Earlier this week there was an article in our local newspaper about a researcher coming to town to study a growing trend, that many people prefer to be spiritual rather than religious; a trend that is prevalent in our Boulder community. It is indeed very prevalent. The researcher gave a talk at a local Methodist entitled, “What Can We Learn From the Religious?” I couldn't get to the talk because we had Confirmation here that evening. Let me offer a few reasons why being religious is as important as being spiritual.
First, I define “being religious” as being connected to a faith community of fellow believers who engage in regular worship of a personal God. Here are benefits of such membership and participation.
- “I am not alone.” All by itself this benefit of belonging to a faith community can enrich one’s life by broadening one’s perspective beyond one’s own.
- “The universe does not revolve around me and my opinions.” Belonging to a faith community can steer us clear from self-obsessing and from having our own views go unchallenged.
- “Keeping hope alive.’ Most religions are centuries old, if not millennia, and have witnessed every epoch’s reasons to bury oneself in pessimism. Belonging to a faith community is to belong to a people who have faced everything we face today. To belong to a people who have survived and even thrived, no matter what the historical situations were, is to gain perspective so as to live with hope.
- “Dare to be different!” It takes courage these days to belong to a faith community because these are the days when “organized religion” is demonized as the purveyor of intolerance and other evils. Come now, let us set things aright. Intolerance and injustice are not the sole domain of those who profess membership in a religion. Intolerance, injustice and every other imaginable evil are part of the human condition. Was not the 20th century filled with horrors from those who professed no faith in God or in religion and even persecuted those who did?
- “Seeing through the fog.” Caricatures of faith-filled people are presented in our culture as rule-bound, negative, intolerant, narrow minded, and unthinking. Nothing could be further from the truth. The people of faith I know are deep thinkers, reflective, purposeful, discerning, and highly intelligent. Today’s “cloud of unknowing” leaves too many people unwilling to enter into the deeper issues of life, like the meaning of life, the ultimate destiny of the human race and of every individual, and so much more.
No, being a believer, and belonging to a community of faith today is only for people of very great depth.
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