I thought I should button up this topic before I move on.

Spirituality is a modern buzzword more so than at any other time in human history of the past two millennia. The reason that I dare to question this concept is not to try to burst anyone’s bubble, to cast doubt upon their life of faith, but for two reasons.

The first reason is that many thoughtful people, those with a scientific background, especially in the behavioral sciences, recognize that there is no evidence for what we call spiritual being more than normal human emotional responses. Because they have built their lives on faith in a spiritual force (I know God is there because he speaks to me), yet recognize the lack of evidence for such a supernatural force, they feel they have no choice but to abandon their faith. It is for this group that I lose sleep. When the church makes these spiritual experiences the requirement for being a good Christian and relegates rationality as “spiritually inferior,” it forces those for whom objective truth is important to leave.

The second reason is about epistemology, or how we find truth in general. If you listen carefully to the popular gurus of progressive Christianity, Richard Rohr, Brian McLaren, and Rob Bell, all of whom are self-proclaimed postmodernists, you will hear the same mindset as Indiana Jones in the Dial of Destiny, “It doesn’t matter what you believe, but how hard you believe it.” The subjective spiritual experience becomes the defining issue, not the objective reality. Richard Rohr falsely claims that the historical Jesus was not interested in factual answers, but only in the spiritual exercise of asking questions. Why? Because, he claims, there are no answers (the defining assertion of postmodernistic philosophy).

To make this more practical, treating any spiritual experience as the sole defining feature of one’s religion, including Christianity, has and will have serious long-term consequences. Many Christians have now lost the ability to find factual truth. In the age of AI, this will only get worse. However, removing the requirement of an objective, factual basis for religious endeavors gives a sense of peace, which is why this idea is so popular. The feeling goes, I can be friends with a Buddhist even though they are saying the exact opposite of Christianity, that there is no personal God, because the substance of belief doesn’t matter, only the experience of believing, which we share.

I applaud their desire for peace. However, Jesus didn’t make peace dependent upon agreement. He made many assertions that were in contrast with even the Jewish society in which they lived. That’s why they murdered him, because of his viewpoint. But he championed peace as the fruit of love. In the same spirit, Thomas Aquinas wrote, “We must love them both, those whose opinions we share and those whose opinions we reject. For both have labored in the search for truth and both have helped us in the finding of it.”

Let’s take this view to the logical conclusion. Imagine a time warp in which your neighbors were from the pre-Columbian Inca Culture (Capacocha). Periodically, they come together for a spiritual worship service where they sacrifice the most beautiful children among the group in a drug-induced frenzy, where they cut the throats of the children and drink their blood. As a neighbor, believing that the spiritual experience and level of faith are the only thing that matters, you have no business questioning their behavior, as the level of emotional/spiritual ecstasy that they are experiencing within their drug-crazed service far outweighs any spiritual experience that you have had in a church, small group, or personal time of prayer.

Let’s take this to a more practical level. If the objective substance of belief doesn’t matter or even doesn’t exist, you have no basis for rejecting racism, bigotry, or hate. Additionally, there have been many cases of child sexual abuse by someone who believed that God said it was good. I know of one personally who made this claim. If they believe this with hard faith (as Indiana Jones alluded to), then the postmodernists, those who say only the faith experience is important, not the rationality of objective truth, then they have nothing to say to this pedophile.

I do believe that people like Rohr, McLearn, or Bell are leading a huge number of Christians away from rationality and objective truth for the sake of feelings/spirituality into the wasteland, and there they will be abandoned, standing on a foundation of sand… or nothing. One of the Greek words for “faith” in Hebrews 11 is “hupostasis.” This Greek word means “foundation,” like the stone foundation of a house. Something you know to be true, objectively. That you can trust. It is not a whimsical, irrational leap into the dark, as the modern world, heavily influenced by postmodernism, portrays it.

Conclusion

Lastly, I will state again, I am confident that human rationality and emotions are God-given, thus supernatural, yet not perfect. God is defined by rationality, as evidenced by the profoundly logical and mathematically precise way God has created the Cosmos. The idea that human rationality is “of the flesh,” or from our sinful nature, and that our emotions transcend into a perfect spiritual realm, was introduced by the dualistic Gonistics, not by the Bible.

Human rationality is the only normal means of knowing truth. Human emotions (which are often labeled as spiritual) are the only normal means of feeling the rightful good or bad, as a result of the truth that reason has found. I imagine that if you think you have a perfect truth, directly from God, through a spiritual channel, it is precarious at best, given the deceptive nature of human emotions when seeking truth. I know I have made bad decisions in my past, even when I was 100% convinced the decision was supernaturally guided by God, while my rationality at the time, like a red flashing light, warned that it would be a mistake. My rationality was correct, while my spirituality, I now believe, was normal human emotions, which are not equipped to find factual truth. He certainly, like Aquinas, didn’t say all truths are the same.

P.S. The MO of religion, in my perspective, is spiritual competition. “My piety is better than yours.” While the only mandate in the Bible for the Christian society is to meet to encourage one another, in some churches, confrontation and judgment await them inside their doors.

I am not naive. I know that my questioning of spirituality will be rejected by most, if not all. However, I want to be clear: I am not writing with the attitude of competition-“who is the better Christian.” This is not personal. But I feel compelled to write for the reason stated above.

I ask that you not take this as a personal attack; it is not. And, not to feel you must reciprocate by making a personal attack on me. I share Aquinas’s respect for those who disagree with me.

In Peace, Mike