“I’m spiritual, but not religious” is a statement that I encounter in so many wonderful people who experience a connection to something larger than themselves, but don’t find that traditional religious texts and practices help deepen that larger awareness or relationship. And then there are those who say “I am religious, but not spiritual,” in which they are usually saying that they find familiarity, comfort, and meaning in ritual practice, doing acts of kindness in communal settings, and sharing common cultural experiences, but if they are honest, God is an idea, an infinitely noble character in a story who doesn’t impose on one’s life in a day to day setting.
Over three thousand years ago, the fertile basin of the Middle East gave birth to a new idea that altered human and religious history. The idea was of one God, creator of the world, who is both singular in number and unique in quality; who is independent, self-sufficient, and transcendent, but at the same time profoundly interested in and concerned for the world and humanity, who is loving and forgiving, as well as judging and wrathful; who commands and challenges humanity to be loyal and faithful to the Divine, and compassionate and just with our fellow human beings.
This idea in turn gave rise over the millennia to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and their countless denominations and affiliations, each with a distinct take on how life with the one God should be lived. As these religions entered the world stage, alongside their charge to love God and love humanity, they began to wage war with those who preceded or followed them. Wherever monotheism developed, it was accompanied by the belief that the one God could be truly represented or correctly understood by only one faith community. Love of God, or more accurately, being loved by God, was perceived to be a zero-sum game – the more one was loved, the less another could be.
And so, together with the love of neighbor came the hatred of the other. Together with kindness to those in need came the murder of those who disagreed. Monotheism became a mixed blessing and a double edged sword.
How is it that monotheistic religions have produced such a checkered past? And how is it that we see such violence and terror in the name of God’s will even today in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Each one of these religious traditions have scriptures that teach love, connection, and peace, and yet we have settler violence in the West Bank, white supremacy in this country, and global Islamic terror all over the world, all in the name of God.
I think we can localize these huge questions in the reality of the human heart and how that approaches our relationship to religion or spirituality. Our human journey includes the presence of pain and fear and we have formed worldviews about ourselves and others informed by experiences of isolation, disappointment, terror, and trauma. Freud was one of the first thinkers to label our sense of self, of who we think we are, of how we see the world as the “ego.” Not ego in the sense of being better than others, but a neutral term that refers to the psychological organizing structure that we call “I” or “me.” Just as we have an innate biological instinct to protect our physical bodies, the same survival instinct protects our sense of self or our “ego.”
For many people who engage with religion, faith in God offers access, if not a substantive claim, to God’s power and grace, guidance and forgiveness in this world and maybe the next. Without God, there is the emptiness of a life without hope for order, and the crushing sense of helplessness in confronting the daily challenges of pain and chaos without recourse to a transcendent source of power and agency. Those whose lives entail many journeys through the “valley of the shadow of death” quite understandably prefer to “fear no harm, for you are with me” (Ps. 23:4), rather than to tread such treacherous paths unguided, unprotected, and alone. For those who claim to be religious, but not spiritual, religion functions by what the philosopher Ken Wilber calls “translation.” Religion is a way for people to harmonize the ego, or the sense of separate self that is unique to each person with the destabilizing forces of the world on personal, familial, communal, and global dimensions. In this relationship to religion, since God is ultimately an idea or concept (even a very expansive idea or concept), it is created by the ego, formed through life experiences, and serves to strengthen the individual’s sense of themselves and the world. And since a person is deeply affected by the cultural and political realities that they are a part of, religion and God must leave the validities of those cultural and political realities intact. If those realities include fear or hatred of the other, the religion has the potential to reinforce those messages.
For those who are “spiritual, but not religious,” there is a danger of “spirituality” however it is experienced or practiced to also strengthen the ego and allow one to “translate” the spiritual ideas or practices into a reality that allows one to feel comfortable, that doesn’t challenge one’s view of themselves or others. One of the key factors in allowing one who identifies as spiritual, but not religious to unintentionally perpetuate harm and division in the world is the lack of community and tradition. When one operates solely as an individual, creating their worldview without the opportunity to be challenged by others or by the teachings of spiritual or religious tradition, it is easy to stay with what is comfortable or easily understood.
Wilber also teaches that the heart of every spiritual or religious tradition is the call for “transformation” beyond “translation.” To truly have God’s presence be not just an idea, but a living reality of joy, awe, and love, we need to be ready to continually let go of identification with the ego, with our sense of who we are, and be open to a greater reality that is unknowable. To live a life of transcendence, wonder, and deep engagement with the creation that we are a part of, we have to acknowledge that we don’t know what this is all about, but that we are open to learn and change.
The fundamental story in Jewish tradition is the exodus from Egypt – yetziat mitzrayim – which literally means “the leaving of the narrow places.” Our Jewish mystics teach that the “narrow places” are our egos – our limited sense of who we are and what the world is about. We can act “religious” or “spiritual” within the narrow place of the ego. And in that place, God is a concept that reinforces our existing worldviews which are influenced by family upbringing, cultural norms, and secular politics. However, if we want our relationship to God to be a living reality and not just an idea, we need to be open to transformation – to continue to let go and “go out” of the narrow place of our own perception to a “land that I will show you.”
In this way, our religious communities can become supportive environments for our own transformative processes. We can have the support and guidance to live the teachings of our faith in our lives in ways that bring greater engagement, connection, joy, awe, and love with this glorious world of which we are a part.