Comfort or Challenge

Time and again, when the irreligious comment upon religion, they say "Well, if it provides a bit of comfort, then it's ok, so long as it doesn't get out of hand."  Religion is being treated as if it were Prozac or Novocaine, as if it numbed and soothed life's challenges.  Well, that's what it is for some people.   When Marx said "Religion is the opium of the people" he wasn't totally wrong, he was just oversimplifying hugely.  

     The thing is, people pursue or fail to pursue both science and religion for their own reasons, and those reasons aren't the same for everyone.  There are two obvious kinds of people when it comes to this:  The first group is made up of the ones who want comfort, want structure, want answers, want to be told what to think, what to feel and what to do so their lives make sense to them.  They are concerned with being orthodox, with following, and with clinging to their religion or scientific thought, as handed down to them, prechewed and fully digested by someone else.  It really can be like a drug, a crutch, or like someone telling them what to do. 

  

"Tell me the story of where the world came from again..."   

"It came from God speaking/A Big Bang."   

"Oh.  Ok.  Thanks."   

"Any questions?"    

"Not really.  That's all I wanted to know." 

"Good.  Glad I was able to clear that up for you." 

    The second group is made up of seekers.  Their embracing of religion or science drives them beyond pat answers (whether delivered by organized religion or popular science).  They are always seeking, but they always somehow end up with more unanswered questions each time they dig into something.  People like this seem more interested in establishing what can and cannot be, what is and isn't actually known (what religious and scientific men of letters can and can't be trusted to know about, and what ground remains relatively unexplored.)  Popular religion readily answers "What" and "Who" and "When" questions in terms of behaviour and lifestyle, and popular science readily answers "How" questions in general.  

   The seeker is after "Why" questions, and many of these have no pat answers. Whether we're talking about science or religion, we're still talking about human beings, and their search for answers.  Religion and science aren't the same, but they're used by human beings to fulfil exactly the same psychological needs.  In both realms we find dogmatic, orthodox clingers who tend to persecute any questioning, disrespecting or disturbing of the commonly held, agreed upon, familiar approaches to things, and we also find seekers for whom the best answers of science or religion aren't nearly good enough at this time, who want to go out further and ask questions they're not supposed to ask. 

     Religion, the bible, church and God do not give me much in the way of comfort.  They offer me a challenge.  That means they upset me and get me thinking.  They cause me to need to grow, need to re-evaluate and change, raise standards and seek new approaches and mindsets.   The challenge of church for me is that I haven't been able to connect with the dogmatic/orthodox clingers, and they seem to be running everything.  Some people get very tripped out and undeniably high from going to the more orgiastic of churches.  That doesn't do it for me.  I am unable to accept it as real.  (Actually, I am well aware that people get pent-up emotion, and that our imperfect world doesn't allow them to let it all out, and that places like pubs, dance clubs, strip bars and churches serve this need, but I don't see it as "really real" but rather as wankery masquerading as consummate love-making, if that makes any sense.  I could, of course, be very wrong.) 

   The challenge of the bible for me is that I was given a filter through which to view it (the "The Bible Says We're Doing The Right Thing" self-justification of our religious efforts filter" I call it) and once I grasp that it's an anthology not written expressly to, for or about me, things get complicated, yet there's clearly gold in them thar hills.  It is a constant struggle to read the bible without falling into those fruitless, deep ruts worn in my brain from having it literally beat into me as a child, and see what it really is, and is really saying, once I've quit opening it with a trained and ingrained specific expectation as to what it will say (that "our" religious efforts and viewpoints are right) and an agenda to be told what to do.  

    It can inspire and challenge, but not if you're opening it to be reassured.  People like to compare it to a  book of rules, a map or an instruction manual.  It's horrible at being any of those in the way a screwdriver is a horrible hammer. God is a challenge to me whenever I admit that I don't understand Him and what He's up to.  It's when I think that I can explain about Him to myself and others that I'm really deluding myself and being smugly self-confident without reason so to feel.  For some people, their view on God really does simply boil down to "You will be in all ways explicable or I will decide you don't exist."  

   If only I could do that.  I know there are many inexplicable people in my life who I'd be much happier deciding didn't exist.  Many of them are the most interesting people I know, for good and/or bad reasons.  I do know a few people who seem completely predictable, explicable and justifiable.  They are boring as hell, and in a weird way, almost don't exist, at least not to the same degree their more difficult to explain counterparts do.