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.
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