Reflections on Life and Faith,
by David Keating

Mythology

May 19, 2007

     Tom Harpur is in the news again. Tom says that Jesus never existed and that Christianity can never realize it's potential to transform the world until we get over our fixation with the idea that someone, divine or otherwise, is coming to rescue us from our shortcomings.

Richard Dawkins says that there is no God at all. That believing in the very idea of a divine overseer of Creation of any kind is akin to a poison running through our cultures. This train of thought says that humanity must divest itself of such notions or face extinction through our own inter-religious violence.

Karl Marx was often quoted as saying that religion is the opiate of the masses, a statement that was used to fuel anti-Soviet and anti-communist sentiment in another era. There are many people who have no interest in communism or the new/old state of Russia who would find Marx's comment perfectly understandable. They find little value in churches or the pronouncements of religious leaders. But Marx also said that religion is "the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation."

And then of course, there is the opposite camp. Those who argue that the Bible must be taken literally and that there are no contradictions within its pages, no matter how many twists and turns they have to take to make it all fit.

Is anyone confused yet?

Harpur, and those who believe similarly, feel that our sacred writings were intended to help us reach that spark of divinity within each of us. What the more literal minded call "The Holy Spirit". They don't want to eliminate religion; they want to return to the spiritual and metaphorical roots of faith. For them, our current literalism is a pale reflection of what faith should be.

Dawkins and those who believe that religion is the left over superstition of our cave dwelling ancestors, believe that as long as we insist on keeping one foot in the door of the supernatural we'll never be able to step into the utopian future that they envision.

The two are continually playing a tug of war game that Marx and others identified a long time ago. As long as people feel that they can't change the nasty things that they see all around them in the world, they'll always look to God or the promise of Heaven to make sense of it all. As one woman said to me, "Well, if I'm not going to Heaven, why should I believe in God at all? And why should I try to be a better person?"

Indeed.

Luckily, most of us take a more practical approach to our faith. We may think about Heaven occasionally. We may even wonder if we're "good" enough. But for the most part we work our way through each day doing the best that we can to get along with the people around us and to not damage the world in any way more serious than failing to pick up the candy wrapper that missed the garbage can on the sidewalk.

We're content to leave the rest up to God. Even if we don't have any particularly clear image of who or what God is. Or isn't. Or something like that.

And that's okay.

We're not expected to be religious scholars. Or to understand the origins of our creation myths. Or to know the timelines of the schisms that created the multitudinous branches of religion.

We're simply called to live our lives in a way that treats all of the other parts of Creation, whether people or plants or planet, in the way that we would want to be treated.

And when you come right down to it, what's so confusing about that?

David Keating