The holidays. No other time of year brings out so much, joy, generosity and hope as well as anxiety, stress and frustration. Why do we have a love/hate relationship with the holidays? Here’s what I think: Thanksgiving is all about gratitude, Christmas is all about joy. If we could just find the perfect mix in our life of these two holidays - of gratitude and joy - we would have what we all want. Peace. The state of mind when everything is good and the state of heart when everything will continue to be good.
But, here’s the problem...
Not only do we not find peace in our lives, but when we turn on the news and see the suffering and injustice this promise of peace seems so out of place. What makes it worse is religion is often a huge part of the problem. So, as I find myself in this time of year hoping for personal peace and peace on earth, I find myself asking a pretty heavy question: Can religion really lead to peace in us and peace on earth?
The history of religion is mixed. In the last 10 years or there have been a lot of books written about the danger of religion. These writers have a theory that goes like this: Religion establishes in its adherents a perspective that says, “I have the truth, I know what is real, I know how to live.” And what we see over and over again cutting across all times, all cultures, AND all religions is that this perspective leads to: “Because I believe and behave the right way, because of what I believe and achieve, I have earned God’s love and you haven’t!” This self-righteousness superiority in turn fuels judgement and exclusion, which way too often leads religious people to marginalize, oppress and, as we have been seeing once again, even murder. All in the name of religion!
SO, if religion is so good; would you be happy to see more and more people become more and more religious? Personally, for me, the answer is no. I don’t see that as a path to peace in us or peace on earth. Maybe a better question is: If religion leads away from peace – is there a remedy to religion? Let’s start by considering some different “remedies” Western civilization has tried…
The first could be called secularization. Secular means “having no spiritual or supernatural basis.” This approach is essentially hoping and expecting that religion will just die out. For the last 200 years or so, the intellectual elite of the West have held that religion is strongest in the most primitive societies. The theory goes: as we advance, as we learn more about the natural world and how it works and how to control it through everything from refrigeration to vaccination, the less we will need religion. People will stop clinging to superstition and myth. Religion will die a slow, quiet death.
Here’s the problem… it isn’t happening. While Americans are leaving organized religion by the droves, spirituality is as strong as ever in America. And the rapidly modernizing societies of Asia, Africa and Latin America are not growing less religious but MORE religious. The idea or hope that religion is going to fade away doesn’t look like it is going to happen. Religion seems to be a permanent part of the human condition.
By the 20th century when it became apparent we weren’t going to grow out of religion, some people tried to take it away through extermination. There are many examples of this “remedy:” The Soviet Union, China, Cambodia and even Nazi Germany. All came to essentially the same conclusion: we’ll get rid of the oppression, injustice and violence caused by religion – by OUTLAWING it (or totally controlling it)! But, here’s the problem…these secular societies didn’t lead to peace on earth. In fact, they rank #1- 4 as the most oppressive, violent and murderous in human history. Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot in their efforts to forbid or control religion created gas chambers, the gulag, re-education camps and the killing fields which systematically exterminated well over 100 million human beings. One author put it like this:
"The 20th century gave rise to one of the greatest and most distressing paradoxes of human history - the greatest acts of intolerance and violence were committed by those who believed that religion was the source of intolerance and violence.” -- Allistair McGrath
So, today, we are living in a culture that is primarily pursuing a third remedy for religion – privatization. The culture creating forces of America – the media, the academy and Hollywood – are doing all they can to frame religion this way: We can have peace on earth, ONLY if those who insist on believing will keep it to themselves. In other words, you can never bring what you believe into work, politics or the public square. Keep your beliefs to yourself. In public, put your religious views behind you, just be pragmatic. Fight AIDS and poverty, champion education and social justice by just doing what works. Don’t bring your beliefs in to it. We must have a completely secular public square.
In order to accurately see this approach, we need to revisit exactly what religion is. Technically, psychologically speaking, religion is any set of unprovable faith assumptions about what life is for. Our answers to the big questions: Who are we? How should we live? Why are we here?
Our answers to life’s biggest questions can’t be proven scientifically or found in a book. This is what we have to see to understand why privatizing religion won’t work – Religion is NOT something only “religious” or “spiritual” people have. We are all religious in the technical sense!
One time the world famous cosmologist Stephen Hawking, an atheist, who has written book after book about HOW we are here, was asked the question, WHY are we here? What is the meaning of life? And this giant of scientific reasoning said, “Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it.” Now, this may or may not be true, but the point is: even secular people, religion-less people like Stephan Hawking, when it comes to the most important questions, build their real everyday life on unprovable faith assumptions. When they start talking about WHY we are here, what life is for…suddenly they sound like priests, social workers and poets. We are all religious, we all live by unprovable faith-based assumptions about the meaning of life.
Here’s why this is important: our unprovable faith assumptions about what life is for can’t be left behind when we come in to the public square. We can’t just privatize them and be “pragmatic” when approaching issues like the problem of single-parent homes or education because what you think “works” depends on what you think families or schools are for in the first place. When we are told, “keep your faith to yourself” that is really just code. It means officially religious or spiritual people should keep their unprovable assumptions about what life is for to themselves, but secular people can bring their unprovable assumptions with them.
These 3 “remedies” to religion are, ironically, all religious in that they rely on unprovable, faith-based assumptions about what life is for…and beyond ironic they tragically create as much exclusion, judgement, oppression and even violence as that which they seek to save us from. So, where does that leave us? I know it is hard to believe, but Jesus lived in a time that was even more oppressive, unjust and violent than ours. Civil wars, invasions, occupying forces, genocides, slavery, public executions without trials, and bloody coups were much more common then than now. And all of it was driven by a world awash in different religions. Everyone believing they are superior because their unprovable faith-based assumptions about what life is for are right (and yours are wrong)!
There is a reason the life and message of Jesus united enemies in opposition to him. He dropped a bomb into their world. His way is an entirely new, completely unique, and totally revolutionary way to answer the questions: why are we here / what is life for? Here’s the bottom line: Jesus did not come to start a new religion, he came to end them. He came to a humanity yearning for peace. He came as the remedy.
So how is Jesus the remedy? Well, we have to keep in mind that all of history makes it crystal clear that our best religions and ideologies inevitably lead to the slippery slope of exclusion and judgement and sometimes much, much worse. Religious people believe secular people aren’t holy enough. Spiritual people don’t believe religious people love enough and secular people don’t believe anyone but them is reasonable or open enough. And on and on it goes…
The remedy can’t come from within us. It has to come TO us. And what we have in the person of Jesus, in his life and his message is the anti-religion. Not the promise of peace through adherence to religious dogma, attainment of spiritual maturity, or accumulation of secular wisdom, but peace through the acceptance of GRACE. Religious, spiritual and secular approaches to life all hold that there is something you must believe or achieve and when you do, you are BETTER than those who do not. Grace is the opposite. The antidote. The remedy for religion.
If you want to know why the Romans and Jews hated and conspired to murder Jesus, it was because he took their religions and threw them overboard. He said to the greatest religious people on earth, the Jews:
“I don’t care what you believe; how correct your theology is, how well you perform the rituals and follow the rules”
He said to the Romans, the greatest secular power on earth:
“I don’t care what you’ve achieved – how you’ve spread law, order and civilization throughout the known world. These things aren’t saving you…they are killing you. This is not what life is for! This is not why you are here!”
Jesus turned their worlds upside down.
Do you know what it is like on Thanksgiving to look backward, feel real gratitude, but still wonder why it isn’t enough? Do you know what it is like during Christmas season to look forward and feel joy, but still it gnaws at you – it’s not enough? If you do, Jesus invites you to
“GIVE UP! STOP trying to impress God, others and yourself and follow Me!
Jesus is totally unique, He has a completely revolutionary approach to what life is for, and why we are here – GRACE. It is accepting that we are already accepted - as we are, not as we think we should be, loved – even at our worst, and forgiven - not because of our goodness but because of God’s. It’s ALL based not on any merit we think we receive for what we believe or achieve, but rather on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
What would happen if we accepted that life is for the enjoyment and extension of GRACE? How would life look? If everyone lived as Jesus did and accepted those who disagreed with them, forgave those who wronged them and blessed those who persecuted them; what would the world look like? What would we look like?
Jesus, with His Gospel of Grace, is the remedy to religion and the path to peace in us and peace on earth.
Michael Gathright
The author is indebted to many writers who have influenced his thinking -- Willard, Piper, Lewis, Dawkins, Dennett, Keller, Harris, Starks, and Francis Schaeffer
