A friend of mine challenged me one day, or rather over the course of several arguments over a couple of years, stating basically that religion is bad because religious people do bad things, often in the name of their religions.
The conversation went something like:
Friend: Religion is bad because it people always claim that God’s on their side when they are killing other people.
Me: But, religion can be good. Er, religious people aren’t all bad. Do you think I’m bad? Does my religion make me bad? Are you calling my beliefs evil?
Friend: No, I’m calling religion bad. Ideologies are the root of many evils, and religions are ideologies.
Me: Oh. But, but —
It’s readily apparent that my response, though heartfelt, was idiotic. I, a person of faith, had no good answer to why people of faith so often do evil in the name of God. I’ve always taken my faith to be a good thing – most often when I’ve been close to losing it. But, when challenged, I realized my rhetoric didn’t stand the silly-test when it comes to religious belief – organized or otherwise. What I was wanting to explain was a subtlety that I hadn’t yet defined properly in my own mind, let alone made cogent enough to argue.
One would be hard-pressed, I think, to find a religion or philosophy that does not promote, ultimately, the Golden Rule. Yet, as with the many other diversities of people – language, skin color, manner of traditional dress, sexual mores, et cetera ad infinitum – instead of treating one’s neighbor, The Other, L’Etranger, as we would like to be treated, we too often categorize, isolate, and discriminate on the basis of religious confession.
References to “just war,” “infidels,” “interreligious conflict,” and “interreligious dialogue” plague history and current events. “Muslim terrorists,” for instance, are separated from “good Muslims” by the politically correct. “Christian fundamentalists” are separated from “mainline Protestants” by the political center. “Cafeteria Catholics” are separated and separate themselves from the Old Catholics, Opus Dei, and even at times from the modern Catholic Church in which they claim to profess faith. Jews argue over Reform and Orthodoxy in a number of variations and even talk about whether one can be a Jew without being Jewish. Secular humanists condemn theists, as theists condemn atheists. Even Unitarian Universalists get into the act when they make a point to eschew creeds, doctrines, and dogma.
Salem Witch Trials
No-one, it seems, wants to play nice with anyone else.
This fact is recognized early in one’s life, when one starts to choose friends (and sometimes enemies) to the exclusion of friendships with other people. It’s human nature, naturally human, and not inherently an evil trait. It is, however, the first step in a long lifetime of creating divisions and categories, of separating the “in-crowd” from The Other.
I’ve come to realize that my friend may have been onto something bigger than she maybe realized. Religion is not in itself a bad thing. Indeed, most religions claim to seek unity, love, and forgiveness, not division and strife; however, religiosity, religious institutions, religionism are the things that lend themselves to abuse. Muhammed saw this when he founded Islam; hence, Islam is technically a religion without an institution. Education in the faith, however, and a desire to use faith as a tool of conquest and control led to the Caliphate, to mullahs, sheikhs, faqis, ayatollahs, and imams. Taken to extremes, these earthly and unholy desires have led to persecution, revolution, and terrorism.
Muslims and Jews can point to the Catholic Church as having done similar injustice in the world. They are not wrong. Yet, according to the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, Jesus critiqued organized religion, too. Even if those words are not his own, they evince the fact that early Christianity was more about substance than form.
Religious dogmas conflict not only with each other, but many give rise to conflict with science, which though not an ideology is certainly a set of beliefs. In its own way, science is a doctrine of observation. Where the doctrine of science denies absolutely the possibility of something that has yet to be empirically proved, science enters the realm of religion, as it does when it enters into speculation. For instance, It takes no more faith to belief in God than it does to believe in dark matter. Simply because something “must exist” for the sake of the current scientific theory does not mean that it actually does or that the theory is correct. And, simply because science sees through different eyes than religion does not invalidate either. (Ironically, “empiricism” means learning through experience – not a far cry from the basis of many people’s faith.)
So, where’s the disconnect between belief and practice?
Religion institutionalized is dogmatic and doctrinaire, and dogmatic constitutions seem to be what causes good people to do bad things in the name of religion. (They also can be, ironically, what cause people to lose their faith. A waverer, faced with a dogmatic constitution, is likely to run away from the embrace of organized religion, rather than to it.)
Doctrines are triumphalist and exclusionist. They are bound up in cultural and personal identity. They encourage us to wall ourselves in metaphorically, and often physically, to protect against the “infidel,” who is, in fact, no less fidelis, or faithful, than we are.
The problem with dogma is that it sets people up to set themselves apart from those who do not believe in their creed, or their claimed lack thereof. Out of this separatism arises one of perhaps four possible outcomes: elitism, tolerance, acceptance, or embrace.
- Elitism leads to persecution: the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Muslim Conquests, religious Zionism, the Armenian genocide, Colonialism, and so on.
- Tolerance is neither evil nor particularly good. It means that you still think the other person is wrong/going to hell/deluded/in a cult, but that you will not be doing anything about it. It does not offer the opportunity to learn from The Other, and it can devolve into intolerance and persecution, but at least it is a first step. Tolerance should be a minimum goal.
- Acceptance is the first step on the road to recognizing humanity. Humans will probably never stop categorizing, discriminating, and arguing over the truth; to do so would be to cease to be human. We can, however, accept that others’ beliefs are as valuable as our own. We can recognize that we are no more likely to have all the answers – or none of them – than anyone else. Once we have accepted different expressions of faith, whether it be in a God, in spirit, or in humanity, we will be on the road to peace. Peace is the necessary outcome of acceptance. Without acceptance of The Other’s humanity, inherent worth, and dignity, there is never peace.
- Embrace of human diversity should be the ultimate goal of a faithful life. “Diversity” is a word much bandied-about, over-used, and often meaningless. “Multiculturalism” and “affirmative action” have largely reduced the word to a tawdry shadow of its former self. It has been limited to racial classifications or “celebrated” through half-assed “holiday” celebrations meant to be “inclusive.”
True Values
Religious traditions divide us, yet traditions do have value. Traditions – whether religious or secular – give shape and meaning to events in our lives. They offer a way to think about the world in a ritualized manner, and ritual is present even in the lives of the most ardent atheists, for ritual gives order. We speak of the morning ritual of waking and putting on coffee. For some, cooking is ritual. For others, meditation or exercise. And, of course, for still others, worship and prayer.
True diversity, and truthful, reverent embrace of difference is powerful. It means not simply accepting others for who they are, but learning from them. It doesn’t mean one must abandon judgement, but it does mean abandoning prejudice. In other words, we may all approach ideas from different angles, accepting those perspectives that speak to us, rejecting those that do not. That’s judgement. Prejudice, however, doesn’t allow us to accept perspectives from outside our traditions, and it focuses on the person as much or more than the idea.
When the Jesus of the Gospels said, “Judge not, lest ye be judged,” I am sure he wasn’t saying, “Don’t pursue the truth,” but rather, “Do not condemn others simply because you disagree with them.” None of us are without faults; so, it behooves us to treat others with respect and love.
Averroes & Porphyry
Indeed, St. Thomas Aquinas practiced embrace by studying Arab Muslim and Jewish scholars who had, in their turn, embraced the great Greek philosophers. In Africa, Jesus and Allah were added to many pantheons. Maybe we can even learn something about embrace from the white deer of Wisconsin.
In conclusion, I wish to make a simple proposal: let us not forget what differentiates us, but celebrate it, learn from it, and always, always be good to one another.
