Instead of a bridge to God, religion is often a barrier to God.

Instead of freeing people from their burdens, religion itself is the burden.

Instead of knowing God, religion is obsessed with knowing about God.

Instead of divine acceptance, religion is preoccupied with guilt and failure, and the depiction of God as a deity displeased about both.

Instead of bringing unity to humanity, religion is the principle cause of most disunity, with its endlessly expanding hard-drive of beliefs, dogmas and doctrines around which little egos collect to argue, debate and ultimately divide.

Instead of peace and tranquility, religion is, for many its practitioners, a circus of endless activity, programs and meetings all of which are time-consuming and exhausting.

Since I know other religions only as an outsider, I’ll reserve my observations to what I know best as an insider to Christianity. I’m certain, however, many of the same problems could be found in other faith traditions as well.

To begin, it is not a little ironic to me that the literal meaning of the word religion is “to return to bondage.” It comes from two words, the prefix re meaning, “to return” and the root legare meaning, “to bind.” Since everyone wants freedom and happiness and many turn to religion to find it, the regrettable consequence is that too often the only thing they get is greater enslavement.

Here’s are a few random observations of mine:

Many churches and church leaders seem obsessed with achieving the status of being the biggest church with the largest crowds and the most elaborate campuses. In the last 10 years alone, for example, churches have spent more than $100 billion on buildings and facilities while 400 million people starved to death somewhere in the world during that same period. Something is horribly wrong with this picture. Church leaders measure spiritual progress in terms of the number of attendees, the size of their annual income and the square footage of their facilities. Furthermore, virtually every Christian leadership conference lauds the largest of these churches and their leaders as if they were role models for all other churches.

Additionally, churches and church leaders saddle their followers with a catalogue of “dos” and “don’ts” as onerous as the proverbial Sears catalogue. They are told what to think, how to believe, and the way they are supposed to live. Furthermore, many Christian leaders disregard the fact that Jesus himself repudiated the religious leaders in his day for doing this very thing to the followers of Judaism (Matt. 23:4).

And, what of the “circus of endless activity?” Have you been in a church lately? Were it not for the cross at the top of the building, you might think you had just stepped inside the big tent at a Barnum-and-Bailey circus. It’s not only a wheel of perpetual and often pointless activity in many churches, but leaders seem to take pride in the fact that their church has become a 24/7 operation. All that really means is that the members have no time or energy to be “salt and light” in their communities because they’re incarcerated in a church with its plethora of activities.

Churches are neurotically preoccupied with peripheral matters of faith, too. They argue theology and debate over the Bible almost incessantly. Their beliefs and dogmas are imposed on believing and unbelieving people alike. In the throes of this kind of madness, it is not surprising that millions of believers are leaving the church in greater numbers today than ever before in the history of the Christian church.

Replacing members they are losing, as well as the equally difficult task of keeping the ones they have, are among the most important priorities facing ministers today. Whether they wish to or not, they are forced to spend an inordinate amount of time looking for the latest gimmick to attract people through the front door, just to counter their mounting losses out the back. If they succeed in getting people to come, then the rest of their time is spent trying to get them to stay. Churches actually compete with each other the way Las Vegas hotels compete for the best show in town. Since the mega churches can afford the more expensive talent, they have a manifest and unfair advantage over almost all other churches. The churches in America that are growing numerically, and there are only a scant few anymore, are finding that their growth comes largely from the disgruntled, disenfranchised or burned-out members who’ve left other churches. Mega churches are filled with people who desire a spiritual connect to God but want nothing to do with the madness of busy-ness that is most churches today.

Rather than mutually respecting and affirming the one and only thing all religions share in common, which is their diverse ways of knowing peace and Presence, religious leaders become preoccupied with what distinguishes them in terms of their beliefs, doctrines, viewpoints and so on. Whenever they do, which is most of the time, it isn’t long before they begin insisting that their beliefs are right and by implication the beliefs of others are wrong. The inevitable consequence is disagreement, division and even destruction. Unless this madness ends, and soon, religious people will end up destroying the very world their religion has evolved to redeem.

I feel more strongly today than ever before that the future of humanity is at stake. Unless there are profound changes in human consciousness — changes in how we understand ourselves and this universe, how we look at each other, as well as how we treat each other — I sometimes wonder if there is much hope for humanity’s survival. The Dalai Lama is right, “Until there is peace between religions, there can be no peace in the world.”

Here’s what I think must happen:

First, accept the fact that there will always be many religions. No one religion will ever convert the whole world to its way of believing. How do I know this? Followers within the same religion can’t even agree on everything and so have divided into an almost endless number of sects and denominations. In Christianity, for example, there are more denominations than there are flavors of Baskin-Robbins ice cream.

Noted historian, Huston Smith, once observed: “…if we were to find ourselves with a single religion tomorrow, it is likely that there would be two the day after.” So, what does this mean? Just what John Coats said recently in a HuffPost article, “Your place at this table is a given.” In other words, we must make room, not only for all Christians, churches and their denominations, but for all religions as well.

Second, religious leaders must continually remind themselves of the supreme purpose of their religion — to bring followers into a meaningful relationship with the Divine — and stick to this purpose. Everything else is secondary. However, if secondary matters — things like your understanding of the Divine, your beliefs or your group’s beliefs, and so forth — are given a place of preeminence, the eventual consequence is a feeling of superiority. That feeling quickly gets ugly and, when it does — and it always does — no good thing will ever come of it.

So again, there must be room at this table for everyone. How? The only way to accomplish this is to grow up. Your ego (and the arrogance around it), as well as the collective ego of your group, must die, which is what Jesus meant when he said “Deny yourself,” (Mark 10:37) or the Buddha meant when he referred to “anata,” or “no self.”

Just call it maturity if these concepts don’t work for you: the capacity to cherish your individual beliefs while making room for the differing beliefs of others. F. Scott Fitzgerald put it something like this, “The mark of maturity is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time and still be at peace.” Religious people who continually debate, defend and then demand their way of believing is the “right” way or, worse, the “only” way are only revealing their immaturity, as well as inability, to live with paradox, ambiguity and, most important, to live by grace and with grace.

Third, I would suggest you make the effort to forgive your faith tradition for its failures. There is so much anger and well-deserved rage toward the church, particularly from those who’ve been damaged or disenfranchised by it. I was one of these persons myself but, since I describe that story in detail in The Enoch Factor, it isn’t necessary to go into it here. Suffice to say, forgiveness will be no small task for many of people. The injury inflicted on them by the church is not only inexcusable, it is in countless instances so inconceivable, even horrific in nature, it borders on being unforgivable. I admit there are times I fight the impulse to walk away from it myself. I still find it incomprehensible, for example, even reprehensible, how the church could expect gays and lesbians to return to the proverbial closet, as someone so eloquently put it, while hiding, as well as protecting, clergy pedophiles in its own closets. If you haven’t forgiven your religious tradition for its insanity, or simply cannot just yet, know that I completely understand. For myself, however, I’ve chosen to forgive and, of course, that’s what forgiveness really is: a choice.

Finally, the fighting must end, too. And, this statement isn’t directed just to Islamic fundamentalists but to Christian fundamentalists, too. The former use weapons to destroy people who don’t agree with them. The latter use a little belief system they call the Rapture against those who don’t agree with them. This system has no Biblical basis as any scholar knows but it postulates that Jesus will return to earth, hover in the clouds while Christians are zapped from the earth, leaving behind all disbelievers.

It’s a belief system straight out of the comic books, which is the irony because, if Christians actually knew where the idea of the Rapture came — which of course they do not — they would reject it outright. Meanwhile, however, belief in the Rapture serves as a convenient way to take revenge on disbelievers or all of those whom Christians have failed to convert to Christianity.

Thinking Christians know that, whatever was meant by the words of Jesus’ return to earth, the New Testament passages that speak of this all suggest it will only occur when people least expect it. Since fundamentalist Christians are all looking for Jesus’ return, they do not realize but they are likely responsible for his delay.

Again, just as it is outlandish to believe your religion is going to convert the world to its way of thinking, it is equally outlandish to develop a belief system that would leave behind the world you can’t convert. We’ve got to learn to get along. “No tree has branches so foolish as to fight among themselves” (Native American wisdom).

I wasn’t expecting much.  I got to the first scene, however–the one where the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, cries out to God in prayer–and I was hooked. In a marriage that isn’t working, Gilbert is an emotional train wreck waiting to happen. Since her life makes no sense to her whatsoever, she does what many of us have done when we can’t think of what else to do–she prays.

“Hello, God.  How are you? I’m Liz. It’s nice to meet you…I’m sorry to bother you so late at night…but I’m in serious trouble…I’m not an expert at praying, as you know. But can you please help me?…I don’t know what to do. Please tell me what to do.”

Who hasn’t prayed this prayer?

It’s appeal is in its familiarity. But, what hooked me most is the fact that this first prayer, or cry, to God, isn’t Gilbert’s last, as it is with many in circumstances equally as troubling. Rather, it is the first of many prayers she offers to God–prayers that evolve into an on-going conversation in a year-long journey through Italy, India, and Indonesia.  Each prayer is but the next step she takes in the search for herself and a life that matters.  As she journeys and converses, the consequence is self-discovery, self-acceptance, and an awareness of the Sacred presence.

Not a bad spiritual practice, if you ask me.

If a spiritual life is really about learning to accept yourself, learning to live compassionately, and becoming so aware of the Sacred presence within you that you converse with this Presence the way two friends would sharing a fine wine in a corner cafe, then Eat, Pray, Love could be a guide to any seeker after a sacred life.

Gilbert prays the way Jesus prayed.  The Buddha, too.

So, what kind of praying is this?

Silence. Stillness. Some call it meditation — the kind of praying Jesus instructed his followers to practice (Matt. 6:6).  It’s also the only kind of praying we ever see Jesus doing (Matt. 14:23; 26:36ff).  Yet, strangely, go into almost any church, synagogue, or temple today and you’ll hear plenty of public prayers (in spite of Jesus’ discouragement against it – Matt. 5:5); but, little or no provision for silence, stillness, or meditation. Most worship is distinguished by its chaos — loud music, continuous chatter, lots of substance but little sustenance.

With very few exceptions, religious leaders almost universally overlook this kind of prayer and it is likely because they know little about it themselves. It is this kind of praying, however–and perhaps only this kind of praying–that results in self-awareness and Divine consciousness. The Buddha said, “He who meditates attentively will attain abundant joy.”

Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is within you” (Lk.10:27). If that’s true, then to know yourself, as well as to know God, you must make it your spiritual practice to go within. The rabbis say, “God has but one tabernacle–the heart.” It is there, in the secret place (what Jesus likened to a “room” – Matt. 6:6) that you practice slowing down the mind, (that virtual stream of thought-making) and to relax and rest in the Sacred presence.  The psalmist put it like this, “Be still and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10).

“Is it easy to learn to pray this way?”

Ask Liz. If you make this your spiritual practice however, the discoveries will mirror those made by Elizabeth Gilbert and will be equally remarkable.

Then, if you ever visit Italy, India, or Indonesia, you’ll do so for different reasons.

Dr. Steve McSwain is the author of The Enoch Factor: The Sacred Art of Knowing God (2010, Smyth & Hewlys). For more information, please visit www.stevemcswain.com.

For an interview or to receive a review copy, contact Tolly Moseley at Tolly@prbythebook.com or (512) 501-4399 x708. Visit us at www.prbythebook.com or www.twitter.com/prbythebook

You’d have thought I just made off with the Mona Lisa from the Louvre.

I promised to protect it, to handle it with as much care as a paleographer would an ancient text—no bending of the edges, no underlining, circling, or writing in the margins—things I typically do with my own books.

Negotiations failed, however. “Put it back,” she ordered, “and get your own.”

So, I did. Wasn’t expecting much, either. “What could Eat, Pray, Love contain,” I asked myself, “that would cause her to guard it like it was the Holy Grail?”

I barely arrived at the first scene, however–the one where Gilbert is sleepless, sprawled across a cold bathroom floor at 2AM–and I was hooked. In a failed marriage, she cries out to God, the first of many conversations the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, has with God.  From there, she acts as a guide on a journey the two of you take through Italy, then India and Indonesia, in search of her soul, in search of a life that matters. There’s no pretense with Gilbert, which is why I like her. You’re invited to peer into her soul, and your own as well.

Sitting in a corner cafe; sipping the finest wine made of the Sangiovese grape; sharing secrets and disappointments, readers feel like they’re best friends with Gilbert. That’s because it’s easy to believe in her. When she describes her marital failings, not those of her spouse, she’s brutally transparent. When she talks about her love affair with David, even before her own divorce is final, she hides nothing. It is this honesty that makes what she says about faith, about God, just as believable.

In an era of religious dishonesty, corruption, and cover-up, where the morning news is as likely to reveal the latest religious scandal as it does the political or economic ones, it is understandable why westerners are weary of the dishonesty in much of organized religion today.

Weary enough to leave, that is. According to the American Religious Survey, thirty-four million Americans  want nothing to do with religion, a system that has repeatedly demonstrated a far greater interest in saving itself than in saving the world.

Still, there are many spiritual seekers. All they really want is an uncomplicated relationship with Transcendence. What you call God is irrelevant to them. So are the doctrines and distinctions that divide instead of unite people.

What’s most amazing is that religious leaders still don’t get it. Instead of softening their rhetoric, their endless dogmas, doctrines, and distinctions, they become more fixed, rigid, separated and exclusivist. Meanwhile, scores are leaving this insanity, perhaps to protect what little remains.  In exchange, they read Eat, Pray, Love, where insanity meets Sanity, where respect and inclusiveness are actually practiced, where they can relax, take off their shoes, enjoy themselves, others, and God.

That’s why this book, now a major motion picture, is so popular. In the end, it matters not whose religion is right, especially if it doesn’t guide you to live in this world, or with yourself, or help you to get along with others.

It is away from this kind of religious madness that seekers of the Sacred are walking.  Today, their paths are taking them toward something real, toward that which connects them to others and to God, and away from the labels and differences that have divided people for eons.  To many, Gilbert and writers like her have become unique spiritual gurus on this path toward what I think of as “the sacred art of knowing God.”

Jesus said, “The way to life is narrow…and few there will be who find it.” If that’s true, Eat, Pray, Love is the quintessential promise that seekers of the Sacred will find the narrow way–even though it’s off the beaten path.

How else would you explain the phenomenal success of Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love (soon a major motion picture), or the writings of the Dalai Lama, Deepak Chopra, or others like them? Just because people are fed up with organized religion doesn’t mean their appetite for spiritual things has been swallowed up, too.

I know because I was one of these millions who dropped out of active involvement in organized religion.  But, unlike the majority of the other 33,999,999 dropouts, I was a religious leader when I did.

I grew up in the church, the son of a Southern Baptist minister.  When I graduated from college, I went to seminary and, after several years of study, I began my career as a professional minister.  It wasn’t long however, before I discovered the church was more lost than the world it was trying to save.

Go into many churches today and, instead of finding an institution interested in saving the world, what you may find is an institution vastly more interested in saving itself.  For example, people go to church to find God.  Instead of finding God, however, followers are often saddled with a catalogue of “do’s” and “don’ts” as onerous as the US tax code.  They are told what to think, how to believe, as well as how they’re supposed to live.

In many places, the church is still the most segregated place in America.  Where I grew up, some forty or so years ago, many of my neighbors attended the Baptist church my father served. That is, if they were white Baptists; the black Baptists had a church of their own. Or, they attended one of the other three, mostly segregated churches that occupied one of the four-corners of Main Street.  Today, however, your neighbor is just as likely to be black as white, or Muslim as Christian.  Maybe people are leaving  the church because they’d prefer to live in the real world—the de-segregated one.

Then, there are those church leaders who seem obsessed with having the biggest church, the largest crowds and the most expensive campuses.   While 40,000,000 people died of starvation in the last decade, churches spent $10,000,000,000 (that’s ten billion) on campuses.

Perhaps some churchgoers departed because they’d rather their charity actually make a difference in the world.

If you went to church looking for relief from the stress and burdens of living, you might have found more of the same, only dressed as beliefs and dogmas, rules and expectations  Then, there’s the debating, disagreement, and division that goes on between churches, as well as between people in the same church. I call it the “We’re right! You’re Wrong!” syndrome.  Each group insisting their beliefs are right which, by implication means, everyone else’s beliefs are wrong.  “We’re in; you’re out!” “We’re the chosen ones; you’re not!”  Maybe those who came looking for some sanity in life are leaving the church to preserve what little remains.

What about the seemingly endless clergy scandals? It may be several years yet, before we know the full impact of this demonic debacle.  I suspect scores of people are just plain fed up with an institution that “would condemn gays and lesbians for coming out of their closets,” as someone characterized it, “while hiding clergy pedophiles in its own.”

Some fifteen or so years ago, I, like millions of others, dropped out of active involvement in the church.  Soon thereafter, I began wondering where to go to find God.   For a few years, I went nowhere.  I just wandered around in a kind of spiritual wilderness.  Then, one Sunday afternoon, completely unexpected as well as outside the church, I had a deeply profound spiritual awakening. I even describe it in my book, The Enoch Factor.

Among the many realizations to which I awakened, was this:“You don’t have to go to church to know God.”  For reasons too obvious to mention, this isn’t the kind of message the church, or any religion, wants spread around.  But, it’s true nonetheless.  There is no religion, not even the Christian religion, holding the title deed to God.  God’s grace is not limited to a select few.  The moment any religion believes it is, you can be sure that religion knows nothing of God.

If there is anything Jesus, and the Buddha, made abundantly clear it is that the Wind blows where it wills.  You can hear it, see its effects, as well as feel its power, but you could never contain it.  In other words, the moment I stopped trying to find God, God found me.  I love the way Deepak Chopra once framed it. “God is not difficult to find; God is impossible to ignore.”

Even the title to this article–Finding God after Religion—seems to imply there’s something you must “do” to know God.  But, the real truth is this: there is nothing you need to do to know God. You know God already.  The mistake virtually all religions make, including Christianity, is to confuse beliefs for faith and, as a consequence, condition people to think there are things they must do, duties they must perform, etc., for God to be pleased and her presence to be known.

Finding God after religion? Remember the following:  In eastern thought, there’s something called “the law of least effort,” or “do less and accomplish more.”  If you will give up the “doing,” and, instead, just enjoy “being” I think you’ll make a great discovery.  The psalmist said, “Be still and know…”  In my own experience, I have found when I’m present (and that’s my spiritual practice) I’m immediately in Presence, the real and sacred sanctuary of God.

What more would you want?  What more would religion ever give you?

One day, the rabbi took Jacob aside and said, “Jacob, why do you suppose Christians make it a habit to tap the side of the saltshaker while Jews always tap the bottom?”

Certain the rabbi was going to join him in ridicule of Christians, Jacob was more than ready to play along. “No, Rabbi, I do not know. Why do Jews tap the bottom of the saltshaker while Christians tap the side?”

“To get the salt out!” answered the rabbi.

There are many ways to tap the shaker, but the purpose is the same—to dispense salt.

Ask the followers of almost any religion what is the purpose of their religion and they will say the purpose is to guide them to know God. They may use different words or ideas to say this, but it is essentially the same purpose. Even in religions like Buddhism, where there is no belief in a Higher Power per se, they still speak sometimes of the “Universal Mind.” What is that, if it is not the same Reality toward which the words and names that others use point, too?

Similarly, a spiritual seeker in Christianity is really no different than a spiritual seeker in Islam, Taoism, or Hinduism. All want to know God, the higher self, or to reach what Hindus call Samadhi, which is “bliss consciousness,” what Christians may call, “salvation,” or “God-realization.” In other words, everyone wants to be complete, to be happy, and to alleviate human suffering, which The Buddha showed us is mostly self-induced anyway. In other words, we all seek the same thing. We just know it in different ways, based on our cultural, social, ethnic, and religious conditioning.  Since everyone is seeking God-consciousness, sometimes confused with “happiness,” then you can understand that every religion has evolved to help facilitate this purpose.

Yet, throughout the history of humanity, religion has been the prime cause of most human division and human and planetary destruction. If this is not mad, what is it?  Throughout the history of my own tradition, for example, Christianity has been either a Divine blessing or a demonic curse. Embarrassing to admit, it has been the latter far too often. If the human species is going to survive, it is imperative we make room on this little planet for everyone—that we have respect for all religions, as well as those who choose to have no religion.

Even as I say all of this, however, I realize, until a person wakes up, this will likely be more than they can accept. Until they experience a shift in consciousness, making it possible for them to see everyone and everything through lenses clear of conditioned thinking, then they will resist virtually everything I written so far. This is true whether they be a Christian, Muslim, or atheist.

If I have learned anything over the years, it is that every religion, in its own unique way, has something important to teach us about Ultimate Reality, or what I like to call the sacred art of knowing God. Even those who profess no religion at all may be able to teach the rest of us something about this Universal Intelligence, Consciousness, Being Itself or, as I am accustomed to saying, God.

I love the story I read of a Frenchman who approached the Dalai Lama after he had given a lecture in a city in France.  He said, “Your Holiness, I loved your words and I’ve decided I want to convert to Buddhism.”

In great wisdom, however, the Dalai Lama answered, “Why Buddhism?  Why would you wish to convert to this religious tradition?  You are in France.  In France, you have Christianity.  There’s nothing wrong with Christianity!”[1]

There isn’t, is there?  No more so than there’s anything wrong with the myriad of other paths one might follow toward the evolution of Divine consciousness.  It’s time humanity stops the insanity of thinking “We’re right, you’re wrong!” “We’re in, you’re out!” “We’re the chosen ones, you’re not!”

Just as is everyone,

You were born to walk with God;

So, why would you walk alone?