Bono, rock’s high priest of self-satisfaction, recently appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience to do what Bono does best: talk. About himself. About the time he met Johnny Cash. About God. About how religion is really just a feeling, man. The episode stretched on for three hours, with the two men swapping stories like seasoned camp counselors with a flask of ayahuasca just out of frame. But underneath the meandering banter and brief moments of Irish charm, something unsettling took shape — a kind of spiritual sleight of hand that’s become endemic in the modern West.

For much of the conversation, Bono and Rogan weren’t really discussing religion as much as they were romanticizing emotion. They spoke of religion not in terms of submission or discipline or covenant, but as metaphor. A good concert? That’s a religious experience. A hard hike to the summit? That’s church. A moment of awe under the stars? That’s communion. But strip away the lyrical phrasing, and what you’re left with is a belief system as shallow as a puddle. It’s not reverence — it’s aesthetic. It’s not devotion. It’s self-reverence in a halo.

Now, to be fair, there’s something noble in trying to find the divine in the mundane. But this isn’t poetic awe. This is a cultural bait-and-switch. The sacred isn’t being rediscovered — it’s being replaced. The idea that feeling something deeply is equivalent to encountering the divine has become a kind of dogma. It’s the new catechism: if it gives you goosebumps, it must be sacred. If it moves you, it must be holy. This isn’t reverence — it’s narcissism with incense. It takes the sacred and makes it sentimental. (RELATED: Media Fawns Over Spiritual Guru Shaping New Age Thought)

It is religious cosplay masquerading as actual religion.

In its oldest and most valid form, religion demands something far more difficult than emotion — it demands obedience, reverence, and often sacrifice. It doesn’t ask how you feel about the Ten Commandments. It tells you to follow them. It doesn’t care if the liturgy gives you chills. It cares if you show up every Sunday and live your life in accordance with something greater than your moods. It doesn’t hand you a mirror — it hands you a cross. (RELATED: Tolkien’s Eucatastrophe and Easter)

We don’t want God. We want an emotional sugar rush. We want the high without the hardship, the rapture without the repentance. We want the warm hum of interconnectedness without the weight of accountability. We want the ritual but not the rigor. We want the transcendence but not the transformation.

But here’s the problem: euphoric feelings are not transcendent. They’re chemical. They can be induced with MDMA, or TikTok, or a surprise message from an ex. They spike, they crash, and they vanish. That doesn’t mean they’re meaningless — they can be beautiful, moving, unforgettable — but it does mean they’re not holy. They don’t pierce eternity. They don’t break through time. They don’t call you to change.

The mountain doesn’t care that you reached the summit. The sunset doesn’t forgive your sins. The mosh pit does not offer salvation. You don’t walk away from a concert a new creation. You walk away sweaty and satisfied, and maybe a little deaf. That’s not transformation. That’s release. And there’s a difference. One heals the soul. The other just hits the serotonin slot machine.

The danger of confusing the emotional with the eternal is that it makes real religion seem unnecessary. Why fast for 40 days when you can fast for dopamine and call it enlightenment? Why kneel when you can adopt the downward dog pose? Why confess when you can just cry to Morgan Wallen? It’s not worship — it’s self-soothing with a Spotify playlist.

It’s not just lazy — it’s dishonest. And it leads to a kind of scroll-friendly spirituality where everyone is “spiritual but not religious,” where “God” is a feeling you get during a particularly moving speech on YouTube, and where the word “church” can apply to anything from a SoulCycle studio to a Taylor Swift arena tour. This is not expansion. This is dilution.

What Bono and Rogan represent — perhaps unwittingly — is the religion of the Self. It’s tailor-made spirituality. It asks nothing of you but that you feel something. It doesn’t correct you; it coddles you. It doesn’t say “go and sin no more”; it says “go and massage your ego.” It’s self-worship on shuffle. And that’s precisely what makes it so dangerous. Because it feels just sacred enough to fool you into thinking it’s the real thing.

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