert at night. The tremendous mystery. And that's just why I don't believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about him."
I think this is a good place for us to start thinking about this assertion of many modern seekers: "I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious." I think if we dissected that statement what we would really find is a soul that yearns for a transcendent encounter with God that it has not been able to find inside institutionalized religion.
These are true seekers. They are not denying God. Far from it. They are seeking a true experience of God. And they rightly sense two important things. The first is that knowledge about God is not the same thing as the experience of God. The second thing is that many people who claim to have had the experience of God do not represent God very well. What they call "religion" becomes the rules and dogmas of some people imposed upon everyone else.
I'm going to respond with two observations. The first is that no one has ever been more against what they call religion than Jesus was. At the time Jesus walked the earth the message of the God of righteousness, justice, and love (who in fact Jesus is) was being completely drowned out by a judgmental, exclusive, worldly, and oppressive religious system. Jesus openly challenged this system and the system responded by demanding his death. They thought that by so doing they could silence him, but in fact it was through this death that the God of Love made a big comeback in the world.
Jesus entrusted his closest followers with the task of spreading his good news about love to the world. They did the best they could and what the people then called "The Way" spread like wildfire. There has never been a more explosive time of growth in the number of those who follow Jesus than during those first decades. The reason, as anyone who studies these things knows, is because rather than trying to impose a religious structure or understanding on their fellowship, these first followers overflowed with love and gratitude. They cared for each other and their neighbors, even those no one else would care for. They raised to dignity those the world abandoned and despised. Their self-sacrificing love was infectious. Who wouldn't want to be a part of something like that? And so the movement spread.
Now I'm sure there are many who will disagree with me on this but I will argue that the difficulty for the Jesus movement began when it made the transition from being a revolutionary movement to being an "insider" institution. It was, in fact, the very thing that Jesus himself opposed that in the end undermined his movement. What originated as a fellowship of love became an imposing structure of dogma. In the time since then there has always been a need for reform in the church because the church itself is the problem. And that is true today as well. I suspect that Jesus would be just as mad at what the modern church has done with his good news as he was at the religious authorities in first century Palestine. Institutionalized religion has a historical tendency to represent human fallenness more than Divine Love.
But the other observation I need to make is precisely the same as the one C.S. Lewis made in response to the RAF pilot. And that is that even though the church is a flawed institution and always will be (well, at least until the parousia; after that we’re not sure what the church will look like), "The Way" remains essential to a genuine experience of God. Let me again quote Lewis about what I think the critics refer to as religion: "Any man who wants to think about God at all would like to have the clearest and most accurate ideas about Him which are available."
And then Lewis goes on to describe "religion" (he actually uses the term “theology”, but I think the meaning is the same) as a map. If you stand on the beach and look at the ocean, then look at a map of that same spot, it is quite obvious that the map and the experience are not the same thing. But that doesn't mean the map is useless. The map represents the experience of people who have gone before. If you set out for a destination and you don't know how to get there, the journey becomes incredibly difficult and perhaps even impossible without the map.
The problem with what we call "religion" is that too many people have mistaken the map for the destination. Do you think this tendency is confined to people who call themselves Christians? Why do you think the Buddha pointed out the problem of mistaking the pointing finger for the moon? It is human nature to err about these things. Lucky for us, God expects us to be wrong and loves us anyway.
In the end I think those who decry religion in favor of spirituality are more than likely just as religious as those they criticize. Because religion is a roadmap to the spiritual experience, and anyone who uses any method to achieve a transcendent experience is using some kind of a map.
In sum I would like to point out that while some maps may be really visually appealing they may at the same time be completely inaccurate. And other maps that may seem more stark and technical may at the same time be the most accurate. Let us not mistake the finger for the moon.
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