“Religion causes good people to do bad things.” That’s what a commenter recently wrote in an online streaming class I was leading (www.twitch.com/theologyandicecream). As a theologian and clergy, part of me wanted to enter the lists of the comment section and show how he was wrong. However, another part of me agrees with him.
Those religious people, amiright?! You know who I’m talking about …the folks who take their beliefs about God and make it into telling everyone how they should live every aspect of their lives. Why don’t they keep it to themselves? Religion seems to be the source of so many problems and if we just cut religion out of the public conversation, maybe, just maybe, we could find some solutions to the problems all around us.
Do you believe that? A growing number of people do and for very good reasons. They have experienced enough of life to see how religious language has a tendency to make a lot of assertions without a lot of answers. Religion has been used and abused, distorted, becoming unnecessary in an age of scientific reasoning and multiculturalism. I’ve grown up in the church and seen how much mental, emotional, spiritual, even physical abuse can take place.
Just toss it out or keep it where it should be: private.
The challenge, and it’s a big one, is that this is actually impossible.
We like to think we can keep our spirituality or religion private, or that we don’t even have a spirituality or religion, but it’s not true. We’re human. Part of being human is confronting the reality around us and having enough self-awareness to know we’re out of our league.
That is why part of being human involves constructing narratives about life, the universe, and everything. Religions explain the world in a way other ways of understanding the world can’t. There’s more to the world than what science alone can explain. There’s a big story, from how the world came to be to what the world is going to become.
Some religions involve gods. Some narrow down to one God. Some don’t necessarily need god at all. What religions and spirituality provide is an orienting sense of purpose to navigate the mysteries of what it means to be me in the life I’m living.
That’s why religion or spirituality can never be truly private without a fair amount of philosophical and psychological mismanagement. We like to think we can compartmentalize better than we can. Some people even like to think they’re spiritual not religious, or not even spiritual or religious. Esqueleto from the movie Nacho Libre speaks for so many: “I don’t know why you always have to be judging me, because I only believe in science.” This then is seen as an enlightened position, truly an Enlightenment position, where isolated reason is put in the service of a more rational life and society.
It sounds really good, but again, it’s impossible. Because we’re not nearly as rational as we think we are, and certainly not able to navigate the larger realities of life in isolation. We are creatures with a variety of needs, emotions, physical, social, and more. I love the show Brain Games because of how it showed so clearly that what we think is objective reality isn’t so, we’re only convinced it is because the brain that tells us what we’re experiencing likewise convinces us that it is telling us absolute truth.
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This is the situation we’re in as a society: we’re bad at compartmentalizing, but we think we are really good at it. Which is a lot like someone who has avoidant or even PTSD thinking …they’re okay without therapy or support. But, they’re not …they’re just diverting the trauma in ways out of their conscious control.
This has all sorts of social implications. The religious people think they’re compartmentalizing and acting out of religious devotion, but far too many use religion as a skin suit for other drives. They want money, or ego-satisfaction, or relief from guilt, or social stature.
The supposedly non-religious think that by cutting divine discussions out they’re rationally astute, but far too many are simply replacing identifiable religions with some other kind of what I’ve come to call “orienting philosophies.” These usually don’t have a divinity or book of sacred writings, but these orienting philosophies provide a narrative of reality and a purpose for life. These can be so strong. However, when we experience contrary narratives, we lash out, because our very identity is at risk!
The challenge we all face is to deal with our self as an integrated whole. To understand the narrative we’re living by and our place within the world.
Sometimes that means adapting a certain part of the narrative or in some situations to convert to a different narrative entirely when we find the earlier one ultimately insufficient. Either way, the goal is to reject the ideal of compartmentalization and to realize that everyone is bringing their orienting philosophy into everything they do, and far too many of us have multiple competing orienting philosophies that are really dis-integrating our sense of whole harmonious self.
Everyone has beliefs about spirituality and God, but not everyone has good beliefs. What makes a belief good? A good belief about spirituality and God is one that is coherent and has integrity with the world around. We can expand on this and say everyone has an orienting philosophy but not everyone has an orienting philosophy that allows for integration and wholeness.
The call to each of us is to identify our orienting philosophy and be willing to engage our self and this world in light of that, being open to challenge and being willing to change. Because our brain isn’t exactly trustworthy, it loves telling us things are internally and externally consistent when they’re not. For this reason, we need the perspectives of others in forming our spirituality and beliefs about God.
It’s in community that we begin to see better, hear better, know better. That’s ultimately what we’re seeking, a place of trust and acceptance, where we can be ourselves in the company of others. But so many competing orienting narratives make this almost impossible in practice, especially when they are hidden or unknown. A good orienting narrative is that allows for integration and wholeness through engaging others of their community.
This is why I encourage each of my students to engage their orienting narratives in view of their context. Good spirituality and belief about God seeks understanding by telling one’s story alongside others. It’s in this sharing of narratives that our blind spots are illuminated and our experience of this world goes beyond our own brains, equipping us to live life as a whole integrated entity.
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