If there is one thing that can make religion unpopular in today’s pluralistic society, It is the idea of claiming access to exclusive truth. On my mission I learned firsthand how the act of sending someone to your door is felt deeply offensive for so many people. It is one reason religion is just something you are not supposed to talk about, in the interest of keeping peace. Religion is simultaneously deeply personal and deeply divisive.
When you feel a strong spiritual bond of community, spirituality and faith, the proselyting of others is seen as an assault on everything you stand for. At the same time, helping others see what you have and sharing it also becomes important the more invested you become and the more joy you find in your faith. Calm assurance that you are “right” has been used to justify coercion, violence and even genocide against outsiders through history. This in spite of the fact that such actions are almost always roundly condemned in the holy writings of all the faiths involved.
Religions are now routinely beat over the head because of this idea. For a religion to be a religion it has to make some claim to truth or authority, otherwise it becomes a set of hollow set of customs and ritual. Yet, one could easily ask, “if you guys have it all figured out, why is God so inefficient as to include a just a small minority of his children in his plan?” The question becomes Is it true that you believe only (Christians, Mormons, Muslims, Jews, etc) go to heaven. The implication is intuitive. How would God justify privileging a certain group over everyone else? It seems unjust and tyrannical. At the same time, why does your faith matter if this is not true?
The act of proselyting becomes an assertion that you have something better than the other and they will resent it. It is only human to resent it. On the other hand, If you really do believe an exclusive truth claim, you very well better be spreading the message because those others are in trouble if you don’t. Proselyting becomes a labor of simultaneous arrogance and concern.
My question is if there is a way to lose the arrogance. C. S. Lewis wrote, ” Pride gets no joy out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.” The sneaky seduction of a truth claim is the joy we start taking in having what others do not have. Religion too easily becomes a competition, with each person trying to seem more pious than the next. Appearances are maintained, often to gain more authority. Hypocrisy is the inevitable result.
Christ’s harshest words went to the religious leaders of his day, as he quoted Isaiah, “They draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” Yet, I think we have to be very careful applying this to anyone but ourselves, as we cannot know another’s heart. Paradoxically, when we start proclaiming the hypocrisy of others, suddenly we are the “right” ones while the others are “evil.” We are stuck in the same trap.
This has led many to take the all mountains lead to mount Fuji approach. Mohandas Ghandi certainly saw it this way. He once stated, “My effort should never be to undermine another’s faith but to make him a better follower of his own faith”
It seems he backed this up in his life. Speaking of Christianity he said,”I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. The materialism of affluent Christian countries appears to contradict the claims of Jesus Christ that says it’s not possible to worship both Mammon and God at the same time.” Pretty challenging and confrontational and yet, in a way that asks people to live their own faith’s teachings. I think it’s brilliant.
This path is easier in Eastern traditions because they don’t necessarily believe in God as a being, per say. Thus, living, ethics, spirituality, and practice become the important components of religion and faith, but they really become more relative to what you understand truth to be. It can become somewhat fuzzy. The monotheistic Abrahamic Faiths, on the other hand, do claim a God above all other Gods, and Lord of Lords. They do this for very good reason. Ethics and spirituality are only meaningful if there is an absolute right and a wrong. Otherwise any position can be rationalized. There has to be an ideal. The monotheistic idea of God defines this. It gives a position of Authority backing the truth claim. So how on Earth do we reconcile an ideal of authoritative truth with the sneaky temptation to be “right” for the sake of being the right ones. It is a fine line.
I think the most tried and true way is to live as an example. My hands down favorite, deepest, most powerful and profound verses in all the Mormon Canon of scripture came through the Prophet Joseph Smith in the 121st section of the Doctrine and Covenants.
39 We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.
40 Hence many are called, but few are chosen.
41 No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned;42 By kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile—43 Reproving betimes with sharpness, when moved upon by the Holy Ghost; and then showing forth afterwards an increase of love toward him whom thou hast reproved, lest he esteem thee to be his enemy;44 That he may know that thy faithfulness is stronger than the cords of death.45 Let thy bowels also be full of charity towards all men, and to the household of faith, and let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly; then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God; and the doctrine of the priesthood shall distil upon thy soul as the dews from heaven.46 The Holy Ghost shall be thy constant companion, and thy scepter an unchanging scepter of righteousness and truth; and thy dominion shall be an everlasting dominion, and without compulsory means it shall flow unto thee forever and ever.
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May 21, 2008 at 5:36 pm
David Littlefield
Doc:
Great post!
” We will have ideas we will all have to get rid of in order to move along toward truth.”
That is certainly true. And this can be a painful and rewarding process.
-David
May 21, 2008 at 7:32 pm
isabella mori
i often don’t read longer posts but this one held my attention!
a question – first you praise gandhi and his approach and then you say, “ethics and spirituality are only meaningful if there is an absolute right and a wrong” and relate this to monotheism. i see a contradiction there. do you?
at any rate, i’m really grateful that i’ve read this. your blog certainly helps counterbalance the more narrow views that i sometimes encounter from people living the LDS faith.
May 21, 2008 at 8:24 pm
Doc
Isabella,
Thanks for hanging in to the end. I sort of agree. I do see at least an irony that Ghandi, as an outsider, needed to point out to Christians they were not living the tenets of their own religion, and it is interesting that a polytheist could do for monotheism what I claimed (and borrowed) as the central purpose of the theology. I think the beef with polytheism is that if your behavior doesn’t meet snuff with one God, all you have to do is shop around and find one that it is okay with. Of course, many polytheists and atheists alike will say that it is complete nonsense to believe that one God is necessary for there to be an absolute right and wrong. It is all a bit of a puzzle, and to be honest, LDS theology ultimately sides in pragmatic terms with the outsiders while maintaining the idea in literal terms.
The LDS way to explain this anomaly is to state that the One true God gives us all the “light of Christ” so that we all spiritually recognize truth wherever and whenever we see it, thus all truth in every religion and no religion comes from the same source whether they realize it or not. Whether this is completely true or not is a matter of faith. Personally, I find it quite compelling.
May 22, 2008 at 12:07 am
sunlize
Great post! “Instead we will just be children of God, the human family.” I really love that thought. It’s very comforting to think that we won’t have to fight over in the hereafter. And it is tricky to balance sharing your faith and respecting other people’s faiths. I find the practice of baptism for dead by proxy very reassuring because there are so many reasons someone may have not picked the true/right faith in life. Plus I like that it gives the person the agency to accept or reject their baptism. (But that’s assuming that the LDS Church is the true church. I guess if some other church is the only true church, then it doesn’t really matter!)
May 22, 2008 at 1:31 am
isabella mori
one way for me me to imagine god/the divine – as far as that is possible – is to picture him/her/it/them as a huge diamond. as humans, at the most, we are only able to behold a few facets of this diamond, and of course it’s very tempting to believe that the facet(s) we can see are god.
“spiritually recognizing truth” – this is a fascinating concept for me lately. i have some rock-bottom beliefs which i like to think come from this spiritual recognition of truth. fine and dandy. unfortunately i have this nagging feeling that the people who committed 9/11 may have thought the same. and of course i like to think that they were misguided …
and so it goes. one of my rock-bottom beliefs is that dialogue is a great treasure, especially dialogue between people of different backgrounds – like between you, of the LDS faith, and me, with a what some people would say a horrendously misguided mix of christianity, buddhism and paganism 🙂
May 22, 2008 at 7:23 am
Doc
Sunlize,
Thanks for the nice words. I agree it is a central part to our theology and should enable greater respect.
Isabella,
Agreed, Dialogue is a great treasure. There is power in understanding. Regarding 9/11 terrorists, I think they are known by their fruits. Their actions have done little to improve life in the Middle East or make the US behave more equitably towards them. Israel and Palestine have not solved their problems. Muslims do not have a better, more fulfilling life in general, but are loathed and despised by those who paint with broad brushes.
Anger and retribution are all too human and corrosive for me to attribute them to divine origin.
Thanks for stopping by. Best of luck in your journey.
May 23, 2008 at 1:50 am
isabella mori
“they are known by their fruits” … yes, *i* would agree with you re the corrosiveness of anger and retribution – but how do *they* see it? don’t some of these people (who appear brainwashed to me) praise their lord each time an infidel dies at their hands? would they call their anger and retribution corrosive – or holy?
i guess the only bottom line i can find here is a willingness to be vigorously honest with oneself (and one’s god(s)). the spiritual recognition of truth that you spoke of must be accompanied by and done with that honesty. and of course at some level such an honesty is incompatible with the love of authority and neglect for life that is dished up to these young suicide killers – may, indeed, god have mercy on them and those who misguide them.