Friday, December 16, 2005 at 12:12am
Where John Lennon missed it (On being spiritual - Part 3)
In the Booker prize-winning novel Life of Pi we find a pleasant story of a boy who practices three religions passionately and simultaneously. He is Hindu, Christian, Muslim all at once. This is an appealing construct, apparently proving that all religions are basically the same, that they can all be espoused alike because they have a common starting and ending point.
One thing about appealing constructs: they can mislead.
I believe in proselytizing, attempting to convert others to seeing things differently. That's what writers do; that's why we create appealing constructs. In this case, the author of Life of Pi is taking a good stab at proselytizing us (though I imagine he'd never call it that) to a way of thinking about religions.
Allow me proselytize with another story. Once there was a girl who determined that she would adhere to three religions. She found a great master in each tradition and set her heart and mind, body and soul on studying and praying and keeping the religious duties of each. Yet the more she tried to comprehend and to be faithful to each, the more she saw that she could not. "To believe in one God, yet many, to take the narrow way and the wide together, this is impossible," she said. "The person who takes three paths finds her feet on one, her hands on another, and her head on yet another."
This is why using the generic term spiritual as a descriptive is bothersome. We create false unity under the spiritual banner when we unfurl it long and high as an attempt to deny differences among us, to bring us all together into one happy family, all on the same level, coequals before God, or with God.
This attempt at unity actually dispels unity. By using the word spiritual as a common banner under which we can all stand, as a way to declare that every religious system holds a common spiritual core, we're not only deceiving ourselves, we're also disrespecting each other's differences. In a pleasant attempt to pretend we're all the same, we're denying the truth that we are not.
Without acknowledgement of differences, without respect for particularities, there can be no unity. Lumping all of us under spiritual has the worrisome potential of making us a sort of passive-aggressive family: We all have the same name, so that means we all believe the same thing and we all agree, right?
Wrong.
Anyone who has been in a passive-aggressive family, or any other human organization in which differences are denied, knows this: In order to maintain the facade of unity and to protect their stake in that group, members cloak their opinions, their feelings, their passions, their hopes. Relationships are shallow, if they exist at all. Eventually, disagreements seethe to the surface; wars break out.
This is why proselytizing—that is, discussing distinctions in loving and respectful ways, not demanding or power-mongering, but seeking the best for the other—is absolutely appropriate and even necessary, especially in a pluralistic society. When we cloak our passion for our particular beliefs or spiritual practices for fear of creating disunity, we prevent honest relationships, thereby denying unity the ability to exist.
Unlike John Lennon, I don't pine away for the day when religion ceases to exist. Rather, I look with horror on such a day. Instead I imagine a day when religious difference is no longer used to divide and to kill, but to unite us all in our simple, humble humanity.
———
Adela McKay is a follower of Jesus in the Anabaptist and Cistercian traditions. A contented wife and freelance book editor, she lives in rural Iowa with her husband and two teens. © copyright 2005 by Write United.
— — —
UPI Religion & Spirituality Forum is a big tent for all expressions
of faith and spirituality, neither excluding nor favoring any.
All opinions expressed belong to the writer alone, and are
not necessarily shared by UPI Religion & Spirituality Forum.
One thing about appealing constructs: they can mislead.
I believe in proselytizing, attempting to convert others to seeing things differently. That's what writers do; that's why we create appealing constructs. In this case, the author of Life of Pi is taking a good stab at proselytizing us (though I imagine he'd never call it that) to a way of thinking about religions.
Allow me proselytize with another story. Once there was a girl who determined that she would adhere to three religions. She found a great master in each tradition and set her heart and mind, body and soul on studying and praying and keeping the religious duties of each. Yet the more she tried to comprehend and to be faithful to each, the more she saw that she could not. "To believe in one God, yet many, to take the narrow way and the wide together, this is impossible," she said. "The person who takes three paths finds her feet on one, her hands on another, and her head on yet another."
This is why using the generic term spiritual as a descriptive is bothersome. We create false unity under the spiritual banner when we unfurl it long and high as an attempt to deny differences among us, to bring us all together into one happy family, all on the same level, coequals before God, or with God.
This attempt at unity actually dispels unity. By using the word spiritual as a common banner under which we can all stand, as a way to declare that every religious system holds a common spiritual core, we're not only deceiving ourselves, we're also disrespecting each other's differences. In a pleasant attempt to pretend we're all the same, we're denying the truth that we are not.
Without acknowledgement of differences, without respect for particularities, there can be no unity. Lumping all of us under spiritual has the worrisome potential of making us a sort of passive-aggressive family: We all have the same name, so that means we all believe the same thing and we all agree, right?
Wrong.
Anyone who has been in a passive-aggressive family, or any other human organization in which differences are denied, knows this: In order to maintain the facade of unity and to protect their stake in that group, members cloak their opinions, their feelings, their passions, their hopes. Relationships are shallow, if they exist at all. Eventually, disagreements seethe to the surface; wars break out.
This is why proselytizing—that is, discussing distinctions in loving and respectful ways, not demanding or power-mongering, but seeking the best for the other—is absolutely appropriate and even necessary, especially in a pluralistic society. When we cloak our passion for our particular beliefs or spiritual practices for fear of creating disunity, we prevent honest relationships, thereby denying unity the ability to exist.
Unlike John Lennon, I don't pine away for the day when religion ceases to exist. Rather, I look with horror on such a day. Instead I imagine a day when religious difference is no longer used to divide and to kill, but to unite us all in our simple, humble humanity.
———
Adela McKay is a follower of Jesus in the Anabaptist and Cistercian traditions. A contented wife and freelance book editor, she lives in rural Iowa with her husband and two teens. © copyright 2005 by Write United.
UPI Religion & Spirituality Forum is a big tent for all expressions
of faith and spirituality, neither excluding nor favoring any.
All opinions expressed belong to the writer alone, and are
not necessarily shared by UPI Religion & Spirituality Forum.