I don't want to ask the same old questions: Why do religious people profess goodness, practice hate? Why do people of varying religions not see their communality instead of their differences? Why do people believing in God take so much of life and death into their own hands?
I guess what I would like to know is what makes some people capable of belief, others not. How do so many people believe such ludicrous stories; what makes the legends of the Bible, the accounts of the Koran, more respectable than the stories of Achilles and Zeus, Cupid and Athena? How, in this age of reason, does faith persist? I don't mean "Why does faith persist?" but "How?"
Friday, January 25, 2008
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Residual Questions Lingering
So what now? What to do with all these experiences of religion? What to do with the knowledge that most of the world's people practice some form of religion, profess belief in some form of God, pray to some metaphysical notion of power?
When I was a teenager I used to assault the night's darkness with my questions: How can I believe in God? Why can everyone else, and not me? If there is a God, why would I be refused belief? Aren't the prayers of the innocent somehow special? Isn't it said, "Seek, and ye shall find? Knock, and the door will be opened to you?" The door in front of me remained unrelentingly solid and impenetrable. So many years later, I do not knock anymore. Will I be taken by surprise maybe? Now especially, that my own mom, a woman of great, unshakeable faith in the selfsame God who spurned me, is dying, actively dying, a protracted and horrible and certain death? Will her vision of eternity illuminate the night for me, maybe, finally?
I don't think so. I don't expect or seek light from this quarter any more, not even a thin line of that famous white light from around the edges of the resolutely chained door. But if I did see such a light, wouldn't I try that old door again, wouldn't I tug at its heavy tarnished locks one more time? Oh, you betcha I would; I am far too nosey not to do so.
I see religion as one of the world's greatest problems. The more I know about religion, the more I feel abhorrence. It makes people resigned. It builds contentment. It builds self-righteousness, from which eventually comes its steady partner, intolerance. It is said that both the greatest goodnesses and the greatest evils in our world have always had their strongest roots in various religions. Well, I don't think that's true. Stalin? Hitler? What extreme goodnesses? I don't see the truth of either side of this statement, which is used, in general, as a sort of universal shrug-off whenever religion is seen to be intolerant or wicked or at the basis of the wars and crusades and campaigns of intolerance, the places where hatred flies its sorry standard and flies it without shame.
What is my follow-up question? I don't really know. What is your follow-up answer?
When I was a teenager I used to assault the night's darkness with my questions: How can I believe in God? Why can everyone else, and not me? If there is a God, why would I be refused belief? Aren't the prayers of the innocent somehow special? Isn't it said, "Seek, and ye shall find? Knock, and the door will be opened to you?" The door in front of me remained unrelentingly solid and impenetrable. So many years later, I do not knock anymore. Will I be taken by surprise maybe? Now especially, that my own mom, a woman of great, unshakeable faith in the selfsame God who spurned me, is dying, actively dying, a protracted and horrible and certain death? Will her vision of eternity illuminate the night for me, maybe, finally?
I don't think so. I don't expect or seek light from this quarter any more, not even a thin line of that famous white light from around the edges of the resolutely chained door. But if I did see such a light, wouldn't I try that old door again, wouldn't I tug at its heavy tarnished locks one more time? Oh, you betcha I would; I am far too nosey not to do so.
I see religion as one of the world's greatest problems. The more I know about religion, the more I feel abhorrence. It makes people resigned. It builds contentment. It builds self-righteousness, from which eventually comes its steady partner, intolerance. It is said that both the greatest goodnesses and the greatest evils in our world have always had their strongest roots in various religions. Well, I don't think that's true. Stalin? Hitler? What extreme goodnesses? I don't see the truth of either side of this statement, which is used, in general, as a sort of universal shrug-off whenever religion is seen to be intolerant or wicked or at the basis of the wars and crusades and campaigns of intolerance, the places where hatred flies its sorry standard and flies it without shame.
What is my follow-up question? I don't really know. What is your follow-up answer?
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