#Spiritual, But Not Religious

In CNN's recent post on their religion blog, Alan Miller discusses the popular idea of being, "Spiritual, but not religious". In the article he presents the idea that "spiritual but not religious" is a convenient way of reaping the potential benefits  of faith in the Divine without having to commit to any form of structure and accountability.


He writes, 

"Moreover, the spiritual but not religious reflect the "me" generation of self-obsessed, truth-is-whatever-you-feel-it-to-be thinking, where big, historic, demanding institutions that have expectations about behavior, attitudes and observance and rules are jettisoned yet nothing positive is put in replacement.

The idea of sin has always been accompanied by the sense of what one could do to improve oneself and impact the world.

Yet the spiritual-but-not-religious outlook sees the human as one that simply wants to experience "nice things" and "feel better." There is little of transformation here and nothing that points to any kind of project that can inspire or transform us."

In our culture where so many claim to "hate religion but love Jesus", are we just looking for ways to eat our spiritual cake and have it too?