In my line of work, I've heard it many times. In discussing a deceased family member, the comment is offered:
"He was a (very) spiritual man."
Though I never know for sure what this means in every situation, I think I know. Since I'm speculating, allow me the freedom of possibly being wrong. However, I wouldn't say this if I didn't know it to be true in more than a few situations.
What I think it means is that this person believes in God or someone like Him. They believe He exists, possibly that He is Creator, and maybe even that we should regard Him in some way. However, they have decided to come to God on their own terms, not His. They have decided to create a god more in tune with their own likings and to worship it instead.
By referring to someone in such generic terms as "a spiritual person", it usually means that more precise terminology such as "devout Christian" would not accurately describe them. One has to also assume that calling someone a "spiritual person" may also be a stretch, an effort to give someone credit for piety that they most likely did not have to a meaningful degree.
My wife is a quilter, a hobby and pastime that I have always encouraged in her, as I see it to be both creative and useful. My grandmother was a quilter, too, so my family heritage is awash in the quilter culture. My grandmother made two types of quilts. One was a more artistic, planned and patterned quilt. The other was the
simply functional quilt in which scraps were sewn together with little thought to pattern and color scheme. In these quilts, the virtue was seen in the quilt's colorfulness. The brighter and more outlandish, the better.
The theology of these "spiritual" people seems to be like these hodgepodge quilts: a mashed-together series of ideas and beliefs whose only connecting trait is that they appeal to this person. In a discussion of spiritual matters, this person might say, "Well, I believe...", and then insert some belief or another. If you were to press them to defend this belief, you would find them squirming on that classic shifting sand on which such homemade beliefs reside. Their belief system would most likely draw on notions or hearsay, passed down or gleaned from family or the misguided populace at large.
If God is the same yesterday, today and forever--and I believe He is--then this type of "spirituality" will most certainly not please Him. The historic record of the Judeo-Christian God shows Him to be generally intolerant of dissension and unaccepting of deviations from His revealed directions. I like this. I would rather worship a God who means what He says and stands by it. When the "spiritually-minded" stand before the Good and Righteous Judge, believing in something that is only God-like and is based on whimsy will be no better than believing in nothing at all.
God is a loving and forgiving God, but this doesn't mean that everyone will benefit from His love or forgiveness. We do not deserve His love or forgiveness, yet He offers it to those who come to Him on His terms. He is God, after all, and who are we to dictate terms to Him.
Coming to God on your own terms usually means that you don't want to be subject to Him because you believe He is too harsh, too unloving. In the vacuum that is Biblical disbelief, any contrary belief looks at home. When you see God as only a God of love, not a God capable or willing to dish out judgement or punishment, then that perverse kind of love becomes all-important. Who cares about sin or forgiveness? All we need is love.
If you believe this--that God is only a God of love and He's willing to wink at our sinfulness--then you probably also see anyone that upholds a Biblically-based standard that calls people to turn from sin and seek God's forgiveness--as hateful and unloving. How calling our fellow man to repent and to address our Creator on His terms can be construed as hateful is beyond my understanding. Indifference is the hateful path. Choosing to allow someone to live in ignorance of facts that would impact their eternity is the exact opposite of being loving.
There's an old saying: "If you stand for nothing, you'll fall for anything." If your faith is a pick-and-choose patchwork quilt of disparate pieces, then that's not faith in the real God. Life is not cafeteria-style, where you can pick and choose what you want to believe and what you want to cast aside. If you think it is, then you are a victim of the ages-old heresy that faith itself matters, not the object of your faith.
Shifting sand is no place to build your house, spiritual person. Build on something solid.
