In Reply to: The difference between religion & spirituality posted by Miguel (reposted) on March 24, 2003 at 08:52:11:
Most Christians I know make an interesting distinction between "religion" and being "spiritual". As in the Family, the term "religion" has really fallen into disfavor and means legalism and self-righteousness as opposed to true religion. (Mind you, I have also met some unpleasant people who have no problem with extolling the virtues of "religion" but I'm not talking about them here.)
On the other hand "being spiritual" means loving and seeking God and trying to humbly live an honest life. In other words, whether you never see a vision, prophesy or anything like that, you would be considered "spiritual."
I notice that there is another definition of "spiritual" in the Family and often in the world at large. "Spiritual" can mean spiritual sensitivity, openness to visions, trances, prophecies and other spiritual manifestations, no matter what your character or attitude toward others is. I've known some very mean people who could give beautiful prophecies, and while it was acknowledged that they were cruel, people would just say the "gift of prophecy" that individual supposedly had was a manifestaton of God's spiritual gifts spread abroad.
A person was supposedly spiritually sensitive and spritually gifted, open to the spirit world, no matter how bad they were in their character and personal life. By this definition, Berg himself was often a very "spiritual" person. That's why this definition of "spiritual" makes me gag.