Spiritual But Not Religious

Photo by Motoki Tonn

“I’m spiritual but not religious.” That is a remark that I’ve heard more times than I can count. Best I can tell, it generally means that while the person in question possesses no commitments to any established religious tradition, s/he doesn’t wish to close her or himself off from some sort of transcendent reality. In other words, it’s a largely meaningless assertion.

In the Bible, the idea of being “spiritual” does not refer to an ambiguous openness to something bigger than ourselves. Rather, it has to do with living in a manner that cooperates with the transformative work of God’s Spirit in one’s life. It is a concrete phenomenon, producing very real results for all to see.  

The person who is spiritual is one who has offered their allegiance to Jesus Christ as lord, and as such has been brought into a new order of life characterized by obedience to God. Left behind for this person is a life characterized by wrong-doing or sin.

Since sin produces “death”—which foremost refers to a distorted and slavish form of existence that works to destroy human flourishing—the spiritual person may now begin to experience life in the way that God intended.

As the apostle Paul explains it, the Christian community participate in Christ’s death to the old order, and by dying to death they are raised anew with Christ. The Spirit’s agency is what makes this participation possible. It is thus the Spirit that liberates Christ followers from sin and death and empowers them to do the very things that produce the human flourishing intended in creation (see Romans 6:1–23).

It is a “more abundant life,” as Jesus himself described it (John 10:10). It is a life headed for a future resurrection like that of Jesus, in which the Spirit’s transformation of the spiritual person is made complete.

It is quite fair to describe the phenomenon I described above as a religious experience, as “religion” (a term with no universally agreed upon definition) may simply denote a set of beliefs and practices related to God. In this respect, Christianity is indeed a religion.

We might ask, then, what is it that leads some people to claim a form of spirituality but no religion; why the apprehension over the latter? It seems to me that much of this apprehension can be explained by the hypocritical behavior of individuals and institutions that bear a religious identity.

No one likes hypocrites, so who would want to associate with a group of them? Of course, the unfortunate reality of religious hypocrisy was not lost on either Paul or Jesus, both of whom condemned it in no uncertain terms (see Matthew 23:1–36 and Romans 2:1–11).  

But notwithstanding the very real problem of hypocrisy, it also seems clear to me that the reluctance many such people have towards religious affiliation has a lot to do with the fact that most religions establish boundaries for proper conduct. This is certainly the case with Christianity. And here lies the conflict: the establishment of boundaries from an external source interferes with the desire for autonomy—the desire of people to choose for themselves what is right and what is wrong.

The impulse towards autonomy is nothing new. It goes all the way back to the beginning. A fundamental claim of the Bible is that the desire to do what one wants regardless of the will of God is what ultimately lies behind human sinfulness (see Genesis 3:1–7). And this is, again, the very thing from which the Spirit delivers us.

Being spiritual means agreeing with God on what one should and should not do. The boundaries that God establishes for human flourishing are quite broad and allow for a great deal of personal and cultural variation. However, they are nonnegotiable—built into the very fabric of creation by the creator.

Some may immediately protest here and ask, “how can I know that the Christian tradition accurately represents God’s will for humanity?” This is a good question, the answer to which lies beyond the scope of this article.

Nevertheless, while I cannot provide a full response to it here, I can suggest that it is the question any would-be spiritual person should feel compelled to investigate. If Jesus Christ was resurrected by God 2,000 years ago and is the lord and savior of the world, then being “spiritual but not religious” is nothing more than one’s own religion without spirituality.