I'm from Chicago and as a young adult the vast majority of my peers either:
A. sneer at the notion of any one faith or deity (especially the Judeo-Christian God), and tend to believe in a vague spirituality, karma or living as their own god.
B. blindly and legalistically follow a faith for tradition's sake not actually valuing or owning it at all, or desperately trying to earn their way into an angry god's graces. This is the religiosity you were referring to.
I subscribe to neither A or B, both common approaches to spirituality in my culture.
I would agree with this, although I hesitate to question the sincerity or critical thinking of the A Group of people, or at least, the same review should be done of those in the former camp (B Group). I'm from California, just FYI.
As for the former, I don't consider it "blind" so much as being based on family & cultural tradition and making/keeping social ties in their community. Their church is more like a community center where they forge emotional bonds with other people through shared worship. I won't sneer at that or belittle its value to others.
I do notice most of these people have not read the entire bible (or whatever holy book they claim to base their beliefs on), usually only a few commonly known verses. It's less about understanding, uh, "metaphysical" aspects of reality than having the social/community ties + some adoption of moral concepts to guide them & perhaps a little prayer & ceremony thrown in for something of a relationship with their God.
Does this aspect appeal to me? Not to so much. I do belong to an organized religion, but have often felt "on the fringe", not due to core beliefs, but
my reason for being there. I've found more of a niche when I started doing more volunteer work that involves a lot of spiritual mentoring of other people, because this felt like less of a social routine than actually relating and growing through discussion of beliefs and feelings and cultivating a more Christ-like mindset & lifestyle. There are also efforts to transcend national/cultural boundaries in practice & beliefs, whereas IMO, many other churches are nationalistic & too entrenched in cultural tradition to be any kind of vehicle for truth about the nature of the universe for me.
The latter (B), however, is extremely common in my age group, especially those who share non spiritual interests (ie. arty, intellectual types). I see blind adoption of atheism or vague, new agey "feel good" beliefs. There's some underlying idea that intelligent people are not religious or theist. That's only for the backwards, uncultured, nationalistic, conservative, [insert another degrading stereotype] American. From my perspective, such people are "sheep" as well
(although don't get me started on the distortion of that metaphor; a sheep is a beautiful thing)...following cultural trends to fit an image perhaps, but not humbly searching for truth. These people also have very little knowledge of what most ancient holy books say, or they take it out of historical context & interpret it very literally (ie. those who criticize the God of the Old Testament as "cruel"). I don't find them to be the independent critical thinkers they'd like to believe they are. I don't sneer at them any more than the other group though, because I understand the disillusionment with religion; I think much of it is corrupt, but I don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. I just see a parallel with these two groups...
Anyhow, the idea of picking and choosing beliefs to what suits one's existing feelings seems, well, insincere to me. It seems self-serving, a way to justify anything. People who say stuff like "my heart guides me" are not people I relate to. It reminds me of Cartman from South Park: "I don't care; I do what I want!". Were I to have that mindset, I'd be blinded by my own desires and conforming to my animal side, so I see my religion as freeing me from this, as well as from the cultural values which shift like sand & have little to do with spiritual truth. It's not a matter of conforming to religion, but being set free from one's own inner distortions, the pressures of the world to be power/money/sex driven, and myths about human nature & the spiritual dynamics in the world. I built faith in ancient holy books because I put aside cultural values and perceived the actual messages about the nature of the soul, what death is, who or what is "God", etc. What perceived made sense to me, the same way one can observe some system in nature and finally understand the end results (I'm thinking like water cycles or movement of planets). It's as if you have an answer to a math problem, and then you're asked to choose from several formulas which is the one that produced that answer. Well, I settled on my beliefs after studying and seeing an inner congruency within the framework as well as how it aligns with existing reality. It "made sense", it did not make me "feel good", although applying principles from these insights improve my happiness.
Anyhow, I don't like to discuss my religion, faith or spiritual beliefs much online, because it's quite vulnerable to me, but I thought I'd chime in on this one. So, no, I don't want to answer any questions, should anyone have any.
He loved people well in the face of death and ridicule, and firmly but peacefully defended the little man, the outcast and the shamed. I also love the time he flipped some tables in the temple out of righteous anger at the disrespectful dealings happening there. I mean, not to mention all of the healing, miracles and such.
