I was happy to read a comment left recently by a fellow blogger named Roger who maintains a site entitled Natural History, Creation and Religious Conflicts. He raises a great, if baffling, question: from whence does the vehemence with which fellow Christians attack one another arise? When two people are bound by a common confession, "I believe in Jesus Christ, the only son of God," what is it that leads to often violent and vicious attacks against one another?
This is not a phenomenon limited to Christians and Roger's concluding question which extends to address religion in general is incisive: Is religious faith always fraught with these kinds of difficulties?
Sadly, as another commenter noted, I certainly don't think this is an issue exclusive to the religious domain. People gathered around a shared center - a business, a team, a political party - frequently profess identical viewpoints and adhere to a common core of beliefs, but these are hardly immune from tremendous conflict. Not even blood-ties are impervious to these feuds, as we find no shortage of stories detailing rifts and rivalries in wealthy families.
Perhaps one way of looking at this issue is to recall that, for an adherent, belief is not simply mental lip-service. That is, it's not simply something one says or nods his head at. Instead, it's a claim about the very nature of reality. If Jesus is the son of the living God, if his life showed us how we are called to live as God desires for us to live, if his crucifixion is symptomatic of our sinful human reaction to destroy and reject what threatens to rouse us from our slumber, and if his Resurrection and sending of the Spirit create in history a new people to live out this revelation...then religious belief isn't about something on paper, it's the very core of one's life. Little wonder the first Christians were called followers of "the Way," for Chrsitian faith is not just about thinking as it, of necessity, is about being and doing.
But it is precisely because it has to be embodied and lived out, enacted on history's stage, that conflict erupts. Each finite being, in striving to live out the core tenets of faith, accents some things more than others. Some are more disposed to contemplation and others to action; some want to stress corporal works of mercy, others spiritual. And, I think, there's space enough in the Church to accommodate all of these. The problem, however, is when one group or faction thinks that its way is the only way. If "I" am unimpeachably right, then anyone who disagrees with me must be wrong and misguided.
To summon an example from a field other than religion, consider the recent case of philosopher Thomas Nagel. Nagel, an eminent philosophy professor at NYU, elicited a furious reaction with the publication of his Mind and Cosmos. Nagel's book questions the sufficiency of certain versions of the evolutionary narrative. By no means does he reject evolution, but he does point out certain lacunae and inconsistencies in certain renderings of the theory. Nagel's suggestion is to expand the framework in which we understand evolution; other academics heaped scorn upon him, one even Tweeting that Nagel's book recorded "the shoddy reasoning of a once-great thinker."
You'd not need to go far to see instances of hostile rivalries erupting between people more united than divided: figure skating, economics, politics, medicine. Rivalry, hardly peculiar to religious traditions, seems to be endemic to the human condition.
Jews and Christians hearken back to a shared myth, a story that attempts to explain the structure of reality, in Genesis. There believers detect the core of sin that marks just about all human relations: an inability to be who we are and a strong preference to forge for ourselves our own identities; a drive to grasp for ourselves than to be given from without. This self-assertive grasping creates an economy of rivalry in the world, for if "I am what I have grasped" and another person has two apples and I have but one, am I now less of a person?
It would be interesting to hear from Roger, who is by profession a professor of biologist, if this sort of acquisitive drive is present in animal species? Do they, as we, hoard excessive goods? Animals, it seems, are inclined to live in a homeostatic environment but humans are far less capable: it appears that we are driven to own and control rather than share and live together.
I resonate with Roger's question because I think it scandalous that Christians, those summoned by the Crucified Christ, continue to crucify one another. Followers of Christ who snipe incessantly at one another give witness, not to the Gospel, but to the dark side of sinful humanity. How can we we purport to proclaim God's Kingdom and invite others to join us if we, through our actions, seem more bent on tearing the Kingdom down through malice than in building it up with mercy?
This is not a phenomenon limited to Christians and Roger's concluding question which extends to address religion in general is incisive: Is religious faith always fraught with these kinds of difficulties?
Sadly, as another commenter noted, I certainly don't think this is an issue exclusive to the religious domain. People gathered around a shared center - a business, a team, a political party - frequently profess identical viewpoints and adhere to a common core of beliefs, but these are hardly immune from tremendous conflict. Not even blood-ties are impervious to these feuds, as we find no shortage of stories detailing rifts and rivalries in wealthy families.
Perhaps one way of looking at this issue is to recall that, for an adherent, belief is not simply mental lip-service. That is, it's not simply something one says or nods his head at. Instead, it's a claim about the very nature of reality. If Jesus is the son of the living God, if his life showed us how we are called to live as God desires for us to live, if his crucifixion is symptomatic of our sinful human reaction to destroy and reject what threatens to rouse us from our slumber, and if his Resurrection and sending of the Spirit create in history a new people to live out this revelation...then religious belief isn't about something on paper, it's the very core of one's life. Little wonder the first Christians were called followers of "the Way," for Chrsitian faith is not just about thinking as it, of necessity, is about being and doing.
But it is precisely because it has to be embodied and lived out, enacted on history's stage, that conflict erupts. Each finite being, in striving to live out the core tenets of faith, accents some things more than others. Some are more disposed to contemplation and others to action; some want to stress corporal works of mercy, others spiritual. And, I think, there's space enough in the Church to accommodate all of these. The problem, however, is when one group or faction thinks that its way is the only way. If "I" am unimpeachably right, then anyone who disagrees with me must be wrong and misguided.
To summon an example from a field other than religion, consider the recent case of philosopher Thomas Nagel. Nagel, an eminent philosophy professor at NYU, elicited a furious reaction with the publication of his Mind and Cosmos. Nagel's book questions the sufficiency of certain versions of the evolutionary narrative. By no means does he reject evolution, but he does point out certain lacunae and inconsistencies in certain renderings of the theory. Nagel's suggestion is to expand the framework in which we understand evolution; other academics heaped scorn upon him, one even Tweeting that Nagel's book recorded "the shoddy reasoning of a once-great thinker."
You'd not need to go far to see instances of hostile rivalries erupting between people more united than divided: figure skating, economics, politics, medicine. Rivalry, hardly peculiar to religious traditions, seems to be endemic to the human condition.
 |
| Taken from www.religionisdumb.com |
It would be interesting to hear from Roger, who is by profession a professor of biologist, if this sort of acquisitive drive is present in animal species? Do they, as we, hoard excessive goods? Animals, it seems, are inclined to live in a homeostatic environment but humans are far less capable: it appears that we are driven to own and control rather than share and live together.
I resonate with Roger's question because I think it scandalous that Christians, those summoned by the Crucified Christ, continue to crucify one another. Followers of Christ who snipe incessantly at one another give witness, not to the Gospel, but to the dark side of sinful humanity. How can we we purport to proclaim God's Kingdom and invite others to join us if we, through our actions, seem more bent on tearing the Kingdom down through malice than in building it up with mercy?
1 comment:
(Sorry - I was cleaning up a bunch of spam comments and accidentally deleted the one from Naturgesetz):
Paradoxically, perhaps, it is because Christians agree on the basics that it is possible for subsidiary questions to become the ones that become our focus.
Post a Comment