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)

We are born believers, made for connection with God—but sin broke that bond, leaving a longing only He can satisfy.

The 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 who identify this way were formerly both religious and spiritual. They tend to be more liberal or moderate politically, and they are more likely to be baby boomers (born 1946–1964) or Gen Xers (born 1964–1979).

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

A Collapse in Church Connection

According to a 2017 poll, the spiritual-but-not-religious crowd believed in the possibility of something more than pure matter, but 93 percent had not attended 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 takes only forty-two days, six weeks, to form a new habit. So people habituated themselves into no longer going to church. That segment might now identify as religiously unaffiliated—a group researchers call "the nones" (n-o-n-e-s), the same people who often call themselves spiritual but not religious.

You may have seen the Gallup report a few weeks ago: as of March 29 of this year, U.S. church membership fell below the majority for the first time, 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 adults probably still believe in something transcendent. They may still say they believe in God, or even believe many good things about Jesus. They are the nones. They are the spiritual but not religious.

Born Believers

I bring all of this up for one important point: human beings are born believers. Unlike what some social scientists try to sell us, we are not born atheists or unbelievers, and we are not merely socialized into faith. Cognitive anthropology and psychology continue to show in their research that we are inclined to believe in God—because we are born believers.

The wise King Solomon observed this very thing three thousand years ago. He saw that God created all of us with an awareness of the eternal, an awareness that there is something beyond space and time, and that He placed that reality in our hearts: "God has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts" (Ecclesiastes 3:11). The "their" in that passage is us.

Our Vision: Life in Connection

We are returning to a familiar theme for those who call Cross Connection their home church—our purpose and mission. 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 Him.

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. (Genesis 1:1, 26–27)

"Let Us Make Man" — The Triune God

Notice that essential phrase: "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness." Who is God speaking to? Virtually all scholars and theologians agree this is a conversation within the Trinity, within what we call the Godhead.

The doctrine of the Trinity is perhaps one of the most difficult to grasp and explain, and I'm not going to spend my time today unpacking it. 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 God. We've been studying Deuteronomy, and in Deuteronomy 6 we read, "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD. And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, and strength." God is one—and yet God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, united together as one God.

God is a perfect communion. When He created us, male and female, 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. We were created by God to live in connection with God.

Made for One Another, Too

We'll look more at this creation in God's image next time, because we were made not only for connection with God but to be united with one another as well. This is why God made man and woman so that the two would be united, joined together as one flesh under the covenant of marriage—two individuals becoming one.

This becomes important as you study the Scriptures, because the idea of divided or separated individuals united together in covenant relationship shows up again and again—not just in marriage, but in salvation. We'll get more on that as we go.

The Problem: Sin Broke the Connection

But there's a problem. Even if you weren't familiar with this story, you had to expect a "but." God created us to live in perfect communion with Him, in 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—the answer, I believe, for why there is evil, brokenness, division, suffering, and death in the world.

I was listening to a conversation this week between a Catholic bishop and an atheist about this exact thing, and the atheist said his biggest issue with God, the Bible, and Christianity is the issue of suffering and pain. We all wrestle with this.

Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "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." (Genesis 2:15–17)

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. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. (Genesis 3:1–7)

Division, Separation, and Death

Our disobedience to God's command brought evil, brokenness, division, suffering, and death into the world—along with disease and all the fallenness of creation. We were made for perfect communion and oneness with God, but sin—our missing the mark of righteousness through disobedience—broke the connection. Sin brought division, separation, and death, and death is the ultimate separation. Later in the Bible, in the very last book, we read about the second death, which is eternal separation from God and from all that is good.

The apostle Paul shows 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.

The Longing We Cannot Escape

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, one of my favorite books, on page 136:

"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

But how do we get it? The spiritual-but-not-religious crowd is seeking transcendent experiences while rejecting the church. Why? Some say the church didn't provide adequate answers to their deep questions. Some feel the church, or a Christian, hurt them. Some feel Christians have promulgated hate against certain groups, or they've seen scandalous and horrible things done by individuals within the institution. They might feel the church didn't actually provide connection to transcendence. Maybe none of those things are true; maybe all of them are. But these are the reasons given.

Even so, the spiritual-but-not-religious crowd is still seeking transcendence. They try to find it in nature, in physical betterment (think CrossFit), in physical mastery (think sport), in meditation, yoga, or martial arts, in breathing exercises, in psychedelics and psychoactive hallucinogens—which is happening more and more—in fasting, in strange diets, and any number of physical things.

Understand that 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 happen in basilicas, cathedrals, churches, or temples, but they are completely religious activities—non-religious religions. And non-religious religions are cheap substitutes for true communion with God.

None of these things will suffice. Someone stands at the edge of the Grand Canyon, or jumps from an airplane in a wing suit, and feels they've come in contact with something bigger than themselves. These experiences might make them feel transcendence, but they will never satisfy humanity's desire for true communion with God. They cannot restore the connection. They cannot bring reconciliation.

How Can the Breach Be Repaired?

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

Closing Prayer

Father God, I pray that You would give us a deep desire, longing, and yearning in our hearts to connect with You. We already have that—would You amplify it? These videos are watched by people who are part of our church, but also sent to many who are not connected to Cross Connection or to any church. 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; if we ask, it will be given. So I pray that You would stir in our hearts to be those who seek, ask, and knock—because if we are looking for true connection to the divine, we will only find it in You, the only true God. Would You 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.