A few months ago I returned to my church, in-person, for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic. My church was closed, much longer than most, to in-person services and, even now, continues to employ seemingly arbitrary practices to “mitigate” the impact of the virus. In the first weeks of the pandemic, during the time of the nation-wide riots, as I attended my virtual 9:30 service from the basement, in my shorts and a cutoff, with an extra strong cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee(my favorite) our pastor delivered a sermon on ‘White Privilege’ that nearly gave me a heart-attack. All of the same words and ideas that had infuriated me every time I turned on the TV or scrolled through my feed were now coming out of the mouth of a man that was supposed to represent peace, hope, and joy. It was not the first time I’d found issue with the message being delivered by this particular pastor. But it was, certainly, the most objectionable.
Prior to the pandemic, I was having monthly meetings with my childhood preacher whom I’d re-connected with after many years. We’d get together early in the morning, before work, and just chat about things. I likened it to Marvel’s Daredevil character, and the practice of having a kind of personal holy mentor-figure that is often associated with the Catholics. I loved those meetings. Having the opportunity to bounce one’s ideas of faith and to hear feedback is so much more valuable than the combing through of internet videos, or even the weekly church service, where there is no conversation, only preaching.
Having a conversation with a pastor is a unique thing. For many folks, (and I count myself in this camp) we are able to share things with them that we wouldn’t even discuss with our own metaphorical spouses; for good or for bad(it’s bad). And it’s unique in that, while the stakes are low, the impact that open conversations about life can have on our mindsets and behavior can be truly profound. I’m guessing this is the appeal of therapists. And while I’m wildly skeptical about secular ‘therapists,’ if you add the words ‘pastor’ or ‘father’ to their title, I become an enthusiastic advocate. In the increasingly isolated world we occupy, the importance of doing anything that gets us in front of real human beings for substantive conversations becomes amplified. But I digress.
In one of these monthly meetings, the subject of race came up as well. It was impossible to ignore at the time. And, again, I heard the nostrums of Critical Race Theory being, if not condoned, certainly considered by my life-long pastor. This, from someone with a more important role in the church and, in my eyes, much more command over the Christian message than my current church pastor, whom I’d heard the same sentiment from, months before. It was disappointing. I was no stranger to the perversion of the Christian message within the church, but this guy was typically rock solid. Now he wasn’t. And I struggled to understand how a guy so full of joy and intellect could fall prey to this obviously destructive mindset.
As I do with all things religious, I spent the next week re-thinking my own understanding of the Critical Race Theory mindset and, yet again, arrived at the same conclusions that I had over the last 8 years of being exposed to it. That is, that it is complete hokum. Critical Race Theory, and all of it’s relatives, is a destructive ideology born out of our postmodernist abandonment of religion that preys on our human need for that very religion. I need not go into depth on exactly what my thoughts on it are, here. The point is that someone [people] I purported to look up to and respect as moral compasses were echoing sentiments from those I would consider to be the exact opposite. And here we arrive at the point…… which we’ll get to in a bit. 🙂
Since the beginning of my social life, which I characterize as starting somewhere around 8th-grade year, any time a conversation surrounding faith would come up outside of church, there would always be this claim you would hear from someone in the group. Whether you were at a bonfire party where everyone was over-served on Zimas and spiked Sonic drinks, or trying to flex your intellectual might with a group of girls while the teacher was out of the room and the only escape from doing the assignment was conversation. Looking back, the phrase really seems to have hit its stride during the late 90s and early 2000s. Only it didn’t really go the way of the Pog, and fade into an irrelevant memory. It arrived and, just sort of settled in. And, while it’s not vocalized nearly as much as it once was, it still found its permanent home in the psyche of a good portion of our generation. It lies in wait just below the surface of any person you may actually take 5 minutes to chat with and learn about. It has permanent real estate on many social media and dating profiles. And it is still, very much, many of our justification for living a lifestyle that is, so obviously, born out of self-centeredness and apathy; “I’m spiritual, but not religious” [or, what it considers it’s much more evolved form “I’m spiritual, but hate organized religion.”]
When one hears a phrase like this, they immediately understand it. It is seductive in its promise and extremely effective in establishing one as a thinker in a group of people that are only looking to appear thoughtful, and not actually be thoughtful. “So, you’re saying I can appear morally upright without adhering to any of the things that have traditionally established one as being morally upright?” Sign me up! In a way, its abandonment of any type of significant litmus test for a moral code is the bastardized vision of Luther, himself, and the crux of Protestantism. This, of course, is the completely wrong way to view The Reformation, but was always the danger in it. That people will exploit the weaknesses in an idea or theory is always a question of when, not if. And that’s a good thing! But more people seem to be embracing the lie than the truth…which, I suppose, it’s no different than anything else……. trust me, the point is right around the corner.
While I have no idea where this utterance first came from, or the exact motivation behind it, I choose to believe that it, likely, came about way before those who use it now think it did, and probably did not mean what they think it means. (This is usually the way things work with shallow-minded sound bites that find their way into our lexicon. They start out as expressions of deep thought with multiple implications but end up being reduced down to their most basic and, often, misunderstood premise and repeated ad nauseum by folks who do not understand them; present company included). And, while I could Google it to find out its exact origin, I’m already getting long-winded, and it’s not germane to my beef.
Because regardless of when or why it started, what it means for those that use it today is what I believe to be, yet another, telling example of the deep-rooted narcissism that runs The West. Thinking about it for 5 seconds you start to realize all the idiocy associated with the phrase. ‘I’m spiritual, but hate organized religion’?? Right from the jump, you’ve confused me. You’re spiritual? What does that mean? Is it a reference to the Holy Spirit found in Christianity or are you calling up your dead cat from a Ouija Board on a Saturday night? Or, perhaps, you’ve seen enough episodes of Ghost Hunters to be convinced. Maybe you simply mean that you are a Vodka enthusiast, and you meant to use the word ‘and’ [I’m spiritual AND I hate organized religion] – this would make more sense. So ‘spiritual’ is vague and meaningless (probably the point, to be honest).
And then you get to the 2nd part of the statement which gets even more stupid, “I hate organized religion.” Oh, what a powerful statement, indeed. Within these 4 words, one is able to convey that they have applied an enormous amount of thought to a pillar of our society, identified it as a boogie-man (which everyone loves) and signaled their opposition to, presumably, all of the evil that it has wrought on the world. Because, see, we’re not just saying that we hate ‘an’ organized religion. We hate ALL organized religion. And this implies that we have poured over the history of each and every organized religion available to us (or at least enough to form an educated opinion) and deemed them all unfit for our standards of…spirituality, I guess? Even if we are charitable and omit all of the eastern religions(which we shouldn’t do if you’re making such a claim) and just consider Judaism and Christianity as the basis for this well thought-out stance on life, this would still leave over 200 different ‘organized religions’ to be considered.
And, perhaps we get even more generous, and just play the “you know which ones I’m talking about” game that you would likely get into as a result of pressing anyone on the issue, how many are we talking about? Of the ‘traditional’ American ‘organized religions,’ just off the top of my head you have the Jewish, Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Mormons, Mennonites, Amish, Jehovas Witnesses, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day saints folks. Surely, an intelligent person would not purport to ‘hating’ every one of these ‘organized religions’ without having done a thorough review of the history and teachings of them, right? A smart person doesn’t simply hate a thing because ‘they look goofy’ or ‘they seem weird’ right? No, that’s far too shallow an assessment for the intelligent person. But, let’s help them out some more.
Let’s say it’s Christmas time (or Hanukkah season) and we really dig deep in our pockets for that charity. And let’s just say that we all only consider 3 religions; Judaism, Catholicism, and Protestantism. This would be an incredibly shallow attribution to anyone that claims to “hate organized religion,” but, for argument’s sake, I can do it. Even if you’re only referring to these 3 broad categories, the amount of thought and investigation one would have to endure, I would think, before arriving at the point where they were comfortable saying they ‘hated’ them all would be quite a lot. The time investment, alone, would put an individual somewhere in their 30s, and with a significant dedication to the subject, before such a declaration could be made; not a 22-year-old who’s spent all of 3 hours on the internet building their worldview.
We could get even more ridiculously accommodating and grant that, what they mean, is that they hate “the idea” of organized religion, and that that is somehow different. [This is another iteration of the phrase that you hear from time to time]. This one I’d like to immediately dismiss because of 1. Time purposes, 2. Any type of religion must, necessarily, be ‘organized,’ (even these ‘spiritual’ folks’ non-religion is, in some form, ‘organized’), and 3. It would not negate the need for a person to have done significant research on organized religion to come to that conclusion.
And so, it took 4 paragraphs, but I feel that I’ve adequately laid out my skepticism with the notion that the young people who claim to “hate organized religion” actually know much of anything about organized religion. So, what do these people really mean? We already know what they mean, and it’s quite simple; “I hate judgment” which actually means “I hate accountability”.
‘I hate accountability’ could be the motto of the west today. The liberal sentiment of “live and let live” has been obviously and sufficiently morphed into “celebrate the bad and condemn the good”. It is no longer good enough to, merely, live in harmony with the sexually deviant, the drug addicted, or even the criminal. No, we must devote months to celebration of them, provide the means to continue their anti-social behaviors, and even promote the legitimacy of those lifestyles to our children. Even the traditional practice of excusing away their behavior by scapegoating a certain portion of the population (the rich) is becoming tired. Instead, we must throw the idea that the behavior is problematic out the window, altogether. There is no “good and bad”, only “what we are, dude” and this would, naturally, trickle down into how young people view religion.
And this is the main tenant, as I understand it, of postmodernist thought. The abolishment of objective truth in favor of ‘My Truth’ seems to have thrown fuel on the fire of the moral relativism that now seems to be the law of the land. As far as I can tell, at some point, ‘Judgment’ became seen as the most evil, and avoidable, sin one could ever engage in. And, while I don’t necessarily disagree with the belief that judgment is a bad thing that robs us of our peace, hope, and joy, it has(as with everything) been perverted and misconstrued. Because you will be hard pressed to find anyone that wouldn’t agree that judging people is a very bad thing (although it’s exactly what the modern postmodernist ideology does). This, afterall, is one of the most prevalent messages of western religions; at least of christianity. And, yes, even those “organized religion” types. What this new ideology seems to have done is to, initially, extend the idea of non-judgement of people to include ‘non-judgement of behavior’, and then proceeded on to ‘celebration of every person and every behavior’. Which is, of course, evil (the work of the devil for those who believe in that sort of thing).
When this new ideology began to really produce fruit in the west, I don’t know. I’m still quite young in the grand scheme of human civilization. I, often, consider how we instinctively generate a view of the world as we are meant to see it, despite whether it’s actually present. Especially, growing up in the 90s, there was no shortage of entertainment outlets painting a picture of the “ideal family” or the “common belief system.” On almost every occasion, movies and TV were railing against these things or “showing us how it really was”. “Sticking it to the man” or “charting my own path” are pretty clear themes you see from Hollywood. We don’t know how many “mans” or “common paths” there actually were, just that we should be against them. All that to say that the timeline for when the dam broke on the abandonment of morality is fuzzy. Obviously, the framework for its destruction came 2 centuries ago, and its progress has been going on longer than any of us think it has, but to identify an inflection point would be difficult.
Also, the older I get, the more I realize that the idea of asking a human not to judge another human is not possible without that evil religion all the Millenials hate. Without any handbook (that they’re aware of) for this new ‘spiritual non-religion,’its advocates are unable to actually provide a coherent definition of its tenants. We are simply given vacuous slogans like “Love is Love” or “Hate has no home here.”(barf) When their entire ideology is simply opposing another ideology, they find themselves standing on shifting sand, with no real meaning or purpose; which is, increasingly, where we find ourselves today.
For my money, I prefer the long-held Christian slogan (and, yes, one that professed Christians also struggle with) of “Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin.” This, to me, is a prerequisite for not only christian understanding, but any number of sociological disciplines. One could not analyze and make prescriptions of any of our social ills without this belief. It’s something we instinctively know, and, perhaps, is even the entire impetus for the entire “Spiritual but not Religious” crowd. And to them, I would say, you’re missing the point. Religion is not a label that one applies to themselves and just ‘becomes.’ I do not declare myself clean and holy because I am a Christian. Identifying as Christian means that we strive to uphold the cleanliness and holiness that God has prescribed to us. And we fail. Quite a lot. But we still strive for it, as the closer we get to it, the more peace, joy and hope we experience.
The so-called judgment that SNRs (Spiritual Not Religious) attribute to Religion is not the judgment of people, but rather, the judgment of behavior God deems destructive to experiencing the fruits of life. And this is how it HAS to be. Separating sin from sinner or “people from behavior” is, obviously, the only way we can live. We know this, instinctively. It is only out of such a belief that the notion of Redemption can even exist. It is the only way societal change can be possible. It is the only reason we are not still living in caves. And everyone struggles with it; Religious and SNRs alike. The only difference, today, is that the religious have acknowledged this fact, SNRs do not.
In a sense, SNRs want to have their cake and eat it too. They’d like to live, what they believe to be, the lives of atheists, but enjoy the benefits of the religious. Instinctively, they understand that everything “good” in humanity comes from outside of humanity itself, but they certainly cannot be bothered to confront that fact. This is why they’d claim to be ‘Spiritual’ in the first place. To be spiritual means to be good, in their minds. They want to acknowledge that there’s something connecting us all outside of human understanding, and that thing is good, so they’re good. “And don’t you dare try to tell them otherwise. Because they, alone, determine what good is.” THIS is the impossible foundation they stand on, and they usually don’t know it.
Instead, it will usually manifest itself in a belief that “Everyone knows what’s right and wrong.” This is illustrated in one of the most nauseating nostrums of the internet age; “If you need an imaginary God or some book to tell you not to be a dick, then you’re a piece of shit.” Of all the statements that create an immediate spike of my blood pressure every time I hear them, this one is probably the most pronounced. Physical reactions by way of twitching eyes, or sharp pangs of pain in the middle of my forehead are among the side-effects. It is the type of stuff Domestic Violence is made of.
And it’s because the layers of idiocy associated with a statement like this are so thick that rarely is the recipient of such a volley given the amount of time necessary to dig through them all. What’s worse, is that the statement usually comes after a lengthy discussion on defining good and bad! “How can you say that everyone “knows” what good and bad are when we’ve just been arguing for 15 minutes on what’s good and bad?!”It is a truly arrogant, idiotic,and judgmental statement that makes certain hypocrites of the people that utter it, not to mention it’s filled to the brim with circular logic. But it sounds good coming off the lips so we’re stuck with it.
In theory, I would say that the fortunate thing about the use of a statement like this in any discussion is that it presents a great segway into the most fruitful conversation anyone could ever have, with the natural retort being “Ok, great! So we agree that there is good and evil?”But my experience is that what usually results in, if not an immediate shift in topic, is a complete shut-down of the conversation altogether. It’s almost as if the people that utter it begin to realize the implications of it AS they’re saying it, and need to pull the rip cord immediately. They learn that these types of slogans fit nicely into a social media post, meant to be spoken into the empty void of the internet, and never to be used in real conversation.
And for anyone that does have stock in such a notion, rather than write another 5 pages on everything wrong with it, I will simply provide the unsatisfied christian response of, “You’re right. If anyone needs some God to tell them not to be a dick, they are a piece of shit. And YOU’RE a piece of shit. Because we all are.” Hearts and Minds, am I right? 🙂
More often than not, however, if you are able to avoid the theistic argument implied when trying to talk to the SNR crowd, the conversation will normally be focused on the perceived behavior of people they associate with religion. The hypocrisy they may have experienced, or believe they have experienced, with those either serving at a church, or merely identifying as religious. And I say “believe they have experienced” because, so often, the grievance they claim to have witnessed is not actually inconsistent with the notion of religion at all. Someone preaching one thing and doing another does not have an impact on the message of religion, nor is it reserved to, merely, religious institutions.
People know this, yet churches today spend way too much time addressing it, and in the wrong way, IMO. I cannot count the number of sermons I’ve heard from one of my church’s pastors that centers around “how people within the church have wronged him and others.” Heck, in 1995, DC talk put out one of their most famous songs (What If I Stumble–one of my favs) and opened the song with a brief statement highlighting this attitude. It was a quote from a priest in the 1960s named Brennan Manning:
“The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians, who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, and walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”
A similar sentiment is at the core of the SNR crowd. Without fail, they will inevitably present some version of the claim that “Religious people think they’re better than everyone else,” which is to say that “those awful religious people are so judgy.”
Now, far be it for me to appear to disagree with a man that devoted his life to theology, because I’m not, but I do believe that this belief within the church, and the statement above, miss the mark a little bit with today’s skeptics. At the very least, it is often misunderstood. Because it is easy to make the mistake of taking everything the skeptic says as gospel, when we wouldn’t do this for even our fellow Christian.
The most glaring issue, I find, with this attitude is the understanding that hypocrisy is common among humans. Even if it were true that people advocating one thing, and doing another, that would not taint the religious message. “Jesus as our model” is something all of Christianity understands to be unattainable, yet worth the effort. This is something I also believe to be instinctive. It’s personified in every cop or superhero movie we have. This IS Batman. Efforting to bring a little bit of light into a dark world despite the fact that we will often fail, and the deck is stacked against us. Yet, fight on, we must, because it’s worth it. We see this theme everywhere. So this cannot be the biggest stumbling block for the non-religious. At least the non-religious that have actually thought about their beliefs for more than 5 minutes.
No, the non-religious issue with religion does not, to me, appear to be the hypocrisy in judging behaviors, yet employing them. It is in the judging in the first place. As mentioned above, jugement has become the worst sin anyone can make, according to the non-religious religion of today. And the tricky part of this belief, and the reason it trips up so many christians, is that, on its face, it would appear to align with what our religion tells us.
After all, “Only God can judge,” IS replete throughout the New Testament. Indeed, this is the understanding that frees a christian in his/her faith when fully internalized. Is it a simple notion that becomes very hard for anyone to reconcile; religious and non-religious alike.
The only reason this notion becomes a problem is because we seem to forget the aforementioned necessity to separate people from behavior. We completely dispense with the notion of “Loving the Sinner, Hating the Sin,” because, for so many today, they’ve opted into this foolish belief that “what you do and how you feel is who you are.”
This is the lie that underpins all of the identity politics that has taken over the west. It is the nexus for the “Diversity” scam and the “LGBTQ+” scam and what derailed the feminist movement. When our behavior IS our identity, you cannot judge it. We know this isn’t true, but it’s been dolled up with flowery words and statements of faux compassion in a way that appeals to a religious person enough to try to reason with it.
It is untenable. As mentioned above, we cannot function in a world that forever chains people to their behavior. It preys on the compassion of the religious and MUST, necessarily, result in not only the tolerance of what is bad, but the celebration of it. For, there is no room to hate the sin and love the sinner if that sin IS that sinner.
This is how evil has weaponized compassion today. How else would evil convince a group of religious people, intent on doing good(The West), to instead choose evil? Why, convince them that good is evil and evil is good, of course! And this is not new(see Isaiah 5:20), only new to us.
So, to wrap this up, I will make a plea to the Spiritual Not Religious crowd simply to think about it a little more. I do believe that 90% of our loss of faith in The West has come, merely, out of our refusal to confront topics of any importance. We fill our lives with never-ending amounts of distractions(present company included) in order to avoid having to think about our mortality or bother with notions of morality. Instead, to these folks, I’d challenge them to create a belief statement. Acknowledging a spiritual presence really is half the battle, on my side of things. Now work on a coherent belief that you can make sense of. If you land on “There is no God,” then solidify your reasons for that stance. If you land on “There is a God, but he doesn’t care about us,” then go down that rabbit hole as well. Go wherever your thoughts take you. Obviously, my hope would be for you to come down on the side of us “religious” types, but regardless of where you land, anywhere is a step above this “Spiritual But Not Religious” limbo that imprisons so many in our world today.
And to the church, I hope that we will hold fast, or return to our long-held stance on judgment. Contrary to popular belief, today’s youngsters are starving for stricter discipline and a “right way to live.” The comparative fullness and youth of the Catholic churches as contrasted with the empty and old state of the protestant churches highlights this fact. (outside of the secular, hippy, mega-churches, of course)We cannot be afraid to hurt people’s feelings and must have on every mast-head our time-tested statement of hope; “Love The Sinner, Hate The Sin”
(written in September of 2022)
AgingMillenial 