Seekers Will Find
Thinkers who study contemporary spiritual life have declared ours to be a “seeker culture.”
Sociologist Wade Clark Roof interviewed hundreds of people for his book, A Generation of Seekers: The Spiritual Journeys of the Baby Boom Generation.
Roof said many of the 76 million people born between 1946 and 1964 are asking deep questions about the meaning of life and are seeking spiritual answers to these questions.
But unlike their parents, many are looking outside the walls of churches for their salvation.
Some look to close-knit circles of friends that provide the kinds of community and support that many Christians seek in churches.
Others head to the great outdoors, where they experience a sense of closeness to God that they can’t find in even the most majestic cathedrals.
Others see signs of the divine in books, movies, and art. Still, others seek answers in New Age books and an experience of the supernatural in assorted spiritual rituals and nostrums.
Such searching isn’t always successful, but many seekers remain confident that such quests for the sacred are more likely to bring them the experiences they long for than they would ever find in a church.
“Boomers still feel some ‘distance’ from almost every institution, whether military, banks, public schools, Congress, or organized religion,” he wrote.
“For many, having any kind of relationship with a religious institution is problematic.”1
Jesus would have understood today’s spiritual seekers. When he looked at the religious institutions of his own day, he saw a greater emphasis on outward forms of religiosity than on the inner dimensions of spirituality that give life meaning.
Christ saw hypocrisy nearly everywhere he looked. In fact, the word hypocrites turns up more than a dozen times in his teachings found in the Gospel of Matthew.
In Matthew 6, Jesus instructed his followers not to worship like the hypocrites, who stood on the street corners and prayed loudly to impress others with their religiosity.
Instead, when you pray, he said, go into a room by yourself, close the door, and pray quietly to God, who will hear and answer your prayers (v. 6).
In Matthew 23, Jesus launched into a scathing critique of religious hypocrites. “Everything they do is done for men to see,” he said. Then he unleashed a series of condemnations that began with the words “Woe to you.”
Along the way, he referred to scribes and Pharisees—the religious leaders of his day—as “blind guides” (v. 16) and “a brood of vipers” (v. 33), among other colorful terms.
But Jesus wasn’t all doom and gloom. Even though many people used religion as a way to avoid coming into contact with the living God, others had better results.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” he said, “for they will be filled.”
All of us have experienced hunger and thirst. For most of us, there are mild discomforts we feel between meals, snacks, and coffee breaks. But those who have gone longer than normal without food and water really know what hunger and thirst can mean.
Jesus wants us to seek God with the same single-minded determination we would use to seek food if we had gone without it for a week. We are all to be part of a “seeker culture.”
If we do that, he promises that we will find the spiritual nourishment we crave.
Father, thank you for making me hungry for you and helping me continue seeking your truth.