This past summer, a close friend and I went bike riding. My friend suggested Island Lake, so I found a PDF of the Metro Park and printed off.  After we drove the 30 minutes we started getting our bikes ready and our gear together, and then I looked at the map and figured which way we needed to go to find the trail.  We went a short distance and because of the direction the paved section was heading I decided we needed to turn around and go the other way.  Which we did for a short distance, when I again decided that it didn’t seem like the right way.  I got out the map and looked at it and decided we should try going toward the entrance where we had come in.  We went that way and after a while decided it wasn’t the right way either.  I looked at the map again and as I did so, my friend decided we should just start following the first path.  We did that and enjoyed the ride, but all along I kept thinking that none of it seemed right, that the map and the path we were following were in conflict.  We rode all the way around the lake—about eight miles and enjoyed it a great deal, but when we returned to the car I got out the map again—and here’s the embarrassing part—the map and the path didn’t match because we weren’t at Island lake.  It was on the opposite side of I96. 

There are a dozen different lessons in this little experience, but the one I’d like to highlight is how what we experience in life and what we know from our faith doesn’t seem to match.  We try to follow the map, the rules, the principles, but something doesn’t seem right.  When this happens to me, what I often discover is that I am treating faith as something that is static rather than dynamic—a rule book, rather than a relationship. 

This is why so many have a negative attitude toward the concept of “religion.”  More and more people say “I’m spiritual, but not religious,” meaning that they believe that there’s more to life and being human than the physical, but that they do not align themselves with any specific organized practice or group of spiritual principles.  That’s a really broad explanation and I’m sure there are nuances that it does not capture, but that will suffice. 

For me, if religion is specifically what I’ve defined above, then it serves the purpose of being a map that gives me landmarks and directional aid.  When I begin to focus on the map, then I’m in for the spiritual version of the experience I had at Island Lake, or what I thought was Island Lake. 

Religion serves the purpose of providing structure in order to assist me in the relationship with God.  It isn’t a substitute for that relationship. 

© Stephen Carl