This trend toward spirituality is an amazing contrast to the stark secularization of recent decades. In some ways it really is an amazing turn, especially for those of us who remember the sixties, when God was pronounced dead.
Where, after all, is God in all this holy, connected, deepened, interior living? At best in today's culture, even in its most soulful moment, God is a sidebar. And Jesus is quickly becoming a victim of political correctness, although new spiritual gurus are quick to repackage and market his principles as their own.
Can you have spirituality without God? The screen of human history and experience points to God's holy interest and involvement in human life. It is an awe-inspiring, breathtaking, mysteriously wondrous story. In our own century, God's activity has been apparent from the beaches of Normandy, where an evil empire began to fall, to the toppling of the Berlin wall.
But as our culture debriefs the meaning of what we witness before our eyes, notice how seldom anyone talks about God as the focus of today's spirituality. Instead, we get excited about the benefits of spirituality- "a richly elaborated life." We extol a life that is profoundly "connected to society and nature," and "to all the many communities that claim our hearts." We are perceptually challenged spiritually. Even with our culture's fascination with soul, the main event is being overlooked. We are missing God.
Spirituality is in danger of becoming defined by a secular culture, a culture with problems in how it perceives most spiritual areas. Ignoring God in the process of developing spirituality, approaching inner life by focusing on the fringe issues and benefits, creates a kind of secular spirituality, an oxymoron if there ever was one.
Besides, it won't work. Trying to nurture inner life without God is like trying to birth a soul that is stuck in the birth canal. It's headed in the right direction, away from materialism, shallowness, and plasticity toward depth, quality, and interiority, but despite all its birth pains, it will never produce a living, breathing, healthy soul.
Without a real spiritual birth that turns us toward God in humbleness and remorse, and aligns us with his values, secular spirituality can at best produce a more refined, sophisticated version of the human toxic dump site. Look closely. The ultimate theme and focus of secular spirituality is self. A better self, a more inner-focused self, a more connected self, even a global community of selves, but self just the same. Self is the god of secular spirituality. If God is mentioned, He is usually defined by function-higher power, for example-not relationship. He is definitely not intimately embraced.
I've noticed the home shopping channel uses the French word
Faux a lot. I imagine they think it has a classier sound
than admitting that something is fake. Fake or not, the sellers are confident
that even phony diamonds, emeralds, pearls, and leathers will look appealing
under studio lights. They glitter. They shine. They sell! So it is with
spirituality today. It glitters. It shines. It sells. But without God at
its definitive core, whether or not the buyers and sellers realize it,
it is faux just the same. Be careful when you're shopping around the Spiritual
Shopping network these days. All that appeals spiritually may not be true!