How Religious Life Gets Sabotaged

Religious practices are intended to nurture and shape healthy spirituality. (See "Religious Because I'm Spiritual, August 18, 2019.) But like all good things, religious practices can be twisted to be something they were not intended to be ... sabotaged, if you will.

Jesus warned us of this possibility in the Sermon on the Mount: "Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven," Matthew 6:1. He then talked about giving alms, prayer, and fasting as examples of religious practices that can be sabotaged.

The culprit in this sabotaging of religious practices is our ego.

The ego is our sense of identity that is tied to things outside of ourselves, apart from whom God created us to be. It is based on performance and achievement. It involves self-effort and self-reliance. This ego-based identity likes to compare and contrast, resulting in a "better than-less than" orientation. This sense of self is based upon what the world (our culture) says is important, how the world defines success, what the world values. It is who the world has created us to be, not who God created us to be. It is how the world has squeezed us into its mold (Romans 12:2). Spiritual guides like Thomas Merton and Richard Rohr refer to this ego-based identity as the false self (as opposed to our true self). I speak of it as a constructed self.

Healthy spirituality leads us beyond this ego-based identity.

Jesus taught this reality as the heart of discipleship. "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?" (Matthew 16:24-26, NRSV).

I find it helpful, in seeking to understand Jesus' statement, to insert the language of false or constructed self and true self. "If any want to become my followers, let them deny the self they have constructed based on the world's values and social pressures, take up their cross and follow me." BTW: the cross was an instrument of death reserved for insurrectionists against Rome. To take up the cross was/is to renounce and live out of step with the power-oriented ways of the world. To follow Jesus was to learn from him a different way of living, based on different values. It was to learn the servant ways of the Kingdom. "For those who want to protect the standing of their false self in the world's eye will lose their true self, and those who surrender their false self for my sake will find their true self. For what will it profit them to gain the world's power, standing, fame, prestige, wealth, approval, applause - yet forfeit their true self?"

Healthy spirituality leads us beyond the ego-based identity. The Spirit leads us to put off the old self (constructed, false self) in order to put on the new self, created in the likeness of God (Ephesians 4:22-24). This process is the essence of the spiritual life and the discipleship journey. It sets us free to be who God created us to be - our true self. It sets us free to live out of our God-given gifts and passions. It frees us to give ourselves to make a difference in the life of another in Jesus' name.

But there's just one minor - well, major - problem. The ego doesn't want to die. It will adapt, conform, pretend ... anything but die! And so it sabotages the very things that nurture this dying-to-self process. It twists religious practices so that, rather than being a way of knowing and living in relationship with God (alms, prayer, fasting - Matthew 6), they become standards used to compare with others. Rather than being a way of connecting with God, they become ways of feeling OK about ourselves because we are "better than" "those people." Church life, thus, becomes just another arena for performing and achieving, for recognition and standing, for constructing a religious self.

As if the ego's ability to sabotage religious practices were not enough, the ego is also deceitful!  It blinds us to the fact that we have created an ego-based religious identity. After all, who of us wants to acknowledge that we might be a Pharisee?!

That's why Jesus warned us about this reality in Matthew 6: beware!

The rejection of church life by the "spiritual, not religious" crowd suggests that the ego is very effective in sabotaging religious life.

Religious Because I'm Spiritual

"I'm spiritual, but not religious."

It seems to me that those who make this statement do not understand the relationship between religion and spirituality. They do not understand the role that religion plays in spirituality.

In a nut shell, healthy religion serves spirituality. We do religious things - religious practices and habits - in order to nurture and develop a healthy spirituality.

I acknowledge that religion can, and often does, get sick. It not only fails to nurture healthy spirituality, it becomes destructive to both the individual and the community. Such expressions of religion are to be rejected for what they are: religious abuse. But the misuse of religious practices does not invalidate their intended purpose: to nurture healthy spirituality. The misuse is to be rejected, not the religious practices.

Without religious practices, what does spirituality look like? What nurtures it? What shapes it? What helps it develop? What helps it become healthy and mature?

Apart from the discipline of religious practices - such as Bible study, prayer, keeping a journal, Christian community, giving, loving another in Jesus' name - my spirituality tends to become a projection of what I already think and believe. It becomes a way to validate myself while insulating myself from any need to grow or change. I become my own judge of what is right and true. I create a god in my own likeness.

In my experience, when a person abandons religious practices and spiritual community, their spirituality tends to become stagnant rather than healthy, vibrant, and growing. They tend to be stuck in their spiritual development.

So, for me, a better statement is "I'm religious because I'm spiritual."

Spiritual But Not Religious

"I am spiritual, but not religious."

In today's post-Christian era, this statement is frequently heard. It is generally used as an explanation of why the person does not participate in traditional church life. The statement acknowledges the spiritual as an important dimension of that person's life. It rejects religious practices, i.e., church activities, as having little value. The statement is often accompanied by a statement about the church being an irrelevant, man-made institution based on human traditions, perpetuating an out-dated way of thinking and living.

The statement expresses rejection of traditional church life. But it might just be a gift, if we church people can receive it. The statement helps us to see how non-church and fringe-church people see the institutional church today.

The statement is a commentary on the church in current, Western culture. It basically says the church has failed (is failing) to do what it is designed to do: to help us encounter God, to connect with God, to live in relationship with God, to live as God's people.

The statement is a mirror non-church people are holding up to us church people to help us see ourselves through the world's eyes. They see too much "church" and not enough of God.

The statement is a reminder of how the human ego seeks to supplant the place of God. Religious life is supposedly about God and the things of God. It's amazing how we turn it to make it about us - what we like, what we have always done it and want it to be, what makes us feel good.

The statement reminds me of Jesus' words, "My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations, but you have made it a den of robbers," (Mark 11:17, NRSV).

What would it take for the church to be a place where spiritual people would turn to find God?

We Live by ...

"We walk by faith, not by sight," Paul said (2 Corinthians 5:7).

Faith is an interesting concept. It involves belief coupled with action. We believe something then act upon that which we believe. I believe that God forgives freely and generously, so I am honest with God about my struggles and failures. I refuse to live with guilt and shame.

To live by faith is to stake our lives on something as true. It is to build our lives on this truth even though it flies in the face of reality!

Paul's statement in 2 Corinthians 5:7 is made in the context of suffering (2 Corinthians 4:7-12) and aging (2 Corinthians 4:16, "even though our outer nature is wasting away"). As Paul dealt with these physical realities, he expressed confidence that the Spirit used his struggles to produce spiritual depth and maturity. "Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day," 4:16. He did not become discouraged (4:16a) because he looked beyond what was to something more, something greater. He looked beyond the physical to the spiritual, beyond what is temporary to what is eternal (4:18). He lived by faith.

Paul bet his life on spiritual realities that cannot be seen or guaranteed. He did not allow the physical to dominate or define his life. How he lived was shaped by spiritual realities he embraced as true, not by physical needs, desires, pleasures, hungers, struggles, suffering, illness, aging, or death. That's what it means to live by faith.

It seems to me, however, many (most) of us prefer not to live by faith. We like to be certain. We like to be right. We like guarantees. We like to know we are secure. (How many of our homes have security systems? All of our computers do!) We like the comfort of the familiar. (No, we don't like change. We like to know what to expect.) We don't like adventure with its unknowns. We can only tolerate little-to-moderate risk. We like to know we are safe from what might happen. (That's why we buy insurance!) And we certainly don't like to lose or look foolish.

In short, we live by fear. Our desire for certainty is our attempt to deal with our anxiety and fear of the unknown. (Have you ever noticed how we almost always project the worse about the unknown?)

To live by faith is to live with confidence. When Paul spoke of faith in this passage, he spoke of confidence - confidence, not certainty. 2 Corinthians 5:6, "so we are always confident." 2 Corinthians 5:8, "yes, we do have confidence." Confidence is a quiet assurance in the face of what is and in the face of the unknown. It is a quiet assurance in God and God's faithfulness, regardless of what comes our way. Confidence involves an inner knowing. "For we know ...," 2 Corinthians 5:1. This confidence, this deep knowing is fostered by the Spirit's work in our lives, reinforced by our experience of God's grace and faithfulness as we live by faith.

To be a follower of Jesus is to live by faith. It is to place our bets on what we say we believe. It is to risk that what Jesus said about God and the ways of God is true. It is to build lives upon Jesus' teachings even though they are at odds with our basic human nature and with the world in which we live. It is to live for Him and his purposes rather than for self, 2 Corinthians 5:15. It is to live with confidence, knowing ... That sounds a lot like being certain, but it is not. It is faith.