How often have you heard that? Spiritual, but not religious.
If you probe a little, or just listen, that’s usually followed by the speaker’s philosophy of life, or view of morality, or concept of God, or all three: as if he or she has crafted a home-made
“spirituality” from the observations made during a few short years of living.
To me it sounds a little smug, and maybe a tad disingenuous. For it betrays a prideful independence which causes great abuses (wherever it is found) in all of the religions of the world, a sort of arrogance which nearly all religions condemn.
It certainly is true that all can not be right, for in many things the great religions contradict one another. But is the answer to reject them all? For many, the answer is yes, in favor of “what works for me.” Solomon was three thousand years ahead of his time when he wrote,
“There is a way that seems right to a man,
but its end is the way to death.”
Proverbs 14:12 (ESV)