Very wise post.
I also grew up in a Christian family: we didn't go to church, yet we stuck to Christian 'empty' dogmas. I never resonated with religion, and my family found it shocking when I declared that I don't believe in the Christian God.
Jesus and Buddha were two men that followed their own path and made their own values and rules. People decided to follow them and take their word as sacred and immutable, and like Nietzsche's 'herd', they followed like sheep and forgot that their exact role in the world is that of evaluating and creating one's own morality.
'Empty' religions are for keeping up appearances, whereas spirituality is a state of being (and becoming).