Theologians typically leave out an essential fact about spirituality when they say that God created people. What they might say is that God created people as individuals.
Many evolutionary scientists make the same omission. They say that human beings evolved naturally from lower animals. What they might say is that genetic diversity has made us individuals to a much greater extent than often is appreciated.
People come in opposites. Values come in opposites, and personality traits come in opposites. Extroverts, for example, value fellowship, but introverts value solitude. As detailed in my book, Normal Personality, personality traits are just combinations of motives and values.
If a religion were to teach that God blesses fellowship, it would encourage extroverts to become who they are. If a religion were to teach that God blesses solitude, it would encourage introverts to become who they are.
Human individuality poses a challenge for religion's mission of spiritual development. As psychologist William James discussed in his classic book Varieties of Religious Experiences, people with a Warrior personality type need to worship gods of battles, but those who are conflict avoidant need to worship gods of peace. Religion, however, often encourages the flock to embrace a common set of values.
I am a psychologist and expert on motives and values. My colleagues and I created the most widely studied psychological model of anxiety in the last 30 years.
Whereas just about everybody agrees with Freud that motivation is about psychic energy, I think it is about the assertion of one's core values. I think the role of religion in society is to provide meaningful ways for people to express their values.
We are a species born to assert our values. We do so at every opportunity that presents itself. The reason this is not obvious is because values has not been a significant research topic in psychology and many psychologists do not know what they are.
Religion is at its best when it helps people become who they are. It is much less successful when it seeks to impose group values on individuals.
In my new book, The 16 Strivings for God, I show how motives and values combine to make us individuals and then discuss how religion is designed psychologically for spiritual development. In my previous blog posts I show the psychological connections between intrinsic motives or psychological needs and the attributes of God. I also present easy-to-understand examples of spiritual personalities.