Religion From the 'Other Side'

When I try to rationalize the theology and dogma of the many religions that human beings have concocted throughout history I find it useful to attempt to view them from God’s perspective – from the ‘other side’.  This may sound presumptuous and perhaps even blasphemous, but we humans have an intellect and reasoning power, so it would be surprising for God to fault us for employing that intellect in such an exercise. (The fact that Adam and Eve were supposedly banished from Eden for pushing the envelope in the knowledge department might make one think otherwise, but I am going on the assumption that this metaphorical version of the creation is not an indication that God does not want us to use our given intellect!)

Conceptualizing God is a fool’s errand of course.  Historically mankind has envisioned deities in anthropomorphic fashion – Gods with human form and human foibles.  Now that we have some idea of how vast and unfathomable the universe is, our past fantasies seem somewhat foolish.  If God created man in his own image, as the bible surmises, then is God just a super-sized human being with super powers?  Even with a healthy dose of ‘blind faith’, that concept seems rather absurd and unlikely.

If there is indeed a God or some form of divinity, and I, for one, am hopeful that there is for a variety of reasons, then I imagine that God would be more amorphous and less tangibly physical than we envision.  But the form of God isn’t really that germane to our discussion, so its mystery can safely be left unraveled.

So God, in whatever form, creates the universe, in whatever manner – big bang, evolution, and any other mechanisms that may be useful.  A first question might be why he even wants to create the universe.  For sake of later questions and argument, let us just say that it is God’s nature to create.

The next big question is: What is God’s purpose in specifically creating human beings? Are human beings truly unique in our possession of a self-conscious state?  Is God uniquely interested in our activity as opposed to the rest of his creation, simply because we are self-conscious and have free will?  These are already tough questions, but in order to move forward with this analysis, let’s assume that God does regard us as special creatures.  What does he want from us?

Is our chief end, as the Judeo-Christian faith speculates, ‘to glorify God and to enjoy him forever’?  Did God create man for his glory?  Is our sole purpose to ‘worship and love God with all of our heart, soul, strength and mind’? 

What does all that really mean?  It seems to ascribe a very human narcissism and vanity to God.  Does a God that can create a universe really need a fan club?  Does God need glory from his creation?  Whom is he trying to impress?  Is there a competition with other universes and Gods?  These questions may sound flippant but I believe they are worth asking.

I interpret all this worshiping and glorifying purely in the context of God wanting humans to bend their hearts and behavior toward Godly things.  God doesn’t need worship or glory in the sense that is normally associated with those words. 

Now if one understands this idea of a relationship between God and humans to be one of mutual love, and that by ‘worshiping’ and loving God, as well as loving other human beings we are reflecting the love that God represents and instantiates in the universe, then that would be much more plausible and palatable.  It seems like the kind of thing God might want.

It is reasonable to believe that if there is a God and he created the universe, then he must have created the universe and human beings for some higher reason than to simply have a functioning machine that would run in a predictable manner like a huge train set in his basement.  If so, then he would be curious and perhaps even passionate about creating beings that have free will and the capacity for both creation and destruction, good and evil, love and hate, compassion and cruelty.  This is the line of reasoning that people use when trying to explain why there is evil and calamity in the world if God is a loving God.

Perhaps God is interested in simply seeing how humans progress with their free will and intellect.  But apart from the pure curiosity of seeing how his creation evolves and how these beings with free will act, what would he expect from this creation and how would he interact with it?  If God is love, and love is the goal and motive force in his creation, then perhaps God would seed the whole enterprise with some mechanism for inspiring this love and animating it in the non-deterministic elements of the creation – the human creatures.

And out of this love would come a sense of morality and an inclination toward ethical behavior that would somehow be innate or at least periodically suggested through some link to the divine – a soul or a spirit perhaps.  And maybe God would be intrigued, even passionately determined, to have the creatures hearken to this call of love and ethical behavior.  Wouldn’t it be logical that God would want his creatures to evolve toward a more loving and compassionate state? 

But what seems highly improbable is that God would be insistent on humans having a specific set of abstract beliefs about the nature of God or the universe, or that he is terribly interested in whether his creation formally acknowledges his existence, given his penchant for avoiding direct contact or communication with his creation! 

Is it really likely that God cares whether we believe in the inerrancy of various forms of scripture?  Can we really believe that God will test us on our knowledge of the trinity?  Is it rational to think that ‘accepting or following Jesus’ (whatever that might mean in practical terms . . . ) is a litmus test that determines whether we go off to eternal damnation or bliss?  Is God likely to care whether we embrace love and compassion via Jesus, Isaiah, Mohammed, Buddha, or through a friend or teacher or self-study?

We trivialize God and strain credulity when we claim that he cares about things like whether we:

• ·         eat pork or shellfish
• ·         believe that Mary was a virgin
• ·         believe that Jesus performed miracles
• ·         believe that Mohammed was God’s last and greatest prophet
• ·         believe there is one ‘chosen people’
• ·         believe that there was actually a flood and Noah’s ark housed representatives of every species on earth
• ·         swear
• ·         doubt God’s existence (as Bertrand Russell famously said: Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence)
• ·         wear a burka, hajib, yarmulke, veil or any other garment
• ·         keep a certain day holy
• ·         pray in schools
• ·         Or a thousand other laws, customs, dogma and idiosyncrasies that religions have decreed as necessary for membership that do not move us any closer to a spirit of love and compassion

Wouldn’t it be reasonable to believe that the only things God truly cares about are things that mold and refine our hearts and actions to be in tune with the morality that every religion as well as secular movements have slowly embraced over thousands of years?

Religious metaphors and traditions, and the cultural heritage associated with them can be wonderfully enriching aspects of our lives and communities, and to the extent that they bind us together in communal life and nurture our interest and search for God’s message of love and compassion they can be very positive forces.  But they are not the essence of our quest to seek God and they should certainly not encumber us in our search or prevent us from reaching out to one another in a spirit of common humanity.

The ‘arc of history is long but it bends toward justice’.  This must be the arc that God wants to see, because justice implies love and it implies compassion.  And all of the human baggage that gets in the way – the divisive religious squabbling and exclusivism, the arrogant, self-righteous insistence on having the ‘one true’ understanding of God – must be jettisoned along the way if this arc is ever to complete its travel.

The Spirit is Willing but the Flesh is Weak

Life is not simple.  There are many aspects of day to day living that confound us, where clear answers to the questions confronting us are not discernible, and may not even exist.  The world is full of contradictions.

For example, we are encouraged to resist the temptations of the flesh by our religious teachings.  In many western religious texts, our ‘natural’ urges are presented as diabolical ploys of the evil one. There seems always to be a dichotomy between the call of the spirit and the pull of the flesh.  Earthly pleasure is perceived to be of secondary importance and at best a distraction for a seriously spiritual person.  Some pleasures are seen as outright sinful, while others are judged to be permissible as long as they do not dominate one’s life or thinking.  But higher commitments to the spiritual life seem to involve a negation of worldly pleasures and cravings.

In eastern religions, the concept of suffering brought on by worldly desires is central.  These desires are not necessarily viewed as evil in any moral sense, but they are the source of pain, discomfort, longing – all of the things that make life so difficult for many people – and are therefore to be mastered or eliminated.

For the non-religious, this dichotomy of flesh and spirit seems antiquated and puritanical.  And the repression of desire is perceived as a recipe for psychological disaster in the form of various neuroses and mental illness.  Worldly desires are understood as natural phenomenon that have evolved in humans and other animals for very good reasons.

All of us struggle with balancing our desires and our discipline.  Only the most decadent libertine will argue that every desire can be indulged without harmful consequence.  And only the most ascetic monastic will proclaim that all desire should be purged from life.

In this struggle to find a middle way between succumbing to all desire and imposing an iron rule over our natural impulses an interesting question arises.  Is there a path that is morally prescribed?  Is there a higher calling to tune our natural selves to be in harmony with a universal morality or ‘right way’?

Human sexuality is a good example of the challenges we face in life.  Clearly, sexual desire is a natural, biological urge.  Repression of this desire has been proven to be a harmful thing in most cases.  Yet it is also clear that unbridled sexual behavior can also be dangerous in many ways.  Is there a ‘morality’ that could guide our sexual behavior that does not vilify it but also does not encourage acts with negative consequences?  If we are doing things that have a significant probability of hurting ourselves or other people, then is this not the definition of an immoral act?

This kind of definition of morality is loose and does not lend itself to well-defined laws or codes, but it provides a basis for decision-making and it also avoids the often arbitrary nature of culturally or religiously prescribed moral statutes.

But it also acknowledges that there is a need for us to rein in our natural impulses to some degree, to apply discipline to those biological and natural urges.  Just because something is ‘natural’ doesn’t mean that it is necessarily ‘good’ or desirable.  We can celebrate nature and evolution for their profound beauty and complexity, but we are still sentient beings with the opportunity to temper and mold ourselves to create a more just and harmonious world.

A second example of the option for refinement and discipline over our natural impulses is our penchant for violence.  Earlier cultures celebrated warlike behavior and prowess and encouraged their development.  Conquest and even annihilation of other groups were greeted with rapturous enthusiasm. Our present sensibilities no longer find this type of full-throated embrace of war and conquest acceptable.  We couch our violence in terms of ‘defending the homeland’ or ‘spreading democracy’, but we still secretly admire and envy the courageous deeds of the special forces and the covert operators, or watch with fascination the brutal encounters between UFC and MMA fighters.

Is there a higher calling for us to evolve psychologically beyond this addiction to violence?  Aggressive, violent behavior is to some extent natural.  Nature is filled with stalking and killing; indeed, it depends on it.  Is our conflict and killing just another aspect of this natural world – a way to control population and weed out the weak and undesirable?  Or are we ‘called’ to leave all of this behind and forge a new path, however frustrating and ‘unnatural’?

There are no easy rules for living.  Some will choose to pursue a more ascetic path, eschewing pleasures of the flesh and finding their joy in the undiluted pursuit of spiritual connection.  Others will revel in hedonistic delights, riding the fine line of self-destruction or broken relationships.  Most will try to find a balance somewhere in the middle.  Morality, whether secular or religious, is an elusive concept that defies any sort of absolute interpretation.  We will continue to fumble in our efforts to define the best path, but perhaps our religious and materialistic perceptions are slowly converging to a unified sense of what a righteous and just life should be.