Are You Religious or Spiritual?

That's the question that I often hear when I am in the process of getting to know someone new.
Then I find myself using that overused phrase, “Well, I’m really more spiritual than religious.”

While it is true that spiritual is a more accurate description of myself than religious, I still seek a more nuanced word to express what I really mean. I want to convey that I am a person who values my relationship with God, I interpret my experiences through a lens of “the bigger picture”, I invoke my religious and spiritual beliefs into my daily life, and yes, I go to church.

More importantly, I believe in having a direct relationship with the divine such that I do not give my power over to any other intermediary person, place or thing. I enjoy my religious practice (New Thought), I respect what my minister teaches and I get a lot of good guidance from reading sacred scriptures, but these are only supportive practices. The main thing is the God relationship which I feel can be maintained with or without such practices. Therein lies my distinction between religion and spirituality.

Religion tends to be more concerned with proper behavior and activities, than with sustaining belief. Spirituality emphasizes belief over practices. What I find helpful about religion is that it provides a structure for understanding divinity and matters of ultimate concern. It also has organizing power such as we witnessed during the Civil Rights struggle of the 1960’s. Further, religion helps us deal with the paradoxical nature of existence: joy and pain, life and death. Religion offers us the symbols and metaphors for thinking about God. However, the flip side of that is that religious leaders often encourage an over dependence upon these symbols and metaphors. Ministers and teachers stop teaching the believers how to think for themselves, they begin to say “Follow me, I have the real truth.” They begin to lead believers to think that they cannot access divinity for themselves. Playing upon the emotional and spiritual neediness of others, religious messages often emphasize a divided reality, us and them, the world and the church, good and evil, saved and heathen, neighbor and terrorist. Religious leaders claim to offer a fix for the needy by promising sure salvation and a life with no pain. These types of leaders do a disservice to religion and to those they claim to lead when they teach that God is separate from humanity and that humans constantly fall short of that Glory.

What I find helpful about spirituality is that it empowers from within. These teachings validate being human and encourage us to do our best because we actually are good, not because we fear the wrath of a disapproving God. Spiritual teachings are usually eclectic, incorporating truth claims from a variety of traditions. Spirituality teaches that the God we seek is indeed within us and has never been outside of our very being. It is belief centered, comfortable with metaphorical language and it is often without much external ritual. The emphasis is upon being rather than doing.

Though I stated earlier that I am much more “spiritual” than religious, I do acknowledge that the Christian religion of my youth still colors the more spiritual life that I am now leading. I have integrated much of those teachings with the belief that God is within and works with us towards our highest good. Religion, too often denies all things unlike itself while I find that spirituality gives me the space to hold all of these things in tension.

Let me know what you think