Religion
To whom or what do you ascribe supreme importance in your life? What makes your drum beat, pulse race, ears tingle, or soul stir? What is the one thing you will go to your grave defending, the topic brought up at family gatherings that makes you cringe or riles you up? What do you accept as true or real to the point of trusting it with your life? There have been many words for it over the centuries, & it is perhaps one of our most triggering words in the dictionary, cloaked in so many perceptions, experiences & nuances it’s hard to leave a discussion like this without feeling slightly confused, a smidge overwhelmed by the brevity of the topic & at war with ourselves over our own understanding or experiences surrounding it.
Religion. Sit with this word. How does she make you feel? What reaction rises to your consciousness as you think of her? How have you experienced her? Is she friend or foe? Do you feel anger or joy? Does she make you concerned or hopeful? Does shame creep in or does freedom beckon? Are you fond of her or have the two of you been estranged for some time? Do you want to burn her at the stake of justice or crown her with laurels of honor? In more recent days we tend to say we are “spiritual” but not “religious”. Being spiritual simply means you are concerned about the human spirit or soul, the deepest part of who we are as humans. Being religious implies you have found a system for what your soul values most highly and trusts most deeply as worthy of your affection & the mission of your satisfaction in life.
Your religion is what you believe will “save” your soul…what will satisfy you at the core of your being. We are all deeply concerned about our souls because we all want & believe certain things will fill us or “make us happy”. I ask you once more, to whom or what do you ascribe supreme importance in your life? We tend to think of religion as the devotion some people have to an organized tradition of faith such as Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, and others, but is that all religion can be boiled down to?
The closer we look at religion, the more apparent is seems that religion is much less an organized system attached to a body politic of followers as it is a universal heart cry of every single soul – we need something to make supreme in our lives, someone to blame when things head south, something to trust when everything is shaken around us, someone to rescue us or steer our course when we are under pressure or in the dark. We need something to lead us, someone to take the dreadful weight of loneliness away, something to offer us permanence in a life so brief, a world so shifting, something to believe in, to offer our affection to, to uphold to others as the highest standard of all that is good, true, lovely, noble, honorable, excellent & praiseworthy.
How do we determine the highest good of life? What do we believe is true enough to satisfy us as the most desirable thing life offers? What do we define our morality by or our ethics to navigate a shifting labyrinth of rights & wrongs? Religion is so much more than simple spirituality or “organized” groups that have had time to determine what their beliefs are on paper. We are all religious. Religion is the road map our souls choose to take in their spirituality. My religion is whatever I have determined to be of supreme importance in my life…what I live for & believe will give me meaning, purpose & fulfillment. Whatever I think will take the loneliness of my soul away & meet me in my deepest desires is what I make my religion.
Traditionally, the concept of God or the Divine had a central role in cultures across the globe as the main stabilizing force, often translating to a religion depending on who you believed God was & what you thought He required of you. In more recent years in the West, Post Modernism has given rise to a distaste for God, even though many other cultures around the globe still ascribe their religious experiences to God. Post modernism is founded in the concept that truth and reality are both relative and cannot be measured or known with confidence, leaving the subscribers of this philosophy rather fluid & ungrounded. It believes the certainty of science & general objectivity is impossible making everything subjective & leaving no room for the concept of Divine being.
Friedrich Nietzsche, a major proponent of the post modern ideology, says quite infamously that “God is dead”. To often we stop there though & never finish the quote in total – “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest & mightiest of all the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed to great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”
What does Nietzsche mean by this? Taking God out of life leaves us responsible for everything He once held together in our minds. When we tear down what was most stable, most “holy”, what will we do with the aftermath of that blood bath? He poses the question, if God is dead, what do we do now? Indeed, what will we have to do now that we are “in charge” so to speak? This is precisely the dilemma the modern mind faces when it comes to religion. Many still worship God as the supreme source of all life and goodness, but many others in Western society especially have joined with the post modernists in decrying God as dead & uplifting the supremacy of their own free will & spirituality, but what will we direct this spirituality with or towards now?
Given these nuances, religion can take many shapes – whatever we deem worthy of our time & attention becomes our religion, whatever we believe is the highest truth & good & most able to save us is what we place on the now vacant throne of God. Some people worship their work…we call them workaholics, but work is essentially their religion. Others worship politics religiously, looking to political government & activism to save the world from its woes & right all wrongs, giving them meaning & direction along the way. Certain individuals look to sports as the all-consuming distraction, seeing wins & losses as paramount to their own victories or failures, identifying with the larger body politic of fandom across the board. Education can become all-encompassing as a thirst for knowledge becomes your deepest truth & solution to life.
Some make society their religion, subscribing to its every whim of fashion, body type, trend, vacation & symbols of status & acceptance. Other still prefer to enter the courts of a cathedral, temple or church to find their purpose in God as many have done over the millennia. Fitness gurus & devoted followers try their hand at a religion of eternal youth & strength through dieting & exercise, seeing fitness & health as the ultimate goal & highest ideal for life. Some couples even worship each other & their relationship to a point of making each other god & goddess of their lives. I could go on, but the point is we all have a religion we practice. Have you ever stopped & asked yourself why? What DO you believe? How did you decide that thing, group, God or person would most satisfy you? To whom or what do you ascribe supreme importance in your life?
What I want to ask is why. Why are we religious? Why do we care about spirituality, the state of our souls? Why do we need that higher sense of goodness to guide us? Why do we need a standard to measure ourselves against, a community to identify with, a mission to embark on? Why do we need this sense of leadership & direction in our lives?
Why do we craft creeds & covenants around us to measure our morality even when we are recovering from the last set of creeds & covenants that wounded us before? Why do we need someone or something to look to to rescue us & solve the problem of evil in the world? Why do we long for a co-sufferer who understands our pains? Why are we lonely? Why does this loneliness demand to be resolved like an incessant ache inside us? Why do we determine x, y, or z will truly atone & make us whole, but that a, b, & c will not?
We all have our stories with religion. Some of us were raised in a traditional religious environment, others were raised in a more unconventional religious environment where things such as education, fitness or politics were the highest good. Some of us were deeply wounded by certain religious expressions while others were greatly comforted & encouraged by their religion. Religion offers some common things regardless of what yours might be. Religion offers community, a sense of belonging & comradery where you are known & loved. She offers moral affinity – being on the same page with other people you respect & admire, headed for the same mutual goal. She offers us direction & leadership when we don’t know where to go or what to do. She grants us stability when life gets hard & messy or suffering ensues.
She offers meaning & purpose, giving a depth to our lives that propels us into joy & ecstasy. She offers an avenue for our affections to flow & flourish in worship & adoration of the desire of our hearts. She shows us what is good, true, lovely, pure, noble, excellent, honorable & praiseworthy. She gives us creeds & covenants that offer us a rubric for right & wrong, a sense of truth & reality by which justice can do her work. She is a cure for our loneliness, something, or someone to wrap our lives around & fill the caverns of our soul with. I leave you with this question, to whom or what do you ascribe supreme importance in your life and why?
