are you a spiritual fruit? (a poorly organized, mostly uninformed rant)

Yesterday I saw two things that bothered me more than they probably should have. First, I was driving home from work yesterday and saw a bumper sticker that read GOD DESIRES SPIRITUAL FRUITS, NOT RELIGIOUS NUTS. I had seen this same bumper sticker before and didn't think much of it at the time, but yesterday it caught my attention and made me think for a long time about that word, "religion." Then last night I took my wife out to eat for Mother's Day and saw a guy in a black tee that made me look twice. The only word on the front was RELIGION, which had a circle around it and a line through it. The letters were white; the circle was red. On the black background I suppose it was intended to be an attention-grabber, and indeed it was. I watched the guy for a while, thinking he was probably a Richard Dawkins minion announcing his enlightened-ness to the world, but then he turned around and I saw written on the back of his shirt EMBRACE JESUS. "Oh," I said to my wife. "I see."

We've done a bad thing with this word "religion." There was a time when if you said "I am a religious person," everyone knew what you meant; they understood you to mean that you embraced and practiced a particular system of belief about the world and about God that imposed on you a certain quality of character and action. There were certainly varying degrees of assent to religion and varying degrees of hypocrisy; there were always people who believed and practiced wholeheartedly and people who were less than sincere about it. But everyone knew what "religion" meant.

Lately, though, the use of "religion" has become muddied. There are certain brands of Christianity - particularly Pentecostal denominations and the "non-denominational" denominations - in which this misuse of the word "religion" is very common. They often say things like, "I'm not religious. I'm spiritual." The difference? By "religion," they mean "empty religion" (which to them means liturgical and ritualistic traditions like Catholicism, liturgical Methodism, Lutheranism, etc.). By "spiritual," they mean "true religion," which must not be restricted by structure or ritual. If it isn't random, it isn't open to the Spirit. And so some find themselves saying things like, "Christianity isn't a religion; it's spirituality."

What this ignores or forgets is that the Bible itself refers to Christianity as "religion" and differentiates between empty religion and true religion: "If anyone thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives in his heart, this man's religion is vain. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world" (James 1:26-27). For Christianity to be "true religion," it must make a difference in your life and how you behave. If it does not, it is empty.

And there is another reason some are giving up "religion." In the current political and social arena, religion is the great whipping boy on which all the world's problems are blamed. War, racism, slavery, the oppression of women, child abuse, rape, people growing up to have all sorts of psychological problems, and that most heinous and yet hard-to-define crime, "intolerance," are all said to be caused by religion. If we were only rid of religion, we'd be rid of these problems. And so, many Christians have repudiated the word in favor of the chimeric and all-inclusive "spiritual."

They have plucked this word out of the tree of pop-culture, in which it means a vague belief in supernatural forces or beings, a belief in what is called "karma" (which has little to do with the Buddhist and Hindu understanding of karma), and a general sense of "different strokes for different folks." The danger is that the accompanying meaning is going to bleed through into Christianity. Christianity, for "spiritual" people, becomes less and less something that imposes definite responsibilities upon individuals, giving them all the benefits of a spiritual (in the proper sense) life without all the inconvenient requirements religion involves.

The irony is that this is exactly what the secularists who decry the evils of "religion" want. They will have won the battle if they can turn all religion into a vague "spiritualism" that makes no exclusive claims and requires nothing of its adherents except for them to be nice to people. In the effort to shield themselves from the attacks of religion's critics, they essentially raise the white flag and admit defeat.

"it's worth it all . . ."

Here's something we all used to know, then some folks came along and told us that this is a job only for the dull, the dimwitted, and those who don't want to live the life of a liberated woman.

Happy Mother's Day, all you moms. And thank you.

just shut 'em up

One of the first freedoms to go when a totalitarian regime rises is the freedom of speech and of ideas. The University of Toledo and Smith College are leading the way. How ironic that those who would otherwise tout intellectual freedom and "tolerance" are so intolerant of ideas they are unwilling (unable?) to engage and refute.

this guy says it better than I did

On the First Things blog, Spengler says what I've been trying to say here all along (only he says it more lucidly and concisely):

"It is right and proper for the Jews to desire that all the world should worship YHWH in their own way, and inconsistent of them to object to the same desire on the part of Christians. But the critical point is that the dispute over the Easter prayer is a quarrel within Israel. Jews should worry only if and when Christians cease to pray for them, for that would signify that Christians had forgotten the root onto which the wild olive branches are grafted."

Here is the entire post. It is well worth reading.