Religion and Spirituality?

[rocala]

Recently, somewhere on the internet, I came across the question "do we need the institution of religion to enjoy the benefits of spirituality?"
From the comfort zone of my own pick and mix style spirituality, I would once have said no. Of recent years, however, that certainty has weakened, and continues to do so.

What does the institution of religion offer, and can it enhance the spiritual life of somebody in ways otherwise unavailable?

 

[muhammad_isa]

What does the institution of religion offer, and can it enhance the spiritual life of somebody in ways otherwise unavailable?

Mankind is in need of family/community.
The life of a hermit is not ideal .. we are spiritually stronger in company of those with
a like mind .. of those that are righteous, so that we may avoid entanglement with evil.

 

[Longfellow]

Recently, somewhere on the internet, I came across the question "do we need the institution of religion to enjoy the benefits of spirituality?"
From the comfort zone of my own pick and mix style spirituality, I would once have said no. Of recent years, however, that certainty has weakened, and continues to do so.

What does the institution of religion offer, and can it enhance the spiritual life of somebody in ways otherwise unavailable?

I don't think there's any single answer to that question, because the words "religion" and "spirituality" have a wide range of meanings from one person to another. One example of what the question might mean is, do we need churches to benefit from the all the possibilities in the teachings of Jesus? I would say that to benefit from all the possibilities, people need to study and practice His teachings together in a community. Not in a commune isolated from the rest of society, but in a neighborhood or village, learning together to live the way He says to live.

I don't think that Christian churches provide everything that people need for that purpose, but they can facilitate it in some ways if they choose to do so. They can and often do also distract and divert people away from it.

 

[Thomas]

Without going into personal conviction, I think everyone can guess what that answer would be.

Here's a couple of quotes I picked up second-hand from the late Prof. Huston Smith's The World Religions:

"If we take the world’s enduring religions at their best, we discover the distilled wisdom of the human race."

(This is my cri de cœur, too often, and too casually, on this forum all that's rehearsed is religions' bleak and blighted history – there is not only a lack of insight, but a lack of the desire of insight – the low hanging fruit proves too easy and too attractive – I apologise if this offends anyone, I don't mean to, it's just the way I see it.)

And texts picked from here offer a kind of narrative thread:

"The full-story of religion is not rose-colored; often it is crude."

"Institutions are not pretty. Show me a pretty government. Healing is wonderful, but the American Medical Association? Learning is wonderful, but universities? The same is true for religion… religion is institutionalized spirituality."

"Given the choice – to remain aloof as disembodied insights or to establish traction in history by institutionalizing those insights – religion chose the wiser course."

+++

"Reality is steeped in ineluctable mystery; we are born in mystery, we live in mystery, and we die in mystery. Here again we must rescue our world from time’s debasement, for 'mystery' has come to be associated with murder mysteries, which, because they are solvable are not mysteries at all. A mystery is that special kind of problem for which the human mind has no solution…"

"The goal of spiritual life is not altered states, but altered traits."
(emphasis mine)

+++

"Authentic religion is the clearest opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos enter human life."

"Without attention, the human sense of wonder and the holy will stir occasionally, but to become a steady flame it must be tended."

"We are a blend of dust and divinity."

+++

 

[rocala]

I found the opening comments of this video to be relevant to this thread. Muhammad's comment about the need for family/community is, in my opinion, undeniably true. In the video, Rupert Sheldrake adds the ideas of place and continuity to the mix. This immediately struck a chord with me.
I have visited St Jame's Piccadilly and Iona Abbey, only to later find that I had ancestral connections to them. I made return trips and the experience was enriched by my new knowledge.