Spiritual versus Religious
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He was lying to himself and to everyone else. He was one of the outstanding manipulators of human history.
Hi Mayflower,
I guess I think of spirituality as being the inner connection with God, with others, like what you say, and religion is what we do in this world, like caring for the husbandless and the fatherless, or, for others, collecting bottle caps, religiously!
Someone who can relate to your relationship with God can be a real treasure! I think we can sometimes find them in looking for people who are doing the good things.
I keep thinking about what you wrote here. We can make connections on the religious level, even doing good things, but the fellowship we have when we are more spiritually in tune is deeper I think.
This is good to think about! I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the thread.
Much love!
Hi Scott,
Are you saying here that this isn't God teaching us in the modern day to care for the fatherless and husbandless?
Much love!
Be ye imitaters of me, as I also imitate Christ.
Or, like we use to say, fake it til you make it.
Oh yeah!
Still doing that, by the way . . .
We just need to make sure we're telling the full story.
To me that means pointing people to Jesus, (spirituality), and showing what that looks like (religion). Not religion for the sake of religion, but religion as a result of spirituality.
Much love!
I'd have to say the divide between redeemed and unredeemed humanity far exceeds any division within the redeemed.
Much love!
Hi Stranger,
Not read other replies yet, but to me, spirituality includes relationships with my Chirstian neighbors, I think I forgot to specify that earlier.
Christ in me and Christ in you makes us one.
Much love!
This is how I feel about it. While I don't accept all the doctrines taught, the love connection seems totally real. We can disagree over doctrine, but it's much harder to disagree over love.
Much love!
I think people may feel less vulnerable by doing those things which would come from spirituality, without that spirituality, so they can say, see, I look like a duck, and quack like duck, eh?
Without having to actually do the life of being a duck.
much love!
Because God hates, does that mean I should hate?
And what does it mean when we say God hates? Oops. that should be a new thread. No one reply.
Much love!
Good question!
If God hated Esau, and told me to love Esau, then I would be wrong to hate him, and right to love him.
What God does is not always right for me to do.
Much love!
ScottA
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All,
I love it that so many consider turning to the Spirit to apply the good things of God to every facet of life in the world. But when I hear it described as the definition of what spirituality is, it makes me do a double-take to see if I am right-side-up, or if the world has turned upside-down. And indeed it has.
God is spirit, and for spiritual things we should be looking up, not down to the things of the world. Spirituality is not a fix-the-world remedy given by God, but rather a lifeline to follow to escape the world, a path to "follow" and be lead free of it.
There is a reason that so many turn to worldly "applications" of spiritual things...but it is for all the wrong reasons. That is not to say that for some, even many, what would appear to be spiritual applications, is not the result of the Spirit bringing forth genuine works of the Spirit. But for the most part, what is preached and talked about is "applications", not for the profit of the kingdom, but only for making the world a better place, as if wanting to call it home. But this is not our real home. And that reason that has caused so many to turn to "applications", comes from the other things that were preached and written at the same time; which things were to be our guide into a long and drawn out future known as the church age. It wasn't instructions to fluff our nest. Even the counsel of fellowship and relations and order in the church, were not to be adopted as a lifestyle, but rather as preparation and provision for the long road ahead. But we have made that lifestyle law and doctrine; and like Israel, many have missed the Lord coming "quickly", which began that first generation after the crucifixion. We have become a people of "self-help." Like the world, our bookshelves are full of evidence of our self-care, our relationships, and our world.
Our world? When did that happen? Jesus's kingdom is not of this world.
So...it would be my counsel to move the "applications" way of doing "church" off the top-10 priority list, and as Jesus said..."seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness" and let those things take care of themselves by the works of the Spirit that will naturally take place. "Let the dead bury the dead" and "be anxious for nothing", certainly not for "the cares of this world."
Then and only then, will we come to appreciate the true spiritual nature of God, which is "His righteousness." But for now...I am not sure we are even ready to talk about it. Bummer.
I love it that so many consider turning to the Spirit to apply the good things of God to every facet of life in the world. But when I hear it described as the definition of what spirituality is, it makes me do a double-take to see if I am right-side-up, or if the world has turned upside-down. And indeed it has.
God is spirit, and for spiritual things we should be looking up, not down to the things of the world. Spirituality is not a fix-the-world remedy given by God, but rather a lifeline to follow to escape the world, a path to "follow" and be lead free of it.
There is a reason that so many turn to worldly "applications" of spiritual things...but it is for all the wrong reasons. That is not to say that for some, even many, what would appear to be spiritual applications, is not the result of the Spirit bringing forth genuine works of the Spirit. But for the most part, what is preached and talked about is "applications", not for the profit of the kingdom, but only for making the world a better place, as if wanting to call it home. But this is not our real home. And that reason that has caused so many to turn to "applications", comes from the other things that were preached and written at the same time; which things were to be our guide into a long and drawn out future known as the church age. It wasn't instructions to fluff our nest. Even the counsel of fellowship and relations and order in the church, were not to be adopted as a lifestyle, but rather as preparation and provision for the long road ahead. But we have made that lifestyle law and doctrine; and like Israel, many have missed the Lord coming "quickly", which began that first generation after the crucifixion. We have become a people of "self-help." Like the world, our bookshelves are full of evidence of our self-care, our relationships, and our world.
Our world? When did that happen? Jesus's kingdom is not of this world.
So...it would be my counsel to move the "applications" way of doing "church" off the top-10 priority list, and as Jesus said..."seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness" and let those things take care of themselves by the works of the Spirit that will naturally take place. "Let the dead bury the dead" and "be anxious for nothing", certainly not for "the cares of this world."
Then and only then, will we come to appreciate the true spiritual nature of God, which is "His righteousness." But for now...I am not sure we are even ready to talk about it. Bummer.
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ScottA
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No, not at all, but rather to understand the bigger picture and the bigger reason for God's giving worldly advice. There is certainly nothing wrong with caring for those worldly needs, but God's plans are much bigger. Such things are merely our schoolmaster. Surely we should take into account that greater agenda.
In that bigger agenda He is building a new heaven and a new earth, a kingdom. In which the concern and directive is not so much those without worldly fathers and husbands, but heavenly.
Hi Scott,
I feel like this is a great post, but I also feel a little left behind in what you're saying.
I think I understand better some of the differences in how we speak of things. Please correct me if I'm wrong here. It seems you are saying that the teachings about how to live life and do church and all that were meant to be the starting gate, and we've codified them so that we just stay there. Is that kind of it?
And so we shouldn't be looking at the material, instead the material, with the expectation that all that is needed to be done through us will be done as a natural outworking of the Spirit in us.
Am I getting this? Or are you trying to say something different?
Much love!
aspen
“"The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few
In response to my own thread, I need to add another idea about Hell. I believe the world is building Hell right now. We are becoming more isolated and more individualized as a society, everyday. Perhaps the ‘worldliness’ Christ has told us to avoid will be Hell one day - the environment is falling apart.....who knows, worldly people here may not really be headed anywhere. They may be forced to live in the world they have destroyed.
ScottA
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Now, I am not sure I follow youHi Scott,
I feel like this is a great post, but I also feel a little left behind in what you're saying.
I think I understand better some of the differences in how we speak of things. Please correct me if I'm wrong here. It seems you are saying that the teachings about how to live life and do church and all that were meant to be the starting gate, and we've codified them so that we just stay there. Is that kind of it?
And so we shouldn't be looking at the material, instead the material, with the expectation that all that is needed to be done through us will be done as a natural outworking of the Spirit in us.
Am I getting this? Or are you trying to say something different?
Much love!
The jest of what I am saying is, we were given the best direction from Jesus (quoted in post #115). But given the task of preparing the church for the many centuries and generations of the church age, much of the New Testament epistles address the endurance needed and the needs of people, along with the main focus given by Jesus. But because of the long and winding road, the church and most in it have taken on the mindset of it being all about the journey or the race, rather than the prize. But it was the prize that Jesus preached and insisted should be first in priority. And that prize is the "spiritual" kingdom of God, and not of the world and the church's preoccupation for tending to the flock while they "wait upon the Lord" and even preach it so.
Yet "waiting upon the Lord" was borrowed from the time before Christ--and now the church has been acting as if He has not already come, and promised to come "quickly." Which borrowing has made them more than partially blind to those things of the spirit of God. It has caused them to turn their focus to the counsel of the church fathers which was not supposed to take precedence over spiritual matters, but simply be a comfort. So we have traded worldly comfort under the heading of charity, for the spiritual promises given by Jesus.
Thus... at this point in church history "spiritual" has nearly become a bad word, or at best a "feel good" word for those "of little or no worldly good." God is spirit, and Jesus has joined the Father in spirit, and we are to "follow", but if this post is at all read, even this forum will light up with more against all that is spiritual, than for.
So, the idea of "spiritual vs. religion" is like a sick joke. After 2000 years of Jesus knocking on spiritual doors, I can just hear Him saying, "Are you kidding me? Playing church and repeating the elementary principles of salvation--is barely 'Feed My lambs.' What happened to "Feed and tend My sheep?"
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