I was recently contacted by an old acquaintance, who I haven’t spoken with in well over a decade, who had apparently “been saved,” or “found Jesus,” had “repented,” or undergone some other similar spiritual conversion event. The communication was supposedly for the express purpose of apologizing to me for various past wrongdoings, some of which were pretty bad by even generic or secular standards. But, in this case, those behaviors apparently seemed wrong in light of whatever conversion event had taken place since then—what had been done then was only later perceived as being un-Christian, or “un-Godly.” So, I got to wondering about what is, or should be, the standard for human morality. Is religion the rule to measure morality by? Is our conscience aligned, or should it be aligned, with theological standards? Is a religious person (Christian, Jewish, or whatever) held to a higher standard of basic morality than the average non-Church-goer, just because they believe in this or that system of eternal reward or judgement? Without getting into the eternal ramifications of morality (i.e., heaven, hell, reincarnation, etc.)—which is well above my spiritual paygrade—I’m going to try my best and punch these questions softly in the nose from a more human perspective with a very simple (perhaps over simplified) concept broken into three categories of attitudes, or states of being: holy, religious, and what I call “churchy.”
Those three words might mean something in particular to you, so I’ll define them in the sense that I’m using them. By the way, you won’t find this approach in any respectable book, formal moral system, or even Wikipedia—this is purely my modest opinion based on paltry things like human experience, theological reflection, and philosophical analysis. So, take it or leave it, chew it up, swallow it, spit it out, throw it against the wall and see if it sticks like good chocolate, whatever you like.
Being what I call religious also carries a whole lot of various connotations, depending on who you talk to. But, to keep it simple, to be religious is to be someone who is thoughtful, prayerful, active, and committed in one religious system or the other, either in a broad sense or a specific one. Obviously, there’s a wide gradient of levels of religiosity. It may surprise you to know that religiosity really doesn’t have a whole hell of a lot to do with morality, virtue, or holiness in anyone’s sense of the word. To say that someone is religious is simply a statement of fact. The person who attends Catholic mass every Sunday is religious in one degree, while the person who attends Buddhist temple meditation services every so often is religious in another degree, while the person who simply prays privately but never attends formal gatherings is religious is yet another degree, none of which indicating a single thing about whether one person would give their life for a total stranger or another is hiding dismembered bodies under their basement—it tells us nothing about a person’s holiness. All you can really say is that religiosity can be an excellent pathway to holiness for some, while perhaps not for others.
The third category is what I not-so-lovingly call churchy. This term may evoke imagery of anything from church-going women with gloriously elaborate hats to the wackadoo guy on the downtown street corner who shouts repentance to passing barflies while he beats a Bible against his fist. While that can be true, we also all know churchy people at every level of the description. They’re the ones who can scarcely utter a sentence without drizzling the words “Jesus,” “the Lord,” or “prayer” all over it like the free sprinkles by the soft serve machine. It doesn’t matter if you’re discussing the deepest depth of theological insight or the most mundane details of how to cook your morning waffles—to the churchy person, God is somehow intimately involved with everything and everyone.
Now, to be fair, if you’re a religious person, you should acknowledge that God (or whatever you call your particular transcendent divinity) is the source of all things and many thanks are in just order (and that, in that sense, God is intimately involved with everything). But, the hard truth is that not everyone running around in the world has the same beliefs. Hell, not even everyone in your religious social circle does. And, to be realistic, you may want to ask yourself who you’re spraying all that language for anyway. Last I checked, God didn’t have any more difficulty hearing a quiet prayer at a respectful volume than He did getting an ear full of thick preaching shouted from a mountaintop.
Undoubtedly, I have lost a few of you at this point. But, in my defense, what I’m really talking about here isn’t evangelism or prayerful thinking—it’s pageantry. To demonstrate my point, I’ll make use of a passage by JC himself on prayer (and what I would call churchiness):
I’ll point out a simple example of what I mean by “pageantry” in being churchy. When you go out to a restaurant, there’s a pretty sharp difference between the family at the next table that you may hear modestly praying over their meal before eating and the folks at the table at the other end of the restaurant who pray so loud that the whole restaurant can hear them (whether we like it or not). The former table is praying for God and themselves while the latter is praying for you to hear them—one is likely legitimately prayerful while the other is probably just pageantry. Last I checked, the Big Man upstairs, no matter what religious tradition you come from, didn’t need you to shout about it for Him to hear you (see 1 Kings 18:25-29).
So, by now you may be wondering what the point of all this is, and even wondering why this article is a good deal less professional and more whiney than the others. What it all comes down to is basic human decency and distinguishing what looks awesome from what actually is awesome. Now, I’m not saying by any means that churchy people necessarily aren’t or can’t be holy. But, what I am saying is that the two are totally independent of each other. Furthermore, as another fellow from the days of yore by the name of Saul of Tarsus* may have agreed: if you need religion or a religious text to tell you how to be a minimally decent person, then you’re probably doing basic decency wrong.
"It is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them.” (Romans 2:13-15)
St. Jerome, in the 5th century, even went so far as to say that if you weren’t personally developed enough to recognize simple human morality and the fundamental rules of living in the world, then you weren’t ready to interpret, or even read religious scripture yet (but, I’m heavily paraphrasing, of course).** Be religious, or don’t, and yes, even be churchy if you must, but above all, be holy and good to your fellow humans. It’s not really that hard. If someone is kind to you, not because their religion taught them to be, but for no other reason than the fact that it’s the right thing to do in this harsh and altogether unforgiving world we live in, then you know it really means something, and that person has the kind of holiness that sticks to the wall like good chocolate.