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By Rev. A. Powell Davies D.D.
November 27, 1949
More and more people--so we
are told--are returning to religion. the former trend is being
reversed. The erstwhile skeptic, instead of believing, as he once
did, that religion is becoming obsolete, is now distinctly hopeful
of it. More than that, he feels the need of it. Life without
religion has become too much for him. The modern age has
disappointed him. The brave new world he dreamed of in his youth has
not materialized; its prophecies have all proved false. The revolt
against religion--where has it brought us? he asks himself. And what
was it that somewhere along the line was overlooked: It must have
been important, for without it all things else have gone astray.
Perhaps it was something religious.
And thus thinking, he takes up again the questions that he thought
were settled. Maybe there is a God. Maybe there's something in
prayer. Maybe one should go to church. Not, of course, that what you
get in church is what you really want. But then, what do you want?
You just don't know. You can't describe it. All you know is that you
need it--and you think it is religion.
But what can one make of churches? They do such queer things. They
don't get together. They are on all sides of every question. Some of
them are on the wrong side of every question--or so it almost seems.
You pick up your newspaper and read that a council of bishops says
thus-and-so. It makes no sense. They are against decent things: not
very progressive things but just ordinary, necessary things, like
freedom of discussion on the radio; or limiting the size of a
family. They ask people to believe creeds that they cannot possibly
believe. They say they speak for God. Does God know it? Is what they
say religion? Or have the bishops lost their religion, too?
Then again, here's a report of a conference of ministers. Protestant
ministers. Nice fellows. Serious minded. They sound at times as
though they might have the answer. But look at the resolutions they
pass! Only by believing in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior can the
world be saved! What do they mean? They never define their terms.
How do you believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior? Suppose you
said you would try it. What is it that you would try? What does it
mean in clear, plain language? If Jesus Christ is Lord of all these
churchmen, how do they come to have such differing opinions? On
everything from the family to the United Nations? Some of them are
in favor of scrapping the United Nations and having a world
federation; some think it would be nice to have both. Of which group
is Jesus Christ Lord? Some are in favor of state subsidies for
parochial schools; others are sure that such a proposal is
iniquitous. Of which group is Jesus Christ the Savior? Some of them
declare that because Jesus Christ is Lord, they are pacifists.
Others deny that pacifism has any such sanction. In what way,
therefore, does the lordship of Christ operate on these churchmen?
Their differences of viewpoint are just the same as other
people's--precisely as though Jesus Christ had nothing whatever to
do with the matter. And so it is with almost everything else--except
the claim that Jesus Christ is Lord. About this they are almost
unanimous. Unanimous but meaningless. Is this religion?
And what does it mean when we are told that the world can be saved
only by supernatural intervention? If such a thing is possible, it
sounds like a good idea; for clearly, all the other agencies that
are trying to save the world are having a hard time of it. A
supernatural one may be just the thing . But what is a supernatural
agency? What is the meaning of the words? In what way are we to
expect the supernatural to intervene? What will it do when it
intervenes? Will something smite open the heavens and come down out
of the sky? If so, will it bring its own organization with it? Or
will it work through existing mechanisms, such as Congress and the
United Nations? What will be its attitude to the Kremlin? Will it
have a solution for the food and population problem? Will it
recognize the present rulers of China? Will its methods be
democratic or will it operate as a benevolent dictatorship? If the
latter, what becomes of human freedom? Can mankind be saved by
overawing it? Is the divine plan one of intimidation? What will it
mean to be saved when the world is being run by the dictates of
celestial magistrates whom, necessarily, we must obey? Granted the
world might be orderly and its affairs well run, but what would it
be aimed towards? What would it mean in terms of values? How would
it advance mankind spiritually? No matter how exalted our masters,
they would be our masters; even a dictatorship of angels would be a
dictatorship; so would we not be slaves? And if this interpretation
is too literal, what would the meaning be if it were not literal? No
one seems to say, except that something miraculous is to be
expected. Something that would take the world out of our hands. So
it amounts to the same thing.
Is this religion? If so, it is contrary to what the ethics of
religion teach us. For unless the soul of man is free, even right
and wrong can have no meaning since the soul would not be free to
choose between them. Only the free can choose. To invade this
freedom, even by supernatural coercion, would destroy the soul.
The promise of supernatural intervention is therefore not only a
venture in improbabilities, but wrong in essence, immoral,
irreligious. It is the surrender of responsibility, the soul's wish
to cease to be a soul. It is asking God to dehumanize us, to take
away our freedom, to divest us of the power to choose, because we no
longer want to be men. It is asking him to take back the world
because we are tired of the effort of trying to run it. We want to
be puppets; want to be slaves.
Is it to this that the skeptic must return when he comes back to
religion? To theologians confused and churches confounded? Must he
subject himself to bishops whose pronouncements make no sense? Or
try to follow churchmen going in opposite directions? Or in default
of that, embrace a neo-orthodoxy the aim of which is the surrender
of the soul?
Or, if he takes the matter at a rather simpler level and tries to
return to religion no matter what its difficulties so long as there
is solace in it, some easement of tension, some word of hope,
something that somehow he might manage to believe in, must he be
constantly confronted with absurdities? Must he go to church to hear
a very ordinary mind expounding with unwavering self-confidence what
God has confided to it about the ultimate mysteries of the universe?
Must he be told, in detail and with complete assurance, exactly what
heaven is like and what he has to do to go there? And must he listen
with docility week after week to what an intelligent child of six
would instantly identify as fairy stories?
Indeed, as to this last I recently received from a child of six,
namely my own younger daughter, a description of heaven in which she
did not for a moment believe but which, nevertheless, so far as she
was concerned put the entire matter in a nutshell. "Heaven," she
said, "is a place where, when you meet somebody, you say, 'Hello,
there! I didn't know you were dead!'" If only some of the preachers
would compress their speculations into similar compass! And then
deal, not with folklore but with religion!
For, as it seems to me, the skeptic, in his return to religion, must
often be having a rather disappointing experience. Just at the very
moment when he has begun to believe that religion after all may make
sense, he finds it just as cluttered up with nonsense as on the day
he turned his back on it. In these circumstances, he does--and I
imagine is likely to go on doing--one of several things according to
his individual character and temperament. He may capitulate and join
a church to whose authority he does not, in his heart, submit. He
may succeed in pretending that he does submit. If he is tired
enough--and there are a lot of tired people in the world today--the
pretence may be convincing, at least for a while. He may think he
has found peace; and except for the very deep unrest which he keeps
buried far below the level of his consciousness, perhaps he has. I
have met such people. I recognize them by the frightened look which
comes into their eyes if anything is said that threatens to awake
that deep unrest. They have found peace, they say. Perhaps they
have. I do not know. All that I know is that peace has not found
them. When true peace comes to a life it comes because that life is
wide open to the world and its struggle and there is room for peace
to seed itself and grow. The peace that you have to guard lest the
east wind blight it or the north wind blow it away is just a sickly
graft, not a self-rooted plant, and only superficially does it
resemble the genuine article.
But many a skeptic knows this, or at least senses it. So that he may
make one of the other choices. He may join a church --or attend
one--in the hope that some time he will find something that he
recognizes as religion. Whether he succeeds or not depends, of
course, not only upon whether there is enough religion in the church
in question, but also upon whether this man is able to recognize it
when he sees it. Instead of joining a church, however, he may elect
to seek religion for himself. He may look for it in books, with
varying degrees of success. Or he may even seek it in the life he
lives, in his own experience, his own thought, his own motives, his
own inner conflicts, his own awareness--and if he does this, he is
very likely to find it. But if none of these methods attract
him--and sometimes that is what happens after a while--he may give
up religion and try popular psychology or one of the more
comfortable sorts of pessimism, or, quite possibly, communism.
But actually, unless it be by personal circumstances, he is not
driven to these alternatives. Religion is not indissolubly wedded to
nonsense. Nor is it necessarily encumbered by irresolution or
irrelevancy. Nor need it be confused. It is true that religion has
to do at last with final questions to which no honest mind can give
an easy answer; with hidden things and with mysteries. But it does
not start there. It starts with life and the way we live it. And it
makes sense.
It starts, for instance, when a man faces a question to which he
does not know the answer, and says to himself and to whoever asks
him, "I do not know." In such a statement there is more religion
than in all the creeds the churchmen ever wrote. For that is exactly
what the churchmen faced: questions to which they did not know the
answer; but they were not honest enough to admit it. If they had
prefaced the creeds by saying, "We do not know the answers but we
think the following statements may be useful; they represent a
summary of our present beliefs and we offer them to all others to
whom they may be helpful," that would have been religious. And there
would have been no persecutions. Heresy is only persecuted because
orthodoxy is fearful of its own pretensions, is not sure of itself;
it fears in others the same doubt that it cannot quite suppress
within itself. And so, I say, religion begins when a man says he
does not know.
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