Sometimes I wonder… is, “I’m spiritual but not religious,” really a fear of self-examination due to insecurity? Might that kind of response be a fear of falling short?
I know there are a myriad of reasons why someone might say that sort of thing, and the numbers who do are ever growing. A culture that continues to separate itself from any sense of common religious understanding will only grow in religious or “spiritual” insecurity. People will not know where to turn or how to make competent judgments about what may or may not be legitimate thoughts or expressions of “faith” or “religion” or “spirituality.”
I wonder if because of a growing spiritual insecurity among people and a resulting growing fear of being judged as falling short or embarrassed by not even knowing the basics of a particular faith, that rather than throwing themselves into a gulf of unknowing, of perhaps failure, of perhaps a complete overturning of lives that cling only to some kind of shaky security, that people would rather respond with, “I’m spiritual, but not religious?”
To say such a thing recognizes that inner draw to the spiritual life (I would say the wooing of the Holy Spirit to inter into the Life in Christ, but that’s me), the inner hunger to know God (however a person at the time understands that), but relieves the person from having to enter into a peculiar or particular world that s/he is, for the most part, completely unfamiliar with. That is very intimidating! It relieves people from having to put forth the effort to understand – what one is currently experiencing, even if not very good or satisfying or life-giving, is sometimes preferable to the unknown. But, it also leaves them in a place where their spiritual longings are never really satisfied. They roam around in a cloud hoping to find that “thing” that will making everything okay, but often settle at the moment for money, for loveless sex, for fame, for a weak and often illusional propping up of self-esteem.
Enabling people to feel secure enough and comfortable enough to enter into the questioning and the seeking and the learning is such a way that God can do the work necessary to open their hearts and minds to the Life in Christ is essential, but it is done not by dumbing down the essence of the Faith, nullifying the requirements, or lessening the call for high standards – that ends in nothing. It is, to a great degree, simply living in integrity, honesty, and forthrightness in the understanding that we are a peculiar people, but people with the answer in Christ for what ails the world.