March 5, 2008

• Spirituality vs. Religion ...

  "... having a belief system - a set of thoughts that you regard as the absolute truth - does not make you spiritual no matter what the nature of those belifs is.  In fact, the more you make your thoughts (beliefs) into your identity, the more cut off you are from the spiritual dimension within yourself."  Eckhart Tolle

  I've written about the difference between religion and spirituality before, and have been thinking about it again as it's the theme of the first chapter of Eckhart Tolle's book "A New Earth".

  As could have been easily predicted, as soon as people started reading the book, knee jerk reactions began popping up on the message boards.  People declaring themselves to be Christians and defenders of truth took exception to this distinction as though their beliefs were under attack. 

  Christianity has often been reduced to a series of propositions to which you give intellectual assent.  Put another way, you are presented with a roster of ideas and you either agree or disagree with them.  If you can put a checkmark in the "I believe that's true" box beside each of the propositions, you're in.  If you have questions, doubts, or just don't believe that one or more of the items on the list is the absolute literal truth, well, you either find a brand of Christianity that subscribes to your list, or you're out. 

  A question worth considering is whether this basic idea is or possibly could be true.  Is it possible that all that's required of you is that you "believe ten impossible things before breakfast" and then you're automatically a "Christian"?  It's been a long-standing tenet of the church in which I was raised that "sitting in church doesn't make you a Christian any more than sitting in a garage makes you a car."  So it's not a difficult concept for me that there might be a little more to this thing than the outward rules, structures, and propositions. 

  If you've attended any protestant or fundamentalist service, even if you've caught a Billy Graham crusade on television, you've probably been exposed to the "Sinner's Prayer."  Spoken with all the same ritualistic trappings of a magical spell or incantation the person who's praying (or repeating the prayer after the speaker) is assured that's all that's required for salvation. On the other end of the spectrum are the churches which require classes, the memorization of doctrinal principles and then once it's clear that everything is understood and that the person can say he or she believes it, it's time to be welcomed in to the fold.   

  Christians are not the only religious group who do these things, but they are the only ones I've seen on the message boards protesting the statements in Tolle's book.  But what if you have an intellectual impairment that prevents your ability to make a reasoned decision?  What if the information you've been presented is incomplete?  What if you didn't really understand it?  What if you believe it wholeheartedly but someone slipped in an extra little fillip that puts you in a heterodoxical camp?  What are you then?

  Religion in all forms consists of both doctrine and theology.  It's both the principle and the practice.  It's both the understanding and the doing.  To say that "religion" is different from "spirituality" doesn't mean that one is superior to the other, but simply that there are two different concepts under discussion. 

  When the Apostle Paul writes that those who have never heard the doctrines are yet "without excuse" because the Spirit of God has spoken to their hearts and has manifested in the world in ways that make a relationship with God possible, I doubt that he threw that in merely as a means of condemning the person without doctrine.  I believe he meant what he said.  There's more to being a Christian, a Muslim, a Hindu, a ... you fill in your own blank here ... than agreeing to the ideas these religions espouse.  (To put it another way, James wrote and I paraphrase, "So what if you've memorized the Bible.  The Devil memorized it too for all the good that did him.")

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  I'm tired.  I've been working long hours, getting a lot done, but neglecting a lot that I need to do for myself.  So I'm not sure what today may hold, but I'm leaning toward spending some time this afternoon in the contemplation of the lilies of the field.  They don't work or worry.  But still they are beautiful, clothed in glory and sheltered beneath the open sky. 

   

  • 10:30 am
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