The Trap of Flimsy Spirituality
A case for religious institutions even though they kind of suck.
I’ve come to a place in my faith where I believe God takes many forms. He/she/they (because God is without gender) speaks and appears in many ways throughout time and across cultures. As a future spiritual director, I’ll be open to walking alongside folks from just about any religion, including those who don’t belong to any particular church, religion, or denomination. You can’t put God in a box, which is what most religions do whether they like it or not.
The rallying cry of many is “I’m spiritual but not religious.” There’s nothing inherently wrong with this. I don’t believe in a God who will disown you if you happen to choose a church theology just slightly off from the “right” answer. (Spoiler: We are fallible humans who don’t have the right answer.)
I admire the mystics, the people who walk on the fringes of their own religions and are sometimes willing to be shunned if it means they get to live out their faith in a way that reflects the truth of what they know of the divine. I can see the sense behind it when people who have this sort of mystical faith choose to meander their own path, leaving the too-tight confines of religious institutions behind them.
And yet, there is a danger here.
Religious institutions, for all their flaws (and my own Catholic Church has many) provide a foundation for our relationship with the divine. While they could certainly stand to be more welcoming to those who experience God in unique and different ways, or who push up against the edges of what is considered acceptable, their rigidity and slowness to change is in many ways an asset. It protects us from those who are wolves in sheep’s clothing, who would cause people who are sincerely seeking God to stray into a world of cultish followings, misplaced power, and consumerism.
In which I edit a book by someone in a cult
My work as a freelance editor introduces me to a wide variety of books, most of them nonfiction. A few months ago, a manuscript came across my desk that I’ve thought of at least weekly since then.
This book is a compilation of daily reflections for people who work in a particular industry. As I worked my way through the introduction, I found myself agreeing with many of the author’s premises: why reflection is important, how meditation can play a role in your mental and emotional health.
But then the author swerved into some very weird territory, describing a specific meditation practice and referring readers to a particular website. The website was . . . bizarre. I felt icky just reading about it—and not in the way some Christians feel when they encounter rituals of religions they aren’t familiar with. Icky like “there’s some manipulation happening here.”
I Googled further. You all, it’s a cult. Not a particularly successful one by the looks of it, but still.
The leader claims to be an incarnation of God, concerned Redditors are posting about their family members who are caught up in this mess, and its premise actively twists Hindu and Buddhist teachings about reincarnation to make practitioners believe that these people have the answer to escaping the cycle of rebirth!1
Because, oh yeah, they have alllll sorts of meditation meetings available—on Zoom, in person, one-on-one, at retreats—for a price, of course. And their meditation and mindfulness method (the one they stole from Eastern religions and contemplative Christian prayer practices) is the only one that actually works. Because that’s the only way to find your true inner self!
*insert me, rolling my eyes all the way into the back of my head.*
Friends, you do not have some secret, hidden inner power. Anyone who tells you otherwise, to quote The Princess Bride, is selling you something.
The unfortunate intertwining of capitalism and spirituality
Cults like this not only manipulate people, they also tend to operate on a similar wavelength as the bootstrapper MLMs who insist that you will earn your money back and be wildly successful if you try hard enough and believe in yourself. Anyone who’s watched the LuLaRoe documentary, listened to The Dream podcast, or been on Instagram for more than five minutes knows that these sales pushes are also typically tied in with faith. Specifically, the prosperity gospel.
People who join MLMs are often convinced that it’s part of God’s plan for them. Even if they don’t believe in the traditional God of Christianity, they often claim to believe in something. The universe, or their own inner wisdom. They’re taught that if they think the right thoughts, manifest the right things, have enough (toxic) positivity, they will be both rich and capable of avoiding the very reality of pain and sickness and heartache and death that makes us human.
It’s all just another way to tie spirituality—this sacred thing that should be beautiful and available to everyone at all times—to money. The one realm that capitalism shouldn’t be able to touch seems to be incredibly susceptible to common tactics in sales, marketing, and manipulation.
No, you do not have access to some secret, inner power that can only be yours if you sign up for the right course or meditation retreat or essential oil blend or peppy life coaching. No, there is not a spiritual guarantee that if you only think of “love and light,” nothing bad can touch you.
What you do have is access to the God of the universe all day and all night, for free. The Creator has given you your intuition, your intellect, your preferences and personality. This is not something you need to pay any sort of guru or thought leader to help you acquire.
That’s not to say there aren’t professionals who can help. Certainly therapists, pastoral counselors, chaplains and pastors, and *ahem* spiritual directors can be part of your journey toward noticing God and deepening your relationship with the divine. But someone who requires thousands of dollars so they can tell you to manifest something with your “inner power”?
No, thank you. That is a money-changer’s table that needs to be flipped over with all the righteous anger we can muster.
Institutional religion: a flawed foundation
If cura personalis is care for the whole person, then this “good vibes only” version of spirituality strips us of that wholeness. You cannot truly care for someone while denying them the ability to feel and process pain, grief, and longing. You cannot claim to have access to some higher plane of existence if you won’t let your followers experience the fullness of life on this plane.
Our religious institutions—those incredibly flawed, power hungry, sometimes abusive spaces—do, admittedly, serve as a form of checks and balances against this “spirituality” that is nothing more than a money grab and an invitation to bury your head in the sand. Our various churches ground us in theology and doctrine that is, if not perfect, at least hopefully solid enough to prevent a descent into the quicksand of feel-good manipulation.
This is a function religions serve when they’re operating properly. When they’re not . . . well, they can be just as bad as the cult leaders, and doing it all in the name of God instead of “manifestation.”
I think part of the reason people so easily fall into feel-good spirituality is because our religious institutions have failed us. They have shown themselves to be places that will uphold appearances before the good of their people. They have twisted what scripture says to fit their own political agendas. They have become houses that at times worship power and greed.
I don’t fault anyone who walks away from their church under these circumstances. But still. Our religions are a foundation, and I’m trusting that this foundation can be repaired if enough good people are willing to continue standing up and saying, “This is not OK. Let’s do the hard work of making it better.”
In the Roman Catholic calendar, this is Holy Week, the culmination of Lent in which we relive the events leading up to Jesus’s death.
It’s not exactly a fun time. We walk the Stations of the Cross, we wash each others’ feet on Holy Thursday and remember Judas’s coming betrayal, we kneel before the cross on Good Friday, we wait in the darkness on Easter Vigil.
Holy Week is a reminder that we are invited to sit in the depths of grief and despair. God is love, but that doesn’t mean walking with God is all sunshine and rainbows. We encounter the divine in the fullness of all human emotions—even the hard ones.
There is no toxic positivity here. No prosperity gospel, no manifestations, no feel-good vibes, no successful MLMs.
We are not called to rely on our own inner knowing. It’s not our job to manifest a happy life. It is our job to repair the cracks in our church institutions, to weed out those who would abuse or exploit others.
To be a light from within that not only keeps the darkness of power-hungry manipulators at bay but that calls to those who are on the outskirts and the fringes, saying, “Yes, God is for you too.”
There is a lot to say about the stripping of spiritual practices from Eastern religions to fit the feel-good manifestations of Western “gurus.” I’ve started and stopped many essays on the topic, but for now I’ll leave it at this: It’s wrong, and it needs to stop.