There it was again: choose what to believe. Couldn't they see he wanted the truth?
- Adapted from JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Religion is flawed, but only because man is flawed.
- Dan Brown, Angels and Demons
I've never had a lot of faith.
I wonder if this would surprise people. I come from a Catholic family, though growing up my exposure was sporadic. I know the usual prayers, what to do during mass, and a smattering of biblical lore. But I'm not sure I could say that I have ever truly believed.
Now, I am not a hard-bitten sceptic, only believing in things I can see. Far from it. If you asked me if I believe in true love, I'd say yes, absolutely - with the caveats that there are a lot of potential true loves, and that love changes. I do believe in God, or I tell myself I do.
I say this because I like logical outcomes. Cause and effect, you know? Certainty. And I'm not certain about God.
I'm aware that I am choosing to believe.
But I'm also aware that I'm still young, it's a big world out there, and there's a lot of things I haven't seen for myself. To say that my mindset will never change is naive. This is just a snapshot of where I am at the moment. I actually don't feel qualified to have an opinion on spirituality...so I'm not going to offer one.
I do, however, have an opinion on religion.
The Catholic Church's current stance is that members of other Christian denominations, and even other religions, can still attain heaven if their actions and beliefs are sufficiently in line with Catholic teachings. (Historically, this is a major improvement. Before the Second Vatican Council, everyone else was going to hell.) But the Church maintains that salvation can only truly come from them.
But this is just one branch of Christianity - and also one religion. There are others out there, often as much traditional as spiritual - Judaism and Shintoism are excellent examples. Belief in our own rightness is hardly unique. Everyone thinks theirs is the true path*. So who's right?
Yann Martel's Life of Pi offers an intriguing solution. Pi, the boy who practiced Christianity, Islam and his native Hinduism at the same time, claims that all belief systems are simply vehicles of higher understanding - even atheism, whose god is Science. It doesn't matter so much what we believe in, as long as we believe.
He makes a good point. But the problem here is that what you believe can matter a great deal to those who think the most important thing in life is to be a good Christian, or a good Muslim, or a good Hindu. And I'm sorry, but it's not.
It's to be a good person.**
Now think about that. As a Christian, or a Muslim, or anything really; aren't you supposed to be a good person? It's one of the few things most religions share. So why am I making that distinction?
Because too often, we focus only on our differences.
In Mitch Albom's Have A Little Faith - a true story - the author's rabbi, who believed in interfaith relations, became friends with a priest. (Episcopalian, I think.) To demonstrate this, he invited the man into his synagogue to say a few words to the Jewish congregation. The priest thanked him, took the pulpit - and started pleading with the audience to convince their rabbi to accept Jesus Christ. He got tears in his eyes, saying the rabbi was a lovely person, and didn't deserve to go to hell.
I found that quite sad. This priest honestly believed his new friend was heading for eternal damnation, because he belonged to a different faith.
That's a fairly harmless example. Again: religions are not bad. They promote a moral standard - things like honesty, fidelity, compassion. They provide a sense of community. The danger lies in allowing our beliefs to become an excuse for violence - which happens time and time again.
It happened during the Crusades, when European Christians slaughtered their way across the Holy Land. It happened during the Partition of India, in rioting between millions of Hindus and Muslims. It's happening right now, with the so-called Islamic State committing daily atrocities which the Muslim world condemns as crimes against Islam.***
I'm lucky enough to live in a place where religious harmony is a fact of life. (It's not perfect, but what is?) But there are so many places in the world where this isn't so. And it should be.
A friend of mine, a Muslim, once told me about the time he and a Christian friend traveled to West Malaysia, where boundaries are more rigid than in the East. They went out to eat, and before the meal they prayed together. The Muslim spread his hands for the doa; the Christian made the sign of the cross. People stared. The woman behind the counter even went over to ask if they were all right. We don't usually see this sort of thing, she said.
The pair smiled and answered, you do where we're from.
I can get behind that.
I may not be sure about belief in my own religion. But I do believe in tolerance. A little respect goes a long way. Some of us know this, and stories like this give me hope that others can learn. It may be naive, but I really do believe that in spite of all our differences, we can still gather behind the one thing we have in common. I believe we can put our humanity first.
I believe in us.
What do you believe?
*Though incidentally, not all religions are so, shall we say, pushy. Shintoism doesn't mind whether you believe or not, and converting to Judaism is notoriously difficult. It's probably why each is restricted to the Japanese and Jewish peoples, respectively.
**Years ago, I read an interview in Reader's Digest with a female entrepreneur. She spoke about going to a Christian school as a girl, and the nuns telling them to be good for the love of Jesus. This woman asked why they couldn't just do good because it was the right thing to do. It got her in trouble. And I remember thinking, but why was she wrong? It made perfect sense to me.
***To state the obvious: it's interesting to note that history is, in essence, cause and effect on a grand scale. The Crusades began when Jerusalem was seized by Muslim Turks, who massacred the Christians there, prompting Pope Urban II to call for a war of liberation. Religious conflicts in the Indian sub-continent are a cycle of perpetrator and victim that continues to this day. And the roots of Islamic terrorism are still being debated, with various opinions blaming exploitation of the Middle East by Western superpowers, crushing poverty, the idea that the the Muslim world is under siege by Western values, and inherent flaws within Islam itself. It's probably too soon to tell.
