Crossed

A Local Pastor and a Local Atheist Debate “Spiritual, but not Religious” — Conviction or Cop-out?

Oct. 16, 2015

A Local Pastor and a Local Atheist Debate "Spiritual, but not Religious" – Conviction or Cop-out?

Have you ever assisted with an autopsy? I have.

As a chaplain resident at the Presbyterian University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, I asked to witness an autopsy. I imagined it would be like watching a surgery from the safety of an observation room. I was wrong.

The day of the procedure I was called to the morgue, where I gowned and gloved. The doctor provided a brief orientation; I would handle the suction. He then pulled down the sheet. The deceased was a patient I counseled.

Nothing in life prepared me for this moment. Though early in my ministry, I was no stranger to death and dying. This was different. Cutting into the body and maneuvering the suction wand, I saw, like never before"¦Apart from the Spirit of Life, we are no more than carcasses.

Presbyterian since before I was born, this moment affirmed what I have known since childhood. I didn’t birth myself. I didn’t breathe life into my lifeless body. There is a good and gracious God to whom I owe my life.

This knowledge of God leads me to worship. Worship inspires my desire for Christian nurture and service to others. Being part of an organized and established church adds richness, depth, vitality and direction to my life.

Some leave the church seeking to be "spiritual" but not "religious." I am not sure what this means. We see in Jesus Christ, God chooses to live in human form. Churches are the corporate embodiment of God’s Spirit, the body of Christ. A "Spirit less" religion is a carcass. A "body less" spirit is a vapor. Life comes when the two, body and Spirit, become one!

Gary’s Response

No Bill, you did not birth yourself, your mother did. You did breathe life into your body when you first inhaled. Comparing non-deity religious such as Buddhists, and others who refuse to accept fictitious beings with a carcass is denigrating. In effect, you are saying that attendance at a monotheistic religious service is required for spirituality. I suspect Native Americans, among others, would disagree.

The fundamental difference between your beliefs and mine is that you accept the term "spirituality" as relating to a supernatural being known to you as God. I see it as the pinnacle of the human condition that allows us to inquire, consider, wonder, and contemplate. It also allows us to conjure up fiction. Separating spiritual fiction from spiritual reality is the core of our belief differences.

A Pew survey from May discloses that the number of Americans who describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated is approaching 25 percent. An additional 31 percent say that, though they identify with a particular sect, religion is not important to them. As a result, we often hear people today using the term "spiritual, but not religious" as a way to communicate their belief system. But what exactly does that mean? Doesn’t the term "spiritual" convey aspects of religious belief by definition?

It does not. Human beings are innately spiritual resulting from our highly developed central nervous systems. Other terms that are similar in meaning include contemplative, ethereal, metaphysical, transcendent, and mystical. While other animals experience emotions, as far as we know only earthbound humans are capable of higher levels of meditative reflection.

Our intellect enables us to have opinions and convictions. We can absorb information, evaluate it, and arrive at reasoned conclusions. Sadly, those conclusions often run counter to our well-being; we pollute our own environment, discriminate against our own species, wage war upon ourselves, and self-inflict harm that "lower" life forms naturally avoid.

Somehow, the term "spiritual" has been absorbed by the religious community as having application only to their practices. All humans are naturally spiritual to some degree. You cannot adequately describe the complexity of human existence with strictly scientific terminology. For instance, I have no answer to the question of how the universe originated. It may just be that I am too limited to understand the Big Bang theory. But that does not give me the right to invent "answers" such as supernatural beings. That would be the biggest cop-out of all.

Bill’s Response

Long before Christ, a deeply spiritual people told a story of a mother bear and her cubs fleeing a massive forest fire on the western shore of Lake Michigan. The mother and her cubs swam across the lake to be safe, but the cubs tired and drowned. The mother waited on the eastern shore for her cubs to appear. The Great Spirit, moved by the mother’s love and devotion, created the Manitou Islands. This is a powerful story, even today. The love and devotion move our spirits, regardless of our faith. The "truth" transcends the glacial science of the islands’ creation. Our spirit helps us appreciate the story. Our religion helps us live with love and devotion. Whether humanist or theist, we need both.

Where We Agree

Bill and Gary agree that spirituality is a vital element of humanity regardless of religious belief.