As my children learn more about the world, they discover that some of their friends are Jewish, some are Hindu, and some are Christian.
Which means they inevitably ask, “Mommy, what are we?”
Um…..
I try to explain how I don’t think there’s really one label that would fit me: I’m not Christian but I think Jesus was a loving teacher, I’m not Buddhist but I love what the Buddha taught us about compassion and about our minds, I think it’s important to treat others with kindness, and the reason we are alive is to bring love to others—
“No, Mom, WHAT ARE WE?”
They want a simple answer, a one-word religious label to affix to a package that tidily wraps up our family’s beliefs.
But it’s not that easy. Religion is so much bigger than that.
What is religion?
Our English word “religion” comes from the Latin “religare,” which means “to tie, fasten, bind.” It also refers to the sense of awe and wonder that one feels in the presence of the divine. In this context, religion unites people in their experience of the transcendent.
Anthropologists tell us that religious behavior is universal. As far back as 60,000 years ago, our human ancestors made fertility charms. Neanderthals buried their dead, and surrounded them with rocks and flowers in a manner that intimates belief in an afterlife or at least a need to commemorate the rite of passage of death. Religious scholar Karen Armstrong asserts that “the desire to cultivate a sense of the transcendent may be the defining human characteristic.”
And while religiosity or spirituality may be a core part of our human nature, our relationship with and conception of religion has evolved over time.
Paleolithic cave painting in France, featuring a half-animal, half-human creature — perhaps evidence of shamanistic practice? (image source: Wikipedia)
The Rise of the “Nones”
In a 2012 Pew Forum survey of religious beliefs, almost a fifth of Americans identified as “unaffiliated,” meaning they don’t label themselves as Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or as a member of any other faith tradition. For Americans under 30, the percentage rises to one third.
But this doesn’t mean they are what we might label as “atheist”:
[M]any of the country’s 46 million unaffiliated adults are religious or spiritual in some way. Two-thirds of them say they believe in God (68%). More than half say they often feel a deep connection with nature and the earth (58%), while more than a third classify themselves as “spiritual” but not “religious” (37%), and one-in-five (21%) say they pray every day.” {From the Pew Forum survey}
And overwhelmingly, they are NOT looking for a religion (only 10% indicated they were). Many indicated they were turned off by the dogmatism, greed, and political influence of organized religion.
Which makes me wonder…
Are we rethinking religion?
Today we refer to religious people as “believers.” Or we call someone a “person of faith,” as if their agreement with doctrine were the most important part of their religious commitment.
That’s really what my children want to know when they ask what we are: a one-word summary of what we believe.
But here’s what we know about religion:
Religion is about action.
Today, we think of religion as a set of doctrines, but historically, religion was not about belief. Karen Armstrong, in her absolutely amazing book The Case for God, writes that for most of human history, religion “was not primarily something people thought but something they did. Its truth was acquired by practical action.” Religion was about ritual and initiation and community membership.
We danced our religions before we believed them.
Huston Smith, in his renowned text The World’s Religions, asserts, “people danced out their religion before they thought it out.” In the small-scale societies studied by anthropologists (who can perhaps provide us with clues as to what human cultures were like for 99% of our species’ existence), there is generally no separation between the natural and the supernatural, between the sacred and the mundane. Spirituality is woven into the fabric of daily living.
To ask one of our caveman ancestors, or even a medieval peasant, “What religion do you believe in?” would be just as ridiculous as asking someone today, “What gravity do you believe in?” It’s just there.
Myths are myths. Literally.
We 21st-century humans have a very different relationship with stories than our ancestors did. We read texts today primarily to gain knowledge, and we divide our books conveniently into fiction and non-fiction. Yet, for most of human history, there was no written word as far as the vast majority of the world was concerned. There were myths and legends and folktales, passed down orally and continually reinterpreted.
History, in the sense of an academic discipline of determining what actually happened in the past, is a relatively recent invention.
The ancient writers of scripture weren’t necessarily concerned with what actually happened; they wrote in order to make meaning of the past. Armstrong writes that “until well into the modern period, Jews and Christians both insisted that it was neither possible or desirable to read the Bible in this way [i.e., literally].” Instead, they believed “it gives us no single, orthodox message and demands constant reinterpretation.”
Myths were not taken as literal truth; a myth set the script for ritual. A myth was, in Armstrong’s words, “something that had in some sense happened once but that also happens all the time”: creation and destruction, birth and death, joy and suffering, rebellion and conformity, good and evil. The myth was a program for action.
As Joseph Campbell tells us, the mythical hero is “Everyman”: not a king or a god, but a commoner. The hero is a carpenter, or a farmgirl, or Harry Potter, or Luke Skywalker. And what do they all discover? That the power to transform resided within them all along – the holy spirit, the power to go home, the ability to make magic, or simply the Force. A myth reminds us of our amazing human potential, whether the events in the tale “actually happened” or not.
Faith is not the same as belief.
Many writers and theologians have suggested we need a new definition of “faith,” one that does not mean a wholesale acceptance of dogma (think of how often we speak of “blind faith”). Sharon Salzberg, in Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience, writes that in Pali, Latin, and Hebrew, faith is a verb, not a noun. It is not something we believe; it is something we DO. As Salzberg says, “We faithe.”
We ask questions, we explore, we accept that we don’t know all the answers, and we go on anyway.
Zen priest Karen Maezen Miller, in Paradise in Plain Sight, describes faith in this way: “You have it when you surrender to a night’s slumber and open your eyes to another day. You have it when you … walk across this planet without falling off the face of it. Mine is not the faith of wishful thinking. It’s faith with arms and legs, days and night, eyes and ears.”
The Protestant theologian Paul Tillich suggested that faith was “that which is of ultimate concern,” the True North that guides our decisions and actions, framing our days and our years and our lives.
Perhaps this is why we are rethinking religion today — it’s difficult to imagine that the several dozen or so major world religions are individualized enough to meet the needs of some 7 billion people.
The Buddha advised that we approach any set of teachings, including his own, with skepticism. We should test them as a scientist would. The Buddha told his followers:
Do not accept anything by mere tradition…. Do not accept anything just because it accords with your scriptures. Do not accept anything merely because it agrees with your pre-conceived notions….
“When you know for yourselves — … these things, when performed and undertaken, conduce to well-being and happiness — then do you live acting accordingly.”
Perhaps that’s what draws us to the religious life in the first place — the yearning for something that helps us live with happiness and ease. We are drawn to a set of teachings not because they are “universal” or because “it sounds true,” but because it speaks to something deep within our own experience. That’s when we know it’s our story.
As I wrote this post {which took me a month to write}, I kept coming back to these lines at the end of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch:
…if a painting really works down in your heart and changes the way you see, and think, and feel, you don’t think, ‘oh, I love this picture because it’s universal.’ ‘I love this painting because it speaks to all mankind.’ That’s not the reason anyone loves a piece of art. It’s a secret whisper from an alleyway. Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes you.’ … a really great painting is fluid enough to work its way into the mind and heart through all kinds of different angles, in ways that are unique and very particular. Yours, yours. I was painted for you.”
My religion is compassion.
While the “ultimate concern” will be different for everyone, it doesn’t mean that all beliefs are what the Buddha would call “skillful.” Our intentions matter, and the impact of our actions on others matter. There’s probably a reason why ancient philosophers, holy prophets, and preschool teachers all emphasize the Golden Rule.
All of the world’s faith traditions establish compassion as a central component of our engagement with the world. The Dalai Lama said it most simply yet profoundly when he said, “Kindness is my religion.”
Beliefs may be significant guides, but it is far more important to me that we treat others with compassion than whether we think communion is symbolic or is an actual transformation of bread and wine into flesh and blood, or who we think God’s true prophet was.
Religion is about understanding our connectedness. When you suffer, I suffer. Religion is about binding us together to take heartful and inspired action to make the world better.
At least that’s my story. What’s yours?
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