Royal Priesthood, Holy Nation Acts
2:5
Spiritual? God-fearing?
by
Robert T. Cooper
When I was in
seminary, many years ago, I did a mission trip to Salt Lake City. There I
learned about a group of people known as “Jack Mormons.” To my understanding,
these were people who when asked claimed to be Latter-day Saints, but never
attended services and didn’t keep any of the Mormon rules such as the Word of
Wisdom.
Such a
phenomenon is not all that unusual. Amongst Christians, there are huge
percentages of people who claim to be believers, even born again, but who never
attend services and never do anything that smacks of Christianity, such as pray
or read the Bible. We might call them backslidden and suspect they have never
been converted.
There are
Muslims who are cultural Muslims only and are not seriously submitted to Allah.
Amongst Jews, we have what is termed secular Jews; that is, they claim Jewish
ethnicity, but not Jewish religiosity. Even amongst religious Jews, strict Jews
might question the commitment of many who identify with Reformed Judaism.
Then we have
the modern phenomenon of people who say they are not religious, but consider
themselves to be very spiritual. But for the life of me I cannot figure
anything that marks many of them as being spiritual at all. I don’t have the
foggiest notion what they mean. Perhaps they simply don’t want to be
self-identified as being non-religious.
In biblical
Judaism, there was a group of Gentiles identified as God-fearers. These were
people who fully worshipped Jehovah, but had not converted to Judaism. For example,
Cornelius was a God-fearer. But there was also a group of Jews identified as
God-fearers. They were devout and godly in character; they observed the
commandments. Of course, all such Jews would be in Jerusalem for Pentecost.
But what about
us? Would we self-identify as being God-fearers? Would others identify us as
being devout and godly in character?
How do you self-identify, and
what do you mean by those descriptors?
