The Portrait of the Lord Jesus Christ by Georgiana Houghton

I’ve heard people say they were spiritual but not religious. That usually meant they didn’t go to church. We separate our worlds into that of the spirit and of reality (the physical world that we can observe.) In my opinion, that is an arbitrary and false dichotomy. We can get sidetracked into debating about spiritualism, the unconscious, extra sensory perception, and mindfulness. I like to simplify the issue and say that religion is the history of our search for God. Christians believe that we access him/her via the Holy Spirit. We could argue for decades what that is. We have taken different paths and directions over the millennia and come to different conclusions about the nature of God.

Some define religion as an organization. We call them synagogues, mosques, temples, and churches. I like the phrase that the church is not a building or a doctrine; it is a community of believers. That is, a group of people who share common beliefs. The problem with that definition is that is seems today that we have so little in common about anything anymore. We are so splintered into polar extremes on every issue. It doesn’t matter whether it is about economics, politics, religion, sex, governing, or social norms. Even within our churches we have become more fractured. The United Methodists are just one of the more recent denominations to be splintered into pieces.

As our economies have become more global, our individual mindsets and view of the world have become narrower. We lack the empathy to see things from different points of view. We have become prisoners of our own experiences. The world is viewed as black or white, and good or evil, so it is ever more difficult to find universal truths or common perspectives.

The Pandemic of Covid-19 upset the relative stability of world order of the past 70 years as we descended into chaos and fear. We lacked leadership to see solutions to our problems or even the confidence to believe in the possibility of a better future. Where did we lose hope? A deep cynicism based on fear has poisoned our souls. Peace is not merely the absence of war. Peace requires a reasonable calm and rational approach to conflicts and a faith in the potential good of humanity. How can we recover our innocence as children of God?

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