Religion and Ethics
All the world’s major religions, with their emphasis on love, compassion, patience, tolerance, and forgiveness can and do promote inner values. But the reality of the world today is that grounding ethics in religion is no longer adequate. This is why I am increasingly convinced that the time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics beyond religion altogether.
Dalai Lama
The above quote from the Dalai Lama serves as one of many examples of the tendency by international leaders to gravitate to a one-world standard for everything, including ethics. I will address that trend at another time; the purpose of this essay is to define the difference between religion and spirituality and to show why religion is losing its influence.
Spirituality is truth and knowledge. Religion is man’s finite understanding of infinite truth. It is feminine in nature in that it materializes and personalizes the impersonal truth of the unseen.
Spiritual thought comes to this world from the written and/or spoken word of spiritually advanced individuals. The institutionalization of finite expressions of infinite truth becomes religious doctrine and is limited by the relative spiritual development of those who maintain the institutions and read the spiritual texts and teachings upon which the institutions are based.
Sects splinter off from primary religious groups due to the differences in interpretation of the original material provided, a natural occurrence making for a common bond of those with a particular understanding. All major religions have multitudes of sects reflecting the relative understanding of its members, thereby providing sustenance for all levels of understanding.
Why have the religions that provided the basis for moral behavior for millennia lost their influence? The truth contained in all the great spiritual texts and preached by the various prophets has not changed. It cannot change. There are no old or new truths. There is only truth—it never changes—that’s what makes it the truth.
It is the perception of the truth that changes. If society moves upward in the spiritual realm understanding of the scriptures will increase, and if it moves downward its understanding will decrease. The last half of the 20th century witnessed a huge focus on materialism by Western society, which overshadowed increases in spiritual understanding that were beginning to sprout.
At this point I ask the reader to review A Gender History of Europe – Part 2, which explains that Europe stands alone as a continent devoid of spiritual tradition and practice. It imported a spiritual text from Asia, lost much of its knowledge in translation, and made a rule book out of what was intended to serve as a spiritual training manual.
The gross materialism of Western thought smothered any influence the Bible had on personal conduct because there was never a tradition of worship, respect for the environment, reverence for ancestors, or family focus. Home, roots, family, and tradition had very little influence in society, especially in the United States. The social structure of society was predicated on consumption and self-indulgence.
As society increased its focus on making money it decreased what little focus it had on the propagation of the species and spiritual growth. The purpose of men and women changed from collectively bringing life into this world, nurturing it, and developing moral behavior and spiritual awareness; instead it focused on learning money making skills so that they could amass material things and enjoy the self-indulgent life.
Women were lured out of the home so that they could get their fare share of money. The need for fathers and mothers in that cultural paradigm decreased as the government began feeding more children than mothers did, and providing more discipline and direction than fathers did. In that form of societal arrangement where would the implementation of religious teachings take place?
Religious practice cannot take place in a vacuum. There has to be a place where children are taught to pray, say grace, respect for elders, reverence for all things. The state doesn’t provide such an environment; to the contrary, it inhibits references and practices to God or spirituality.
The center for religious learning and practice is the family. With the deliberate emasculation of the male and the removal of his authority the family broke down, the government took control of society, and religions lost their influence.
The religions of the world will probably change for reasons stated earlier, but the truths upon which they are based will not. What the world needs is a return to the family as the focus of societal activity, and it will happen. A multitude of prophets have forecast the end of grossly materialistic societies. The current one is no exception. Solomon said there was nothing new under the Sun and Isaiah stated that we shall rebuild on the old foundations and that we will become known as the rebuilders. That day is close at hand.
E.G.
