Question: In the past few years how often have you asked a Christian "What is your religion?" and they respond, "Oh, I don't consider myself religious, I consider myself spiritual".
SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE HECK DOES THAT MEAN!?!
I, a Christian, must confess that in my own mind, I consider myself to be spiritual rather than religious. I can say that with a bit of pride, knowing that such a sentence gives me the license to hold onto a Christian belief system, without being stereotyped into the Christian "Religion" crowd (Christian music, Jesus fishes on your bumber, and a level of ignorance of how isolating such behaviors can be in a secular society).
But both religion and spirituality are fairly ambiguous terms when you take the time to think about them in isolation. Maybe more relative than ambiguous.
Religion - Does religion simply mean a personal belief system on life or life's purpose? A moral code? Or does it mean an organization of people meeting together under the banner of shared beliefs? Perhaps it means simply the devotion to something, i.e. "my religion is college football".
Spirituality - Is this a fancy word for a simple awarness of forces beyond our human senses or a spiritual world? Perhaps it means new age beliefs or eastern theology? Maybe it means a belief in ghosts.
Alone, both terms mean very little, but when you combine it with the word Christian, you get two very different, but clear, definitions.
Although I graduated from college two years ago, let me explain the above in the college context. Maybe being a "religious Christian" was cool in generations previous to mine, but now days, if you announce on a college campus that you are a "religious Christian", you are critized for being closed-minded, hypocritical and ignorant. On the other hand, if you announce that you are a "spiritual Christian", acceptance comes much easier.
The term "religious Christian" has been ruined by so-called Christians who protest at the funerals of homosexuals, bomb abortion clinics or simply live a life that is contrary to what they preach. So in an effort for Christians who truly take Christ's message to heart and recognize that we are meant to be a light in the world, we have clung to a new term, "spiritual Christian". In doing so, we are left to defend only the merits of our faith, not what others before us have done in the name of religion.
Think of it in this way, on the same token that you might read in some fashion magazines that "Pink is the new Red", "Spiritual is the new religion".
But what happens when this new term is tainted? What happens when some "spiritual Christians" come along and ruin that term for the rest of us and create a whole new set of false stereotypes. How then do we identify ourselves in Christ?
"I don't consider myself spiritual, I consider myself balanced"....pshhhh
