The Return of Religion

I grew up in the sixties/seventies, thinking religion was the problem. Not a problem. The problem. The thing that turned people off from feeling safe, good about themselves, and God. Instead, it was riddled with guilt over sin and fear of hell. It traded genuine spiritual inquiry for a rulebook on obedience. All framed as known truth and wisdom that was only obvious to a few. I am suspicious of anything that is known to others but not easily understandable to me.

That was fifty years ago. My thinking has shifted dramatically, and I find myself rethinking some assumptions I held with great confidence in my youth.

Chief among them is the idea that most people, given time, freedom, and information, will naturally figure out how to live well. Will set aside time for contemplation, and look inward for truth and connection. Will question God, its existence, and everything else. But that has not been true. I was not correct in that thinking. Most people do not want to dedicate time to contemplation. And, possibly, prefer to have a template to work from, a list of things that should be done in order to be a good person. Like having ten commandments. A clear definition of God. Answers to things beyond understanding that are easy to reference.

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Let me be even more direct and pose a few uncomfortable questions.

Is it true that a meaningful percentage of the population has neither the cognitive capacity nor the emotional bandwidth to work out morality and meaning from first principles? That’s not a condemnation. Is it an observable fact that intelligence is not distributed equally? And if so, can we accept this, or do we prefer to avoid or deny this observation?

Is it true there is a second, perhaps even larger, percentage of the population that has the capacity but not the interest in doing this work? They have jobs and kids and thirty years of mortgage payments. The examined life is a luxury they do not choose to devote time to or cannot afford.

Is it true that there is a third group of people that can only be defined as evil? This is a difficult group to consider, but is it real? Does evil exist? Are there people who simply don’t care about right and wrong in any meaningful sense? Those who navigate the world by appetite and self-interest without ever feeling remorse or caring about the rights and needs of others?

These are difficult questions. Hard to consider and think about.

If you add those groups together, they include at least 80% of the population that either can’t, won’t, or don’t care to determine ethical and moral direction for themselves and others. Which leaves roughly twenty percent who have the ability, the discipline, the desire, and the willingness to sit down and actually do the work.

Twenty percent, and it could be much less, is not a majority. Should any group of people determine the fate of the whole? Even if they should not, could they keep themselves from trying? And how can a minority influence the direction of civilization without building a broad consensus, establishing shared norms, and convincing the majority to adopt certain behaviors?

How would you do it? What would you do? Is it right to ignore the entire thing and hope it all sorts itself out? Can you watch suffering without attempting to help?

These are the questions humans have asked since the beginning, and we are now living in the result of what they have chosen.

It seems to me that the choice was to solve the myriad of problems with stories. Rituals. Community. By creating clearly understood consequences. In a way that reaches people where they actually live, not where anyone wishes they lived. Religion, for most of human history, has been that architecture. And still is.

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We now have the hindsight to see what happens when it is dismantled without being replaced. The sixties offered freedom. Structures that genuinely needed loosening got loosened. People had permission to question, to choose, to define themselves. These were genuine gains. But freedom without structure has dangers. Mostly due to the nature of humanity described above.

Perhaps much of what has accumulated over the past fifty years is closer to indulgence. It is touted as honorable and dressed up as authenticity. A nearly complete dissolution of shared standards. I’m not making a political argument. This isn’t about left or right, about which party has failed us more comprehensively. The disintegration I’m describing is cultural and psychological. The baseline appears to have dropped. Religion gave people a structure they didn’t have to generate themselves. That’s meaningful and necessary architecture.

So my position has changed. Religion’s return to public life is not a bad thing. But I do hope it evolves. Learns. Acknowledges what the last fifty years have taught us. Becomes more willing to examine itself and change. That means accepting that religion was built by humans, no matter how enlightened, connected, or incarnated they may have been. Which means it contains corruption, self-interest, and all the things that humans inevitably introduce into everything they touch.

There is a long history of religious institutions protecting their own power at the expense of the people they claimed to serve. Doling out religious certainty to retain power and justify atrocity across every tradition and century. We need religion to hold two things simultaneously — the structural truth that most people require and want a framework to live within, and the historical truth that every framework requires ongoing correction.

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I fear that personal integrity may have caused many to abandon religion, to push it away. But that may not be what is best for everyone else. And if that is so, then it becomes imperative to let go of a selfish awareness that does not accommodate all of humanity.

I say the twenty percent still have this job. Are still needed not only for the betterment of humanity but also for the improvement of the architectures and tools required to serve humanity. All of humanity. This cannot be done by making religion a bad thing.

Or by disengaging.

What do you think?