From Spiritual But Not Religious to Multidisciplinary Philosophy in Jesus´ Legacy

Pete Blo Pete Blo 6 months ago Another perspective to consider is the analogy of sports and the arts. So many people enjoy watching athletes do their thing and support their favorite teams with a religious zeal. – even to the point of starting fights with adherents of opposing teams. People practically worship their favorite artists, especially actors and musicians. In all these variations it is extremely common for people to consider their favorite athlete, team, actor/actress, musician, band, etc. to be the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time)–practically a god or at least a demi-god. Out of every million of these fans, maybe a few thousand get inspired to try their hand at the sport or art they admire. Out of those thousands of dabblers perhaps a couple dozen take it seriously enough to attempt the work. Out of hundreds of those, one or two are serious enough to continue the work required for mastery after initial failures or setbacks. Out of those, perhaps a few have enough perseverance, patience, persistence, and capability to accomplish something significant. (This is a loose paraphrase of an Indian description of the spiritual life.) 99.99% of religious people (no matter the religion) are really nothing more than fans. Hopefully benign, but in the current era they are getting increasingly malignant. Many of these cannot discern the difference between being a malignant dangerous "fan" of their religion and actually spiritually transforming. SBNR people may be attempting to live outside of these various religious "fan" clubs, but that doesn't mean they haven't simply created their own new "spiritual" fan club. Membership in any religion or SBNR philosophy is no guarantee of achieving something spiritually significant nor is membership in any particular religion a guarantee of NOT achieving something spiritually significant. The current state of religion and spirituality requires something like a SBNR movement to prevent complete malignant calcification of existing religions. 2 Wil Hou Wil Hou 2 months ago Yes, what you are touching on is how individual the inner life is. We are in community, experiencing effort, conflict and struggle - just the right environment/conditions for growth/to be grown, while loving and serving our fellow man/beings.! It’s a full life, with free-choice and decisions galore. &Just enough time. Green Peacemst Green Peacemst 0 seconds ago Great point. I have been and continue to be a fan of University-based culture, and have seen the necessity to integrate and resacralize all my secularized, desacralized cultural inputs and common notions. Thus, in responding to anti-theists, mostly scientific materialists, but also fundamentalists, I´ve drawn on my own background to identify the need to supersede "science" as the prime source of status academic work. Comparative Religious Studies actually is part of what I recognize, but even more broadly, to capture liberal arts and sciences, as Multidisciplinary Philosophy, and Theology, and in fact noting that it is in Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity of structured pluralism. They were talking about the compartmentalization factor, and trying to get into activating comparative thinking. It´s a modernized Christian impulse advancing in the end Christianity´s trump card. It operates around Jesus´ two loving Commandments, with no 2 being "Love thy neighbor as thyself." Thus, colonialism was perpetrated by nominal Christians prioritizing merchant, soldier, and political power motivations. Christianity has its self-correcting empirical mechanisms in resurgent integrity, with University-based philosophical scholarship central to that, US based constitutional democracy and Civil Rights, and its elevation to UN human rights and sustainability. Thus, globalized secularized Christianity has been established with its strengths and weaknesses. Unsustainability and human rights abuses, by the UN related University-based standards with structured pluralism, allow for diversity, but require modernization under pressure of existing problems and the Christian basis of secularized educational and western cultural tools and sustainability standards. Gandhi´s interfaith Christian Hinduism was something he developed with a law school education and Jesus´ Jewish heritage and legacy in social justice prophetic justice as essential and unique. Even Buddhism´s high lovingkindness integrity failed to impact India much, or achieve extensive development on its own. Prophetic social action was pioneered by Elijah under God´s influence, so that he spoke truth to power, to King Ahab, and was protected. Key associations and causal connections through spiritual-religious practice, study, experience, and phenomena.