Spiritual, Not Religious?
That's like saying I'm a person but I have no gender.
I’m pleasantly surprised that this little post on Substack Notes has taken off as well as it has:
I want to share where the inspiration came from, and why being religious is as indispensable to the life of a human person as food and water, and why a rejection of religiosity is self-delusion.,
If you read my short story, “The Haunting Bookshop” you’ll know I’m fond of randomly flipping through pages in a book and seeing where in the story chance takes me. It’s also how I approach reading the Bible. The other day I randomly flipped to the book of James, chapter 2, and my eyes landed on verse 19:
“You believe there is one God. You do well.
Even the demons believe that and tremble.”
I recently published a clip from a past podcast, “Heaven, Hell, and the Path to Eternity” that spoke to something like this, but not as completely. Check it out, it’s a very short clip and it sets a stage for where I’m going here.
In the clip I only said that the devil believes in God, but is still in Hell. The scripture, though, refers to the entire demonic order. And because the context of the scripture involved people quibbling over how to live out the Christian faith (Faith vs. Works) it made me think of the demons as people—people who are spiritual, but not religious; identifying something in their nature, but not living what it calls us to. Sound familiar?
Religion and Religiosity
Aquinas saw religion as a moral virtue, and a virtue of justice that governs how we rightly relate to God. It's not just a set of beliefs or practices, but a moral habit that forms the will to give God what is due to him, through devotion, prayer, sacrifice, and reverence.
So, boiling it down, to be religious is to give God what he deserves. But we might also say that to be religious is to give a god what it deserves. We all believe in a god, just not always the real one. Sometimes the god we believe in is the false God of the self, or the god of our desire and pleasure. And when we live our lives oriented toward satisfying that god, guess what, we’re religious!
“believing in God did not save the devil from hell”
The angels and demons are spiritual creatures, not just because they’re of a spiritual substance but because they’re creatures with a natural connection to the transcendental, and eternal things. At the end of the day that’s really what we’re talking about when we say something like “I’m very spiritual" Just as believing in God (Intellectual Credo as opposed to deep Fidei/Faith) did not save the devil from hell, being “spiritual but not religious” does not secure salvation for the demonic realm. Having a spiritual connection to God—being “spiritual”—did not save the demons.
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The angels chose once and forever (Explained in my Afterthoughts at the bottom of this post). They chose once to ‘be religious’ (act in right order toward God) or they chose once to not be religious. We can choose again and again—rightly or wrongly. But once our earthly lives end, there is no more choosing. The sum total of our choices in life will be set in stone, as theirs is, and that is what we will take to judgement.
“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive recompense, according to what he did in the body, whether good or evil.”
2 Corinthians 5:10
Our actions—good and bad—are guided by our interior dispositions (Will, desire, knowledge, intent). That’s where religion “lives”. An interior disposition rightly oriented toward God (Religious!) leads us to seek and do the Good and to follow God. We obviously make mistakes, but it’s our intent and our efforts that God will judge by, as much as the acts themselves.
But what if a person is spiritual but not religious? Are they bound for hell, like the fallen angels? Without a religious disposition that seeks to do the will of God, and therefor without a real, spiritual connection to God, to grace, and to the sacraments, such a person has a very long climb up a very steep hill ahead of them in terms of salvation. The truth is, they may not make it to the top, but they could. Many won’t, but some will. (I explain this in Afterthoughts, for paid-subscriber, at the end of this post)
All human beings are spiritual, so that’s nothing to brag about as something that makes one exceptional or gifted. We all not only have a spiritual “self” but we have a natural connection to the transcendental, and the eternal. But we are also naturally religious. Even atheists are. We all orient ourselves toward a god. It may be the god of pleasure, the god of humanism, the god of power, or it may be the God of Abraham (the true God). We’re made for God, we’re made for seeking out and finding Him, and so we’re made to be religious. Those who claim to be spiritual but not religious are fooling themselves. They may not be capital-R “Religious” (rightly ordered interior disposition rightly ordered toward God) but they’re unavoidably lowercase-r “religious” (interior disposition ordered toward a false god). The fallen angels believed in the true God, but they were not capital-R Religious; they were instead lowercase-r “religious” choosing the god of their own pride over the true God. And what good did that do for them?
There’s a little more to the story, if you’re a paid subscriber supporting my work. My Afterthoughts can be found below.