Lost and Found

What religion needs to recognise is that spirit can never be contained and restricted. At the heart of the disillusionment with so much contemporary religion is the sense that it seeks to control and restrict God. Our God has become too small. At this stage in history, we are no longer spiritual children whose every thought and experience has to be ratified by higher authority. On Mount Tabor the clothes of Jesus are described as dazzlingly white; the apostles are lost for words. No human words can ever describe the mystery of God. The spirit is wild, portrayed in wind and fire at Pentecost, and it is to that wider sense of mystery and search that many are attracted today. We are rediscovering that religion is not primarily a doctrinal matter or moral matter – important though these are – but a mystical one. Today the mystical and the prophetic have to become one. Far from losing religion, this development will help us find its soul.