The Subtle Obstruction to Real Connection - Part 1 - Religion

A few days ago I kicked off a series of articles where I make the claim that our cultures tendency to objectify people, often ignorantly, has led to an inability to have a real connection with another human. The idea being I am engaged in this relationship to get something for myself. Initially this seems our need to do this is pretty obvious...survival of the fittest right? But does our need to fight for ourselves and look out for number 1 really satisfy us? I believe we have created behavioral norms in many parts of our society that has led to the rise of mental health disorders, anxiety, depression and isolation.

Religion is the one I want to talk about today -

I want to be careful to throw religion into a terrible light. I am highly spiritual and have a community of people that I keep close to all things happening in my life. And in the Book of James in the Bible pure religion is defined as:

   "27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world."

This is obviously a worthy ambition, to take care of widows and orphans. However, thats rare in religious institutions. The norm for most institutions is leadership using control methods of its constituents to feel good about itself or people attending these institutions, fitting into the mold to meet some sense of spiritual inadequacy.

With both camps of people using each other, most institutions slowly fade from any sort of relevance in the community and the meetings become more and more stale - there is minimal real human connections - regardless of the spiritual beliefs -

Unfortunately, this was my norm for over 20 years, both as a attender and as a leader. It would go something like this -

A few key leaders would get together and ask the question how can we bring more people into this? Most of these leaders would lack the courage to just invite their friends or neighbors or people they work with - and so they will come up with a list of things they can do to "sell" their meetings to the general public. Maybe it will be have a carnival, serve beer, bring in a comedian so on and so forth. Now from the outside looking in no problem. However what you can't see in most people is the danger in that question -

               "how can we bring more people into this?"

The problem here is you just became a salesperson. You are trying to use people to grow your religious beliefs/institutions. I understand that most religions encourage its participants to spread their ideology which I am not opposed to. What I am opposed to is using sales tactics and manipulation to get people into your ideology. I have never bought something from someone that walks up to my door and tries to sell me a product. However, I have had friends and family tell me about a product or investment that they recently got into in which I followed suit. The difference is, there was no agenda from my family/friend outside of the two of us having a real human connection. When someone I don't know is trying to sell me a religious ideology that clearly has no regard for actually caring about me - no thanks.

If you want to know if you as a leader or a spiritual leader that you are following are objectifying people just ask them how their institution is going. If they are discouraged by the number of people then I would doubt they really care about the people. I would suggest that they are using people in religious context to feel better about themselves...thats a lonely place, and it won't end well

We also have people showing up out of this weird guilt spiritual inferiority complex. You will usually see them on a spiritual holiday, after making a series of poor choices, or when they are fed up by life experiences.

Now, the problem here is spirituality exists way beyond the physical. How does showing up to some spiritual meeting make you spiritual. Is it because you chant/pray/dance correct? IS it because you repeat after some guy in the right tone of voice? I refer back to my first meme - why do you show up? Most people show up with the goal of being seen so that people will ascribe some sense of spirituality to them and they can go on with their lives feeling less bad about themselves. Bummer way to live.

Let me just say if the Creator that you are trying to follow just wants you to go to some meeting for an hour a week to try and help you wipe the butt of your soul - you have a small Creator...my suggestion would be stop lying to yourself and to people.

Again, I am deeply spiritual and feel quite connected to my Creator and to my community. Please don't objectify people in religious context. Its death, both to you and to the environment. It creates irrelevance, loneliness, and lame people. If you have a desire to seek out your Creator, start in your bedroom, or with the religious text. If your God is unavailable to you without the help of some person I suggest a new God. As you grow your own experiences with you Creator, then by all means seek out others wisdom and insight - they will be of incredible help to your story and your life will be marked by real human connections and not fake ones.