Spirituality and Religion #2

Spirituality & Religion
Lecture #2

In 1938, the poet philosopher William Irwin Thompson said, “Religion is not identical with spirituality; rather religion is the form spirituality takes in civilization.” Religion is therefore not a negative, but spirituality supersedes religion as a more fundamentally human experience rather than a community and institutional one. The fabric of our spirituality is woven with the ethical threads of living with others in community. This is where our faith meets its greatest challenges, but its truth is profound. A theme which I have stressed in my on ethical writing is that life is a process of giving birth to our spiritual natures as we mature in our human relationships.

It was the Jewish philosopher/theologian Martin Buber who stressed that God meets us in the “between” – between ourselves and others, and it is in this between that we learn that all life, especially human life, is created in the image of the divine. Within human connections our spirituality is excited and comes to life—here is where we meet God and open a pathway to God for others. It was in John’s first epistle, the 3rd and 4th chapters that we read about God’s love and our responsibility to love one another. John writes, “God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love has been brought to full expression through us. And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. This is the message we have heard from the beginning: We should love one another.”

Our lives, I believe, are commonly shared gifts from God. Our spirituality does not close us to the world; rather, it is alive and open, growing and groomed by faith, animated by hope, and transcended by our ethical concern for others. Spiritual meaning is able to complete us and fulfill our undertakings because it seeks life beyond the boundaries of our present circumstances and traditions, and is deeply personal.

Aristotle defined the virtues that lead to happiness. Buddha taught the way to happiness through an end of suffering. Jesus preached that happiness springs from faith in the goodness of God, and Paul gave us the formula of “faith, hope, and love” for our fellow humans. In the last decade, the academic movement for Positive Psychology created an empirical science of happiness.

Poet W.B. Yeats, at the close of World War I, said that things fall apart when the center does not hold, and the center to which Yeats was referring can metaphorically be described as the center knot in a braided rug, the nuclei of an atom, or the human soul that is spiritually connected to others and to its source.

Our center is our moral compass and if we listen, it can provide a positive direction for our lives. Immanuel Kant sought this center in the logic of practical reason; Professor Kurt Baier at the University of Pittsburg found it in his commitment to the dignity of creation, including human beings. This was the source of his ethics. Recently, in studies of “loneliness,” doctors are saying that we humans have either developed or have been provided with a genetic predisposition to connect with others. Human meaning is positively integrated with human connection and with a faith that implores us to become partners with God in the healing and repair of the world.

Some maintain that in the last few generations, the “modernist” consensus of rationality, democracy, and enlightened self-interest has broken down. They claim, “The relentless modernist attack on religion and the reality of consciousness itself has diminished the moral heart of civilization, unleashing a reign of scientific reductionism that tells us that we are nothing but biochemistry and neuron impulses. Therefore, they continue, “Lacking a moral center, today’s anarchic reign of materialistic economic globalization has contributed to war, environmental destruction, and inequality.” (Mention Marlette’s cartoon, “The Decent of Man”)

This may or may not be true, for when I read and study science, I have a great sense of awe concerning the greatness of creation and I have never believed or felt that scientific knowledge threatened my faith. On the contrary, philosophy and science, mathematics and formal reasoning have only strengthened by faith as all of these systems require a cultural and metaphysical foundation.

Permit me to end this discussion with a few words about “choices.” French philosopher and Nobel laureate Henri Bergson (1859—1941) combined spirituality, mysticism, and science in a unique and controversial way. His Roman Catholic faith (converted from Judaism) would seem to be in direct conflict with the philosophy he followed for much of his life. The following quote is from his 1907 work "L'Evolution Creatrice" ("Creative Evolution"): “…as each of us can live but one life, a choice must perforce be made. We choose in reality without ceasing; without ceasing, also, we abandon many things. The route we pursue in time is strewn with the remains of all that we began to be, of all that we might have become. But nature, which has at command an incalculable number of lives, is in no wise bound to make such sacrifices."

Choice lies at the center of our lives.

The Old Testament writer added: "Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver and the gain therof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her." [PROVERBS 3: 13-15 *King James Bible]

And spirituality requires wisdom. In Hinduism we read, “Discipline divorced from wisdom is not true discipline, but merely the meaningless following of custom, which is only a disguise for stupidity." [Rabindranath Tagore 1861-1941] And I have told students for over 40 years that “education can cure their ignorance, but is no help for their stupidity.”

Why do I contemplate spirituality, truth, and wisdom? I think that it is because they are so illusive. They are the forgotten parts of our religious path. We would rather be entertained than disturbed by a sermon. We would rather listen to the choir than worship through singing. We would rather demonstrate our faith through the showiness of organized religion (flags, robes, processions, candles, and professional performances) than from the deep ecology of our personal spirituality.

As we fill the cavities of our minds with the junk food of modern society and by our church—making sure that our beliefs and doctrines are checked off by theologians and church officials—our spiritual natures exhaust and even shake off their essence and their inner validity. We are civilized, rational, and committed to competitive capitalism and our religious commitments bear the imprint of this commitment. In a world where what counts is getting things done, where bigger is better, where appearance supersedes essence, where in our schools where what gets tested gets taught, character and values are the losers, and where, in organized religion, “right” belief is more important than rational spirituality, is it any wonder that church attendance and commitment to the purposes of organized religion are falling behind the spiritual or essentialness of our lives.

Viktor Frankl has said, “Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”