A Less Formal Faith

We seem to be becoming much less specific in our religious definition, less inclined to see ourselves as Catholic or Christian.  We are less focused on a specific formulation or particular perspective, as though the approach to God (and God to us) were less significant than is the fact of approaching.  It is a broadening, or deepening, that may rely less on the form than on the fact -- and even "fact" is not so correct an expression since we move inward from fact toward a less specific relationship, a closer union, that is not dependent on formulation.  Fact may be true, but it maintains or establishes a distance -- a formality that is not so necessary.  Formality is associated with things like God's grandeur and our corresponding insignificance.  It may well be fact that God is majestic and that in comparison we are decidedly less, but we are going beyond a religious experience based on comparison; and so while that fact (and others) and even some ceremonies that will embody them might maintain a role or have a function, it is a much less significant one.  All the titles we might have used to magnify God served only to shrink the contribution we would make to whatever we might share.

This is not to deny the truth expressed in any one approach, or to lessen the value of any tradition.  It may instead be the contrast between the specific, with its more narrow and so more intense assessment, and a more general, or more inclusive, sense of God -- which might not note so well the distinctions but offers in its place a greater or fuller realization.  At least so it seems.