Surfing the Contradictions — Lived Religion
Like it our not, you’re living your religion. Like . . . morning breath . . . everybody’s got it. Or at least that’s the way sociologists of religion have traditionally framed our lives. You can choose “Roman Catholic;” you can choose “Secular” or “None of the Above,” but there’s a list, and you fit in it somewhere.
You exist. What you do is your . . . life? religion? philosophy?
Call it what we will, we’ve all got one. So. What’s yours?
More and more people are feeling cornered by the question.
I contend that the idea of religion — which appears to be as old as Homo Sapiens itself — springs from the mismatch between the Sapien psyche and how we find our lives to be going. We feel . . . . What, exactly?
We want . . . . What, exactly?
I think that we — all human beings of whatever stripe — desperately wish to feel at home in the universe and to feel that we have agency and direction in our lives. Always have. Always will.
The German philosopher Martin Heidegger called that restless, uncomfortable feeling that we each have deep inside Geworfenheit, “thrownness.” It’s the feeling that we’re here, but we don’t really know where “here” is and we don’t know what to do next. That feeling can be debilitating. Or we can thrill in the expectation of what’s next. That, as Shakespeare said, is the question.
What do we do about finding ourselves thrown into this world? Oh, look: look at all of those beautiful, pre-packaged options! Buddhism. Islam. Lutheran. Church of God in Christ. For some of us, our ancestors chose for us. For some of us, our culture chose for us.
Some of us are . . . skeptical . . .
Maybe. Just perhaps, reality is so complex that there is no right answer anyway.
The medieval Christian theologian Anselm (1033–1109) had a motto — fides quaerens intellectum. In English, “faith seeking understanding.”
Anselm’s motto is I think a concise summary of what theology is about. Theology starts in faith and attempts to explain how that faith tradition works, without bursting the faith bubble.
I suspect, however, that the moment faith seeks understanding, the faith ship has sailed . . . and started sinking.
It’s not that faith can’t withstand questioning. Nor is it that faith cannot be understood. It’s merely that faith and understanding do not reside in the same zip code. You can live in faith-land or in theology-land, but between the two there is a great gulf fixed.
I suspect that for the most part, people don’t “do” theology to find logic and coherence in their beliefs. If the wide variety of disparate and contradictory beliefs held by many people is any indication, people look to theology not to solidify existing beliefs, but to find alternatives to weave into their lived practice.
For a little relief from that Geworfenheit.
The best book that I know of on this subject is Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life by the sociologist of religion Meredith B. McGuire.
In her studies, Dr. McGuire dug deeper than the easy labels of Buddhist, Catholic, Protestant, Agnostic, Muslim, and on. What do people actually do to cope with this big, overwhelming Geworfenheit?
A Protestant who never attends church, does Buddhist-style meditation, practices yoga, and carries an amulet to ward off cancer?
Contradictory much? You bet.
But, why not?
McGuire bases her thinking on the work of Clifford Geertz and Robert Orsi. Why do we do religion?
To make the invisible visible.
To concretize the order of the universe.
To explore the nature of human life and its destiny.
To make human interiority visible and tangible (Lived Religion, 13)
That’s a darn good summary, I think. Making the “invisible visible” might be about the supernatural, but it might also be about gravity and quarks.
Concretizing “the order of the universe” might be about “He’s got the whole world in His hand,” but it can also be about fractals and the accelerating expansion of the universe.
“To explore the nature of human life and its destiny” may be about salvation and damnation, or it might be about saving ourselves from global climate change.
“To make human interiority visible and tangible” might be about holy rolling and testifying, but it also might be about finding coping skills for taking life’s left hooks.
You get my point. Pre-packaged religions just aren’t up to Geworfenheit. More and more people are choosing . . . meh and . . . whatever.
As John Lennon said long ago,“whatever gets you through the night.”
