If God is With Us, Why Does My Soul Feel Dead?
- Posted on November 12, 2008
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Yet, as many devotees of the burgeoning “spiritual-not-religious” denomination will tell you, they left the hallowed halls of organized faith because their religion was killing them - either softly or bluntly - and it was a matter of soul survival to leave. Certainly, there are those who do find a life-changing connection to God in their houses of faith. They discover meaning, experience awakening and redemption, and the impetus for following Jesus by doing good in the world. But to say that all those who remain within religion’s walls feel alive would be a lie. Christian denominations, in particular, seem to be suffering a vast soul-drain. Many church-goers confess a profound inner numbness, yet have simply accepted their inability to feel as the cost of being right about God. What a tragedy. We have a religion of God as concept, not as Person; a religion of the disconnected cerebellum; of mind, not body. Enchantment? Not likely, when we have made unholy any synapse that would enliven us to the God With Us and consequently, to God’s world, So Very Much With Us. As Advent approaches, how dare we sing O Come, O Come Emmanuel. An embodied God, human, bloodied, and wailing a newborn’s cry? Hardly. The Church’s current bent is more, The God-Not-With-Us. No wonder people are leaving, to save what is left of their souls.
And when they leave, they are improvising their own sacred spaces...individually and corporately. As religious “professionals”, we may wring our hands at their amateur, unguided attempts. We may call them back into the official gathered life, for fear they will stray from right thinking, right practice, right belonging. Even as we extol the benefits of meeting together (which are many), we ourselves may have a faith more dessicated than dedicated, and, like them, may be assembling the new sacred wherever we can...to save what’s left of our own souls.
Read the rest of Sally’s thoughts here...
What do you think?
Sally Morgenthaler writes, "In the introduction to Thomas Moore's, The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life, he gives us a glimpse into what energizes the human soul:
"The soul has an absolute, unforgiving need for regular excursions into enchantment. It requires them like the body needs food and the mind needs thought. Yet our culture often takes pride in disproving and exploding the sources of enchantment, explaining away one mystery after another and overturning precious shrines, dissolving the family farm that has housed spirits of civility for eons, or desecrating for material profit a mountain stream sacred to native residents. We have yet to learn that we can't survive without enchantment and that the loss of it is killing us."
I have been thinking a lot about this phenomenon of late: how many ways do we kill the soul? Materialism, workaholism, substance abuse, narcissism. But for many, religion is the chief murderer of the soul. This is a deep irony, as religion's time-worn job is to provide meaning. It is where humans have historically gone to find life, not execute it.
Comments
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Dave on Wed, November 12, 2008
IMHO Sally is confusing the “Divine” with the “mystical”. Yes there are many churchgoers who have no room in their theology for the mystical, But there are many dechurched individuals who feel connected with something mystical, but it is opposed to the one true God (e.g. Oprah’s Book Club recommendation by spritualist Eckhart Tolle).
I think it is like a person going to Outback Steakhouse and getting a bad steak so he chooses to go to the deserted Outback of Australia looking for a good steak and there he finds no steak at all.
Peter Hamm on Wed, November 12, 2008
“We have a religion of God as concept, not as Person; a religion of the disconnected cerebellum; of mind, not body.”
TOTALLY Amen! This is the problem with too many cerebral but apparently totally emotionally numb Christians and Christian teachers throughout our history, and we see it so much.
I love the words of Aaron Niequist’s song (which we are doing next week) “This world is enchanted, lean closer to see it, this world is enchanted, dare to breathe it in…”
We have the most marvelous, mysterious, enchanted, “magical” reality in the universe in God and Christ, far more than fakers like Tolle… Perhaps we should work harder to communicate that.
Gerry on Wed, November 12, 2008
I would love to respond to Sally’s comments, but I am just too busy planning next week’s service, next week’s message, and next week’s creative team planning meeting. Right now I just don’t have time to think about how to have a meaningful encounter with God!
Roger on Wed, November 12, 2008
As someone who has left organized religion for some of the very reasons you mention, I can affirm that I have found life outside of religion.
I’m not sure I’m improvising a sacred space though. Everything has become a sacred space. So, I would probably be considered one who has strayed from “right thinking, right practice, right belonging” (whatever “right” is). However, if I’m wrong, I don’t want to be right. Life if too good!
Peter Hamm on Thu, November 13, 2008
[However, if I’m wrong, I don’t want to be right. Life if too good!] interesting proposition. I wouldn’t want to believe that about my driving directions, or doctor’s instructions for a serious injury or something like that…
Gerry, I feel for you, sounds like your people need to step up a little more, so you can stop doing some things that you need to stop doing.
Jay Kelly on Sat, November 15, 2008
Peter, I’m pretty sure Gerry was being ironic.
Jay Kelly on Sat, November 15, 2008
Peter, re: your response to Roger (driving directions and doctor’s instructions), there are major differences between spiritual life and things like driving directions. Agreement on and quantification of results are at least a couple.
Re: Agreement . . .
If you’re trying to drive to the Best Buy next to the mall, you’re gonna get agreement among everyone on where it is. You may get differing suggestions on the route, but everybody will agree that, yeah, it’s right by the mall. If you follow directions that don’t get you there, then, well, you followed bad directions.
With the spiritual life, there’s no nearly as much agreement on what counts as success. Is it moral behavior? An internal sense of peace? Compassion toward others? A sense of God’s presence? All of the above? It’s not clear—even among people who all agree the Bible is the source of spiritual authority in their lives.
Re: Quantification . . .
If you make it to Best Buy successfully, there are ways to quantify that success. You see the sign out front, you see employees with Best Buy shirts on, etc.
Quantifying the results of spiritual life is more difficult. If I’m trying to quantify a sense of God’s presence, how do i do that? I’m pretty sure that’s some sort of internal feeling, but am I experiencing it more today than a year ago? What does ‘more’ mean? More intensely? More consistently? And given that it’s some kind of feeling, can I really be sure that my current experience is dramatically different than it was a year ago? And what if I realize that the ‘sense of God’s presense’ I have is exactly the same feeling I have when I see U2 perform ‘Original of the Species’? Does that mean I’m experience God at the U2 concert? Or that I’m experiencing something other than God when I have the same feeling at a church service?
That’s not to say that I’m deluded or lying to myself or something like that. It simply means that quantifying spiritual ‘results’ is much more difficult than quantifying the results of things like driving directions.
Bottom line: Roger would likely agree with you that you don’t want to have his same attitude toward driving directions. But that doesn’t mean his disposition toward spiritual matters is the same kind of thing.
buyu on Fri, January 02, 2009
Buyu, Medyum, Medyumlar, Cinler, Buyuler, Nazar, Fallar, Yildizname, Hipnoz, Telepati, Reankarnasyon, Horoskop, Yorum, Tarot, Palmistry, Numeroloji, Konusunda Lider Site..!
medyum on Mon, June 14, 2010
thank you nice article
sunday school program on Mon, February 21, 2011
We must remember that God is with us during all times, and that because we simply have the father in our life it does not make life any easier or harder to deal with. Remember to pray, and persist. Things do not change over night.
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