The Disappointment of Religion

Reading the lives of the saints often raises our expectations. We read of someone transfigured with light, or of someone who is present in two places at once. We read beautiful descriptions of the inner life, of an awareness of our union with God or clarity with regard to the nature of all things. In comparison, our own religious experience will be sterile, a voice crying out in the wilderness met with stony silence. For some, such comparisons can lead to despair. For others, these comparisons make them doubt the authenticity of saints’ lives. In many cases we simply discover the disappointment of religion.

The modern religious search often begins in disappointment. The rhetoric of religious believing and the reality can be miles apart. There can be very legitimate reasons for this disjunction. The truth claims of many religious groups border on the absurd. Complex dogmatic constructs quickly reveal themselves to be the intellectual fabrications of cultural and psychological forces. Disappointment leads to disbelief.
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