While speaking with a parent on report card day, she mentioned something I had long gathered from overhearing student complaints: religion class pushes students away from religion.
I don’t teach religion. I know very little about how religion is taught at our school. But, from my own elementary experiences disliking Church and disliking CCD, to forsaking it completely, to now welcoming religion (even if in a somewhat unorthodox approach) in my life, I can sympathize with that mother’s concern. Religion classes did very little for me. It was not until I had sufficient context in other areas–notably poetry and philosophy–and life experience, that I felt comfortable considering myself religious.
Ultimately, due to the personal and subjective nature of my journey, I have shied away from proselytizing in class, or even really mentioning the peculiar religious mutt I’ve adopted. (For reference, take a Jesuit, give him the Heart Sutra, and then engage him in a discussion about the Bhagavad-Gita with Emerson… that’s kind of close.) Still, I think there are universal precepts of religion that get overlooked in class. As much as the focus is personal, I would hope that any students I have will always have an open mind towards everything presented in life, and that includes religion (as well as swaths of food they seem to unfairly scorn).
Here is the rough draft of a few series I’m working on, followed by some reflections I found.
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Religion is not a bad thing. It has been blamed for pretty much every evil in history, a distinction it shares with water, women, candy, money, land, and just about anything else anyone can think of fighting over. The soul, the spirit, the very core of our being—whatever that is—is the domain of religion. It is a study of belief and faith, defining them and arguing for them. It our reason, but it goes beyond it. Meister Eckhart, a medieval German theologian, illustrates this contradiction:
Eckhart: The more God is in all things, the more He is outside them. The more He is within, the more without.
Studying religion asks us to examine the very core of our being. From where did our life come? What is that guarded spark inside of us that tells us who we are and why we are here? What force causes the grass to grow and the rain to fall? There are very clear scientific answers to some of these questions. A combination of rain, sunlight, and soil nutrients causes grass to grow.
But consider the causes. We can trace life backwards with science as far as the Big Bang, but then what? Aristotle didn’t believe in God as many of his contemporaries did, a godlike Zeus who made thunder; instead, Aristotle considered ‘God’ to be the First Mover, or Primary Cause. Predating Isaac Newton, he considered that at some point, everything was at rest, and someone or something, some force, got everything started. As the Taoists have said: “It is the author of causes and effects, but is not the causes and effects.” 2000 years have passed since Aristotle and Plato, and we are no closer to understanding or apprehending who or what ‘God’ is.
William Law: Though GOD is everywhere present, yet He is only present to thee in the deepest and most central part of thy soul. The natural senses cannot possess God or unite thee to Him; nay, they inward faculties of understanding, will and memory can only reach after God, but cannot be the place of his habitation in thee. But there is a root or depth of thee from whence all these faculties come forth, as lines from a centre, or as branches from the body of the tree. This depth is called the centre, the fund or bottom of the soul. This depth is the unity, the eternity—I had almost said infinity—of thy soul; for it is so infinite that nothing can satisfy it or give it rest but the infinity of God.
Both Eckhart and Law could only apprehend the notion of ‘God’ as a presence both within and without. It is present in both spaces, while also being absent from them. We must also discuss what I’ve called the ‘notion of “God”’. ‘God’ as a term is a placeholder. Like all words, it is symbolic of something else, but here more than anywhere else, that reference is a mystery. In some senses, we could say that it exactly stands for ‘mystery’, for what we will never fully understand. Though I use the term ‘God’, it is a cultural convenience.
Eckhart: The knower and the known are one. Simple people imagine that they should see God, as if He stood there and they here. This is not so. God and I, we are one in knowledge.
It is a placeholder for that unknown Ground from which all life grows. That it is unknown implies that this is territory for discovery. And though millions of people throughout history have had their say about religion, writing scripture, lecturing congregations, amassing followers, directing policies, it must ultimately be a personal journey. Shankara, writing his treatise, Viveka-Chudamani (“The Crest-Jewel of Wisdom”) elucidated this independent path:
Shankara: The nature of the one Reality must be known by one’s own clear spiritual perception. It cannot be known through a learned man. Similarly, the form of the moon can only be seen through one’s own eyes. How can it be seen through others?
When a man or woman follows the ways of the world, or the ways of the flesh, or the ways of tradition (i.e. when he or she believes in religious rites and the scriptures as though they were intrinsically sacred), knowledge of Reality cannot arise in him or her.
This is to say that the true religious individual is not simply a studier of texts or a practice of rhetoric; the true religious individual has focused his or her mind on this divine Ground and in all his or her actions, an understanding of it, a peace with it, a being of it, are the desired ends. Religion is not about studying a test or attending church, it is about how one lives one’s life, and what one lives life for. Texts and ceremonies should not be shunned, but they must be appreciated as means to an end, not an end in themselves.
Beyond all, this divine Ground, and scripture or ceremonies we follow to help us comprehend it, should bring us a realization of our common humanity, what we share with all others, and what we share with all animals, all plants, all life, and even inanimate rocks and dirt. William Law calls it love. He says that “love is infallible; it has no errors, for all errors are the want of love.” As religion helps us understand ourselves, it helps us understand love free from possession. This is the love grass perceives when water drops from the sky, yet it is the same love that allows a young boy to be murdered in a city street—not from a lack of love, but from a want of it.
For all their uses, science and philosophy will not take us to this Ground, to God. The former attempts to explain the cause of what we already know, the latter asks how we know what we know, but only religion is adequate for exploring why we are at all.
Aldous Huxley: When the hope is to know God inclusively—to realize the divine Ground in the world as well as in the soul, temptations must not be avoided, but submitted to and used as opportunities for advance; there must be no suppression of outward-turning activities, but a transformation of them so that they become sacramental.
Pope John Paul II: Giving of yourself
It is more blessed to give than to receive. (Acts 20:35)
“What we have here is not simply a moral exhortation, or a command that comes to us from without. The inclination to give is rooted in the depths of the human heart. Every person is conscious of a desire to interact with others and everyone finds fulfillment in a free gift of self to others.
“When believers respond to the inner impulse to give themselves to others without expecting anything in return, they experience a profound interior satisfaction.
“The efforts of Christians to promote justice, their commitment in defense of the powerless, their humanitarian work in providing bread for the hungry, and their care for the sick by responding to every emergency and need draw their strength from that sole and inexhaustible treasure of love which is the complete gift of Jesus to the Father.”
· Consider these questions…
o Pope John Paul II makes an assumption that the feeling that makes us give is an intrinsic part of our nature. Do you agree?
o Is it possible to give and not expect anything in return?
o What does this have to do with Jesus?
