How often do you think mainline Christians take the personal piety of others? How frequently do we take someone who says “I am spiritual but not religious”? “Not very often” is the best answer to offer. Saying that one is spiritual and not religious lacks a certain seriousness of belief and unbelief. Catholics in the USA number circa 65-70 million and in the world Catholics number just over a billion this notion of being spiritual and not religious gaining currency. Why? Because a personal relationship with Jesus is lacking. There is no encounter with the living Messiah, Jesus is an abstraction.
Last week someone asked me what I thought of being spiritual but not religious. I simply said, to hold that belief is to lack a certain convergence of faith and reality; while understandable from the point of view that many professed Christians lack a true conviction of faith in Jesus Christ both from the point of doctrine but also in practice.
David Briggs has an article that is to be read: “Religious but not spiritual: The high costs of ignoring personal piety.”
Instead of jumping to a negative conclusion, why not ask the question of what you are doing to work on your own education in the Faith and its practice? Adherence to Christ is a life of love, but it is also an ongoing work.
