The "R" Word

Religion.

To many, this is a very dirty word, inexorably entangled with a host of horrifying concepts, such as rigid morality, social and political oppression, thought police and mindless conformity, not to mention the idea of going to hell, and mutually exclusive to evolved concepts such as constructive doubt, dissent, debate, acceptance, innovation and freedom – freedom of thought, freedom of religion and freedom from religion.

And there are good reasons for this intellectual entanglement. There is a long, long list of atrocities and absurdities committed repeatedly in the name of religion, and we all know it.

Spirituality is often confused with religion by those more keenly aware of religion's darker side, and this is unfortunate. Spirituality isn’t religion and doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with religion, except that religion claims it as their purview.

Spirituality is the experience of sacredness, the experience of the presence of deep meaning, whether related to a deity/deities or not. Sacredness exists, in our experience of love, nature, beauty, death… anything, really.

Religion started as the ritualistic expression of our experience of sacredness, and most religions focus it around a higher power. Ritualistic expression, however, does not necessarily create or maintain the experience of sacredness.

Some religion successfully incorporates spirituality, and some doesn’t. Some people who are uninvolved in religion experience spirituality, and some don’t.

Some people who call themselves agnostics experience plenty of sacredness but don’t find their experience expressed or reflected by any known religion. Then, to add insult to injury, the word agnostic falls onto lists of religious affiliations, but the point is they aren't affiliated. But they aren't atheists, either, not at all.

Being this puzzle piece that just doesn't fit anywhere can be fine and comfortable, or it can feel painful and irreconcilable.

If an agnostic thinks they're supposed to fit in somewhere, but their experience of sacredness doesn't mesh with any religious expression they're exposed to, they can have an uneasy sense that something's wrong with them. They also feel pressure -- because religion is ubiquitous in our culture, you may not notice it until you're trying to practice freedom from it. Resentment builds. Sucks for everyone.

But there's nothing wrong with them. Actually, this experience is pretty normal, and becoming more so. "Spiritual but not religious," I believe, is the popular label.

And this is good. Authenticity gaining ground.

Meanwhile...

Many agnostic/spiritual/undefined people aren’t aware of positive changes in the whole realm of religion, because they don’t have or want any involvement with anything religion-related.

For example, a few years ago, Newsweek published a long story exploring many new and empowering interpretations of women’s roles in the bible.

You may want nothing to do with the bible and perhaps you can’t imagine getting any value out of reading the article.

I encourage you to read it anyway, because articulating the unspoken assumptions, myths, rules and mores of our culture is a necessary step in challenging and updating obsolete ideas. These bible scholars are doing just that.

Case in point. The traditional story of the Annunciation says that the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and told her she would have God’s child. What isn’t often mentioned, except in the obscure mystical traditions that were suppressed long ago, is that Mary was given a choice. She wasn’t told -- she was asked. It wasn’t a command or a duty; it was an opportunity. Blind obedience was not part of the story. Choice, willingness and empowerment were.

Can you imagine if our cultural values emerged from this version of the story, how much different our lives might be?

The bible may be divine, but our interpretations of it are human and therefore always potentially flawed.

If there is a god/God/gods/Gods, we are to bring all of who we are to the relationship -- all our intellect and doubt and intuition and curiosity -- all the gifts and capabilities we are blessed with. We need to come away from the knee-jerk rejection of all things religious, and instead wade knee-deep into the grey area where ideas can be reexamined and reinterpreted.

Perhaps then can we expand the overlap between spirituality and religion.