At their best, religious and spiritual communities help us discover this pure and naked spiritual encounter. At their worst, they simply make us more ashamed, pressuring us to cover up more, pushing us to further enhance our image with the best designer labels and latest spiritual fads, weighing us down with layer upon layer of heavy, uncomfortable, pretentious, well-starched religiosity.
Interpretation
The quote critiques how religious communities can either inspire genuine spirituality or create shame and pretentiousness.
Brian D. McLaren highlights the dual roles of religious and spiritual communities. At their best, these communities foster authentic spiritual experiences that connect individuals to deeper truths. However, at their worst, they can impose societal pressures that lead to superficiality and shame, compelling individuals to present a curated version of themselves filled with pretentious practices and beliefs, ultimately detracting from true spiritual growth.
In practice
A speaker at a spirituality conference uses this quote to emphasize the importance of genuine spiritual practices over superficial ones.
We must never underestimate our power to be wrong when talking about God, when thinking about God, when imagining God, whether in prose or in poetry. A generous orthodoxy, in contrast to the tense, narrow, or controlling orthodoxies of so much of Christian history, doesn't take itself too seriously. It is humble. It doesn't claim too much. It admits it walks with a limp.
Jesus doesn’t dominate the other, avoid the other, colonize the other, intimidate the other, demonize the other, or marginalize the other. He incarnates into the other, joins the other in solidarity, protects the other, listens to the other, serves the other, even lays down his life for the other.
To be a Christian in a generously orthodox way is not to claim to have the truth captured, stuffed, and mounted on the wall
We’re seeking — imperfectly at every turn, no doubt — an incarnational theology, a theology that brings radical good news of great joy for all the people, good news that God loves the world and didn’t send Jesus to condemn it but to save it, good news that God’s wrath is not merely punitive but restorative, good news that the fire of God’s holiness is not bent on eternal torment but always works to purify and refine, good news that where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.
But life is short: while one lives, everything is lacking; when one is dead, everything is superfluous.
The magnitude of the punishment matches the magnitude of the sin. Now a sin that is against God is infinite; the higher the person against whom it is committed, the graver the sin-it is more criminal to strike a head of state than a private citizen-and God is of infinite greatness. Therefore an infinite punishment is deserved for a sin committed against Him.
An evil for these times destined to move through the world in handsome human guise.
But truly, if I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.
So you find yourself surrounded by death and horror in the world, and you escape it into lust. But lust has no duration; it leaves you again in the desert.
I have heard something said about allegiance to the South. I know no South, no North, no East, no West, to which I owe any allegiance.
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