I suppose that a lot can be said about spirituality. An untold number of books have been written about it. Whole libraries could be devoted to this single subject. And if you stood on a street corner and asked passersby what they thought the definition of spirituality is, you’d likely get a lot of different responses. So I’m not sure that any simple and concise definition is sufficient, but basically, I think, spirituality is about the awareness of a power at work in the universe that somehow escapes our physical senses.
Once an individual becomes aware of this power, this underlying presence that is not readily apparent, then the individual may be driven to ask a certain question: is there any validity to this awareness, am I actually detecting something that has a reality that is independent of my individual experience, or am I manufacturing the experience on some level, even unconsciously? Since the nature of that which is being experienced is by definition outside the realm of observable and measurable phenomena, then the validity of the experience can not be proven. I think this is where faith comes in. Will the individual chalk up the experience to a personal fluke? Or will the individual decide to believe in the experience?
Organized religion can be a means of exploring one's experience of the spiritual, find ways of talking about that experience, and have one’s faith in the experience bolstered by others who claim to have experienced something similar.
Since it is not possible to prove the validity of spiritual experiences, one would think that those who have had the experiences would remain humble. And of course, many do remain humble. Even many of those who choose to utilize organized religion to express their faith remain humble. But there are many who do not. They get bogged down in dogma, and they demand that they understand their experience in absolute terms, and rather than admitting to any doubt, they show a willingness to demand that others accept as true what they can not prove.
Fundamentalist Christians insist that they have a failsafe formula for determining the absolute truth of their faith. They claim that interpreting the Bible in literal terms is the only way of knowing their god. They claim that nothing of themselves exists in their interpretations. They insist that it’s all matter of fact and straight forward. But is it?
I find it odd that if the fundamentalist god were real, and if this god actually intended to punish us for eternity for failing to understand the godly message, the fundamentalist god would choose to communicate with us through an ancient, long, meandering anthology that can be and has been interpreted in a number of ways, even by fundamentalists.
The most pernicious aspect of fundamentalism, I believe, is this idea that literalism provides fundamentalists a means of expressing their faith in concrete terms. There is no mystery. There is no doubt. It’s all presented as cut and dry. This seems insane to me. Most of us are staggeringly ignorant of a great many things. Some of us don’t understand the lunar cycle. Some of us don’t understand how the TV works. Some of us couldn’t fix the toilet if our lives depended on it. And there are those among us who insist that not only do they know for a fact that their god is real, but they demand that they know in absolute terns what this god thinks and wants.
I think it’s interesting that modern fundamentalists focus so much of their attention on abortion and homosexuality. Isn’t it odd that a religion that is supposedly based on the precept that their god is love and that the most essential aspect of their morality is treating one’s neighbor as one’s self could be boiled down to an intense disgust of abortion and homosexuality?
What do you suppose links these two concerns? It has been well documented that the lack of reproductive freedom relegates women to second-class citizenship. It helps keep them poor and dependent. And the revulsion of homosexuality means that heterosexual men will be revered. So it seems fundamentalism heavily favors patriarchy.
Call me a skeptic, but I suspect that fundamentalism has little to do with spirituality. I think it’s a means to allow fundamentalists to gain a superior status in our society, protect that status, and attack anyone who might pose a threat to their status. And I think it’s a way for fundamentalists to fool themselves into believing that they are good, decent people while acting out in an extremely selfish way.
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