Made for Connection | Sunday, April 18, 2021

God has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts. (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness..." So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (Genesis 1:26–27)

We were created for connection with God — and even those who reject religion can't escape the longing for it.

Spiritual But Not Religious

"I'm spiritual but not religious." Have you ever had anyone say that to you? The spiritual-but-not-religious crowd is on the rise in Western culture, especially here in the United States. Many of those who identify this way were formerly both religious and spiritual. They tend to be more liberal or moderate politically, and are more likely to be baby boomers (born 1946–1964) or Gen Xers (born 1964–1979).

What does it even mean to be spiritual but not religious? For the most part, these are people who consider themselves spiritual, but who say their religious faith is no longer very important in their lives. They believe in transcendence — the existence or experience of something beyond material reality — but they have checked out of organized religion. They are no longer affiliated with a church or faith group, yet they believe there is something more to the universe, to life, and potentially to an afterlife.

The Numbers Behind the Trend

According to a 2017 poll, the spiritual-but-not-religious crowd said they believe in the possibility of something more to reality than pure matter — but 93 percent hadn't been to a religious service in the past six months. Imagine those numbers now, after thirteen months of shutdowns and church closures.

As of June 2020, just ten weeks into the shutdowns, Barna Research found that nearly half of American churchgoers — 48 percent — had not engaged with their church online in the previous four Sundays. Researchers suggest it only takes 42 days, six weeks, to develop a new habit. So people habituated themselves into no longer going to church. That segment might now identify as religiously unaffiliated — what researchers call the "nones" (N-O-N-E-S).

You may have seen the Gallup report a few weeks ago: as of March 29th of this year, U.S. church membership fell below the majority for the first time in their research, dropping to 47 percent in 2020. Twenty years earlier, in 2000, that same poll found 70 percent of American adults attending church. That is a phenomenal drop. Yet many of those who no longer attend probably still believe in something transcendent — they are the nones, the spiritual but not religious.

We Are Born Believers

I bring all of this up for this very important point: human beings are born believers. Unlike what some social scientists try to sell us, we are born with an innate religious orientation. We are not born atheists or unbelievers, and we are not — as many would say — socialized into faith. Cognitive anthropology and psychology continue to show that we are inclined to believe in God, because we are born believers.

The wise King Solomon observed this very thing 3,000 years ago in Ecclesiastes. He saw that God created all of us with an awareness of the eternal — that every one of us is born aware that there is something beyond space and time. As he put it, "God has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts." The "their" in that passage is us.

Our Vision: Life in Connection

We're returning to a familiar theme for those who call Cross Connection their home church. Our vision is life in connection with God, one another, and the world through Jesus. This point — that we are born believers — is an essential aspect of that vision, because we were created by God to live in connection with God.

Genesis 1 reveals this. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth... Then God said, 'Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness'... So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."

Made in the Image of the Triune God

Notice that God says, "Let Us make man in Our image." Who is God speaking to? Virtually all scholars and theologians agree this is a conversation within what we call the Trinity, the Godhead. The doctrine of the Trinity is perhaps one of the most difficult doctrines to grasp or explain, and I'm not going to fully unpack it today. I'll simply say that when theologians speak of the triune God, they speak of a perfect communion or community of three in one.

God is one. We've been studying Deuteronomy, and in Deuteronomy 6 we read, "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one." And yet God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, united together as one God. God is a perfect communion. When He made man and woman in His image and likeness, He created us to be one with Him. God's desire is that we would be united as one with Him.

Made for One Another

Not only were we created for connection with God, but we were made to be united in connection with one another as well. This is why, in making us in His image, God made man and woman for the purpose that the two would be joined together as one flesh — two individuals becoming one flesh, united under the covenant of marriage.

This becomes important throughout Scripture. The idea of divided or separated individuals united together in covenant relationship shows up not only in marriage but also in salvation. We'll get more on that as we continue these studies on life in connection.

The Problem: Sin Broke the Connection

But there's a problem — and even if you weren't familiar with the story, you had to expect there would be a "but." God created us to live in perfect communion with Him, the same way there is perfect communion within the Trinity. Genesis 1 and 2 tell the story of creation, and Genesis 3 gives us the next major event — which I believe is the answer for why there is evil, brokenness, division, suffering, and death in the world.

A lot of people wrestle with this. I was listening this week to a conversation between a Catholic bishop and an atheist, and the atheist said his biggest issue with God, the Bible, and Christianity is the issue of suffering and pain. In Genesis 2, God planted a garden in Eden and commanded the man: "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."

Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field... "You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food... she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. (Genesis 3:1–6)

Death, the Ultimate Separation

Our disobedience to God's command brought evil, brokenness, division, suffering, death, and disease into the world. All the fallenness of creation is bound up in this fall in Genesis 3. We were made for perfect communion and oneness with God, but sin — missing the mark of righteousness through our disobedience — broke the connection. Sin brought separation and death, and death is the ultimate separation.

Later, in the very last book of the Bible, we read about the second death, which is eternal separation from God and from all that is good. The apostle Paul describes the progression: "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned" (Romans 5:12). At the end of Genesis 3, after God spoke of the curse, Adam and Eve were sent out of the garden — disconnected from God.

A Desire We Cannot Satisfy

We were created for connection with God, and we lost it because of sin — and we can't help but long for it. C.S. Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia, wrote in Mere Christianity: "Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire; well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

You have a desire to live in connection with something transcendent — with God, in perfect communion, harmony, and oneness. Why does every human in every culture default toward religious or spiritual expression? Because we were made for it.

Non-Religious Religions Cannot Satisfy

But how do we get it? The spiritual-but-not-religious crowd is seeking transcendent experiences while rejecting the church. Why have they rejected Christianity? Some say the church didn't provide adequate answers for their deep questions. Some feel the church, or someone within it, hurt them. Some have seen scandalous things done by individuals in the institution. Maybe none of those things are true; maybe all of them are. But these are reasons they give for giving up on institutional Christianity.

Even so, they keep seeking transcendence. They try to find it in nature, in physical betterment (think CrossFit), in physical mastery (think sport, yoga, martial arts), in meditation, in breathing exercises, in psychedelics and hallucinogens — which is happening more and more in our culture — in fasting, or in strange diets. None of this is new. It is just the rebranding of the same old things people have done for millennia to recapture a connection with the divine.

Each of these things is fundamentally religious. They may not take place in cathedrals or temples, but they are completely religious activities — non-religious religions. And non-religious religions are cheap substitutes for true communion with God. They might give someone a feeling of transcendence — standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon, or jumping out of an airplane in a wingsuit — but they will never satisfy humanity's desire for true communion with God. They cannot restore the connection, and they cannot bring reconciliation.

How Do We Repair the Breach?

So how can we repair this breach? I hate to do this to you, but to answer that question you'll have to join with us next time, because it's quite a big explanation. We were created for connection with God, but that connection was broken as a result of sin and disobedience — and we still long to get back into connection with Him. How can we make that a reality? That's where we're going next week.

Closing Prayer

Father God, I pray that You would give us a deep desire, longing, and yearning to connect with You. We already have that, but would You amplify it. These videos are watched by people in our church and sent to many who are not connected to any church. So I pray, God, that whoever this finds, You would use it to draw them to a place where they desire to connect with You. You said that if we seek, we will find; if we knock, the door will be opened; and if we ask, it will be given. So stir in our hearts to be those who are seeking, asking, and knocking — because if we're looking for true connection to the divine, we will only find it in You, the only true God. Place that longing in people's hearts, that they would seek You and find in You the satisfaction of these things. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.