{"id":9461,"date":"2017-08-15T07:00:57","date_gmt":"2017-08-15T11:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/freelancechristianity\/?p=9461"},"modified":"2017-08-14T10:18:35","modified_gmt":"2017-08-14T14:18:35","slug":"what-do-you-want-from-your-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/freelancechristianity\/what-do-you-want-from-your-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"What People of Faith Share in Common with Atheists"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The more I realize why my faith is important to me, the more I realize that these matters of importance don\u2019t primarily rely on my believing anything particular about God, God\u2019s nature, or what happens after I die. For many, coming to this conclusion would require a significant shift in what faith even means.<\/p>\n

\"different<\/p>\n

About half way through the 1989 film \u201cField of Dreams,\u201d Ray Kinsella (played by Kevin Costner) and Terrence Mann (played by James Earl Jones) are in the bowels of my beloved Fenway Park. Ray has brought Terry there in an attempt to involve him in a ludicrous scheme that Mann is trying to resist getting sucked into. Mann was a major player in the 60s civil rights and anti-Viet Nam protests who now, twenty years later, is tired of being everyone\u2019s unofficial guru and voice of the flower power generation. He just wants to be left alone. \u201cSo what do you want?\u201d Ray asks Terry.<\/p>\n

Terry<\/strong>: I want them to stop looking to me for answers, begging me to speak again, write again, be a leader. I want them to start thinking for themselves. I want my privacy.\"ray-and-terry\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ray<\/strong>: (gesturing to the concession stand they are in front of) No, I mean, what do you WANT?<\/p>\n

Terry: <\/strong>Oh. Dog and a beer.<\/p>\n

Sometimes what we claim to want and what we really want are two entirely different things. Often our expressed desires for lofty sounding goals and achievements are, in reality, a cry for at least some sort of guidance on how to make it through our days and weeks with a modicum of our integrity and character intact. None of us comes into the world knowing how to live a good human life\u2014all of us need as much help as possible. Last semester I worked with my General Ethics students on an article with the attention-getting title \u201cDoes It Matter Whether God Exists?\u201d that begins with a provocative quote from John Gray, an atheist philosopher:<\/p>\n

In many religions\u2014polytheism, Hinduism and Buddhism<\/a>, Daoism and Shinto, many strands of Judaism and some Christian and Muslim traditions\u2014belief is of little or no importance. Rather, practice\u2014ritual, meditation, a way of life\u2014is what counts . . . It\u2019s only religious fundamentalists and ignorant rationalists who think the myths we live by are literal truths . . . what we believe doesn\u2019t in the end matter very much. What matters is how we live.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Careful there, dude\u2014the \u201creligious fundamentalists and ignorant rationalists who think the myths we live by are literal truths\u201d who you are stereotyping are the people I grew up with. But Gary Gutting, the author of the article who teaches at the University of Notre Dame, observes that a religious person need not respond to someone like Gray defensively or with outrage.<\/p>\n

It all depends on what you hope to find in a religion. If your hope is simply for guidance and assistance in leading a fulfilling life here on earth, then a \u201cway of living\u201d without firm beliefs in any supernatural being may well be all you need.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gutting\u2019s comment reminds me of something I once heard a Jewish colleague say: \u201cJudaism is the only monotheistic religion that one can be part of and also be an atheist.\u201d What, I asked my predominantly Catholic juniors and seniors, could my colleague have meant by that? Although such a comment was outside the normal frame of reference for many of them, they realized that, despite typical preconceptions and assumptions, there might be reasons for placing oneself in a religious tradition that have nothing to do with God. Judaism, for instance, is a way of life for my colleague, providing the traditions, practices, moral guidance, and community support that every human being seeks, at least occasionally, as we construct frameworks of meaning and purpose around our lives.<\/p>\n

There are also many groups of Christians for whom the Christian faith is about how to live a good and flourishing human life now<\/strong>; the texts and traditions of Christianity undoubtedly provide a great deal of guidance concerning how to do just that. And, as the atheist quoted at the beginning of Gary Gutting\u2019s article provocatively points out, what one believes or does not believe concerning God need not be important for such people.<\/p>\n

I can imagine, for instance, an atheist finding a great deal of direct guidance for how to live a good human life from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew\u2019s gospel without feeling obligated to sign on the dotted line concerning anything about God\u2019s existence and nature. Such guidance, of course, can be found in all sorts of place, both religious and non-religious; one\u2019s choice of which framework to adopt will depend largely on one\u2019s history, personality, commitments both social and political, and simply where one finds oneself most at home.<\/p>\n

But many persons of faith want a lot more from their religion than just daily guidance for how to live a life. Gutting continues:<\/p>\n

But many religions, including mainline versions of Christianity and Islam, promise much more. They promise ultimate salvation. If we are faithful to their teachings, they say, we will be safe from final annihilation when we die and will be happy eternally in our life after death. If our hope is for salvation in this sense\u2014and for many that is the main point of religion\u2014then this hope depends on certain religious beliefs being true. In particular, for the main theistic religions, if depends on there being a God who is good enough to desire our salvation and powerful enough to achieve it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have noted frequently on this blog my observation over the years that, for the majority of my students, the primary benefits of being a religious believer are \u201ccomfort\u201d and \u201csecurity about what happens after I die.\u201d That\u2019s certainly the religious world I was raised in. The people I grew up with were obsessed with \u201cbeing saved,\u201d a salvation that had a lot more to do with what happens after I die than anything that might be applicable to how to live my life today and tomorrow.<\/p>\n

As I look back five decades and more on that world, I realize that even then I was far more interested in how the religion imposed on me applied to my daily life rather than what sort of mansion I would occupy when in heaven and what sort of harp I would be playing. Truth be told, heaven sounded pretty boring to me and I wasn\u2019t sure I wanted to spend eternity there. I was much more interested in whether being a Christian could help me avoid bullies, find a girlfriend, and grow up to be at least a marginally well-adjusted adult.<\/p>\n

These days I find myself thinking about atheism a lot, not because I\u2019m thinking of becoming one (I tried that once\u2014it didn\u2019t take), but because the more I realize why my faith is important to me, the more I realize that these matters of importance don\u2019t primarily rely on my believing anything particular about God, God\u2019s nature, or what happens after I die. I don\u2019t know what will happen after I die, and I spend a remarkably small amount of my time thinking about it, even though the amount of days I have left on earth are far fewer than the ones I\u2019ve already lived.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong\u2014I believe that God exists, that God is intimately interested in relationship with human beings, and that this requires something important of me. But I also believe that the values and moral commitments that are closely related to my belief in God are available to persons who are of a different faith than mine or of no faith at all. If what people of faith want out of their religion is only available to people who sign on to the very specific beliefs concerning God and more that define their religion, there is little hope for dialogue with those who do not share those specific beliefs. But if, first and foremost, what I want out of my religion is guidance for how to live a good human life now<\/strong>, then I am looking for the very same sort of guidance that billions of other human beings seek. That gives us a lot to talk about\u2014regardless of what we believe concerning God.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The more I realize why my faith is important to me, the more I realize that these matters of importance don\u2019t primarily rely on my believing anything particular about God, God\u2019s nature, or what happens after I die. 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