THE ESSENCE OF SPIRITUALITY AND RELIGION

From where does our religious/spiritual impulse come? It seems to be the cornerstone of our nature. We require connection, whether it is the connection of a baby to his mother, a wife to her husband, or the husband to a job or a self-esteem-building occupation. We all need a sense of approval, of being a “somebody” who has value. In The Significant Life, attorney George M. Weaver identifies our drive to establish our self-importance:

·       Individual humans are not concerned so much about the survival of the species as they are about their personal survival or significance. In order to push ourselves beyond our confining space-time limits, we as individuals try to set ourselves apart from the rest of humanity. It is unsettling to admit that one is average or ordinary – a routine person. (7)

Weaver documents this human impulse in many ways:

·       Salvador Dali once said, “The thought of not being recognized [is] unbearable”…Lady Gaga sings, “I live for the applause, applause, applause…the way that you cheer and scream for me.” She adds in another song, “yes we live for the Fame, Doin’ it for the Fame, Cuz we wanna live the life of the rich and famous.” (7)

However, it doesn’t matter how many books we have published or how much acclaim we have achieved. The gnawing awareness that we are not good or esteemed enough remains.  We remain jealous of others’ attainments and hunger for more. Writer Gore Vidal had been very transparent about this:

·       “Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.” (58)

Essentially, we are social creatures who crave the approval, love, and respect of others, and when we don’t receive it, we become hurt and even angry. However, to depend on others for our sense of significance is self-defeating. It will make others feel pressured and creates a relationship of taking and not of freely giving. Besides, it will never be enough.

We were not made to be dependent upon others to determine our value. This is servitude. While this might be quite natural for a baby and even for a youth, true inner peace and maturity requires that we will eventually find our value apart from the approval of others. If we fail to do this, we, our opinions, and actions will inevitably be determined by our social context. Unless this need is met, we will continue in dependency despite our attainments. Weaver cites President Lyndon B. Johnson as an example of this:

·       According to one commentator, “It is a curious footnote to history that long before he ran into trouble, Johnson had turned central Texas into a living monument to his heritage and his journey to the summit (the L.B.J birthplace, the L.B.J. boyhood home, the L.B.J. state park, the L.B.J. ranch and more).” (22)

From where does this powerful impulse to find value and self-esteem come? It’s human. This is because our reality is basically relational. We were made to love and to be loved. This is reflected in the Biblical account of the Fall. Adam and Eve had been free of our feelings of guilt and shame. They felt so comfortable in their own skin that they went naked (Genesis 2:25).

Their Creator had forbade them only one thing – eating the fruit of a certain tree. However, one they disobeyed and ate the fruit, they were so overcome by guilt and shame that they could no longer bear the presence of God and hid from Him. Meanwhile, they were aware that something was terribly wrong within, and instead of confessing their sin to God, they decided that they could handle the problem themselves by covering their shame with a coat of fig leaves.

However, their refusal to confess blocked the possibility of reconciliation. Consequently, instead of deriving their sense of okay-ness from a sustaining and defining relationship with their Creator, they condemned themselves to the unsatisfying task of satisfying their most basic relational need through their own efforts to prove themselves worthy in the face of their underlying guilt and shame, which tells them, “You are not worthy or deserving.”

In order to mitigate these threatening feelings, we also resort to self-deprivation or even self-punishment to pay the price we know that we owe to regain a fleeting sense of worthiness and to reduce stress. Others resort to substances to reduce the pain.

Today, we no longer cover ourselves with fig leaves. Instead, we have found more socially acceptable objects to cover our stubborn feelings of our inadequacy – power, possessions, appearances, popularity, recognition, and a wide variety of attainments.

However, we find that these will not scratch the itch for long. Instead, we need ever-increasing doses of these valued drugs. If and when we recognize our flight, we try to break free to find an escape from these addictions and turn to spirituality to heal our insecurities.

This is where religion and spirituality (R/S) come in. In order to feel that we are worthy and deserving to combat our feelings of guilt and shame, R/S comes to the rescue by offering us absolution. How? By telling us how we can become worthy and deserving. Often times, it offers the afflicted many varieties of denial. For example, New Age guru, Eckhart Tolle, offers one popular solution:  “The ultimate truth of who you are is not I am this or I am that, but I Am!”

“I Am” is how the God of the Bible had identified Himself to Moses. Therefore, Tolle is counseling us to consider ourselves God. However, this requires massive doses of denial to suppress what we actually perceive about ourselves. Besides, denial doesn’t make our problems disappear. Instead, it serves as a temporarily comforting Band-Aid to cover over our problems and to look the other way.

Oprah Winfrey offers another form of denial:

·       “God is about a feeling experience, not a believing experience…A mistake we humans make is believing that there is only one way…There are many paths to what you call God…There couldn’t possibly be just one way…Do you think that if you never heard the name of Jesus but lived with a loving heart…you wouldn’t get to heaven?...Does God care about the heart or if you call His Son ‘Jesus?’” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwGLNbiw1gk

Winfrey also is in denial, claiming that we don’t have a specific underlying problem that needs to be addressed. Instead, we are free to pick whatever solution feels right for us. She then insists that it is the loving heart that makes us worthy in God’s sight.

But do we have godly loving hearts or is this just another form of denial? Most ancient religions acknowledge that we have a dark-side alongside of our brighter nature. While the Bible teaches that we are created in the likeness of God, we have evidently taken a wrong turn somewhere. Consequently, the Bible regularly denounces our rejection of the Creator:

·       There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.  All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one. (Romans 3:10-12)

What is the result? Alienation from the God who can give us what we actually need – forgiveness and reconciliation with Him! However, our sins have made God odious to us. After Adam and Eve sinned against the Source of their peace, they hid from God. Even after they were confronted by Him, they blame-shifted and lied about their transgression. Never once did they truly confess their sin and plead for His Mercy. Their sin had blinded them to the road of redemption. Instead, it seems that they gladly accepted God’s punishment – removal from God’s now glaring and intolerable presence oversight. Banished from their Source of peace and selfhood, they had condemned themselves to wander the land in search of alternatives, which could never give them what they had lost.

We too are self-condemned to wander in search of the Home we have rejected. Meanwhile, we are consumed with stress, anxiety, and self-absorption, trying desperately to prove our value. Jesus condemned this preoccupation of the ruling class. Although they hadn’t explicitly rejected their God, they had remodeled Him according to their specifications:

·       He [Jesus] said to them, "You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God's sight.” (Luke 16:15)

With this, Jesus condemned alternative R/Ss. Instead, we are to come to God on His terms according to who He is. Therefore, we have to search for the truth and not what feels right to us. I had been searching vainly for God according to my preferences. However, as I lied in a pool of blood after a horrific chainsaw accident, God revealed Himself to me, and I was ecstatic. As I bled towards death, I vowed that I would search for this God until I found out the truth about Him, even if this search would lead this Jew to Jesus.