http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IAhDGYlpqY
Language changes, and words take on new meanings in time, but this is an example of a meaning-shift a bit bewildering to me. I’ve seen it enough so I should be fine with it; but the word “religion” is being used to mean “everything I dislike about religion” or “bad religion.” Here in this Youtube video “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus” the speaker, after a list of grievances against the churches, goes on to state a series of propositions about life which in the aggregate would have no other name than a “religion.” I agree with the video’s speaker theologically, and I do think that Jesus’s attempts to reform Judaism are steps that are universally applicable to all religions. Still, to me this would be like Copernicus saying “I hate Science” because everyone around him subscribed to Ptolemy’s geocentrism. And this is a widespread phenomenon: people who entertain any number of propositions about the meaning of life and a Deity and a mode of life in accord with those propositions will still bristle at the term “religion.” A psychological complex like that, buried in the subconscious, is often enough to push a word’s meaning around. We’ll see what happens. I’m generally of the opposite tendency – if a thing is of ultimate importance to someone I am inclined to call it their “religion” – “art is my religion,” “pleasure is my religion,” etc., echoing Paine’s “My church is the world, to do good, my religion.”
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dictionary.com defined the word religion this way:
“a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.”
i guess by that definition i am at least partly guilty of redefining the word. in my mind religion, or religious people, are characterized by their religious practices. i.e. “devotional and ritual observances”. that is to say that i think of a person as religious if they regularly perform certain religious rituals. what i no longer do is to think of that person who performs religious rituals as necessarily having any deeper of a spiritual understanding than anyone else, save for whatever one may get purely from education.
in fact, where i have had the opportunity to see them, i have found the spiritual lives had by priests or other outwardly religious people to be less authentic than that of irreligious people. among these religious people there seems to be an insurmountable temptation to focus more on religious behavior than there is to actually listen for and respond to the voice of god.
i admit bias, but by contrast to pretty much any priest i have met, i strongly prefer the unassuming chap with a pleasant disposition whose works advance the kingdom with or without his knowledge through participation in a big brothers program, or helping a neighbor shovel their driveway, or by helping a coworker through a tough time. even by endeavoring to let his conscience be his guide, i think he gets closer to the heart of god than he might by being more ‘religious’.
do you not find that religious behavior tends to be at best a crutch, and at worst a hindrance to true exploration of our spiritual existence?
I think that an inner life is important, and as a result people have offered worldly rewards – e.g. jobs, respect, social status – to people who are supposed to focus on this inner life. Unfortunately the worldly rewards tend to become the main point. And it is certainly the case that an established religious tradition takes for granted what the goals are. If you’re a Buddhist, the end result of your quest had better be calm detachment or you’re not going to be the head of the monastery. This does tend to short-circuit people’s religious experiences. Many of the people I know in the religious life are not spiritually developed at all. But I would say that all – one hundred percent – of the truly spiritually developed people I know have a religious “practice,” even if it’s just reading books or interpreting their dreams. You have to pay attention to it. And I have found that in many ways, the traditional forms of religion, rightly understood, really do help.