When Religion Gets Stuck

Moral codes and ideologies

The limited frameworks of ideologies ignore vast sectors of human existence. Living within their explanations of the human condition crushes creativity, and compresses the soul in order to make it fit within the ideology’s narrow bounds.

But religion can do the same thing.

There is considerable evidence at this point that religions are something that allowed large groups of people to trust each other and thus contribute to improved survival rates. Statistics in the 21st century show that even now, people who have consistent involvement with a religious group are happier, healthier, and longer-lived than those who do not have such a practice.

But religions can also become ideologies, narrowing the inherently revolutionary and creative intent of a founder to a rigid set of rules. In some cases, to stray beyond those rules, or to be suspected of having done so is a death sentence.

I suspect this may happen where religion has become involved with politics, ie, in the business of controlling other people’s behaviors. There is an elemental rigidity in politics because it is fundamentally about controlling other people. The majority decides by vote what ideas, or people who will present ideas, will be the foundation of the rules of a given society. The minority may end up having no voice at all.

The flaw of this rigidity is significantly demonstrated in the example of Confucianism. This detailed code of moral behavior lasted for three thousand years and was based on the divine right of the Emperors. It dictated how one treated others both above and below one in the hierarchy of the social structure of China from approximately 1600 BCE until the end of the colonial era.

When Confucianism fell, it collapsed so hard that the Chinese people were left with nothing to guide them in how to behave in a world suddenly far beyond what they had understood to be true. Used to the rigid support of a highly structured code, they were deeply vulnerable to a despot who was happy to tell them the right way to live.

Both Christianity and Islam have embarked on wars of conquest in the name of ‘saving’ the world. I wouldn’t begin to think I could interpret the Koran in a way that would suggest that I knew anything about its prophet. But I have heard some Muslims speak who believe his words were meant to create peace and good relations among all humans, regardless of what we specifically hold sacred.

I was raised Christian, and I’ve read the Bible in multiple translations. I don’t think Jesus would have approved of the desire for power, even when the people seeking it thought they were doing so in others’ best interests.

We live in the world of the Enlightenment, a time when mechanistic ideology is leading all of us toward meaninglessness and despair. In the face of this, belief in something - anything - greater than ourselves is better than no belief at all. And given that belief is hard, having a group around one to bolster it can be a blessed relief.

But it’s not a complete answer. Without humility, and the willingness to look for answers in our own behavior, religion simply becomes another ideology, crushing the spirit it is meant to nurture.

Selina Rifkin, M.S. [Nutrition], LMT, has been to Hades in a handbasket. More than once. This has given her some opinions. Like most of her generation [X] she’s okay with snark. Most days she tries for good writing. But the snark, and side comments creep in. She lives with her husband, and is Mother of Cats; four boyz and one cranky gurl. Selina has written The Young Woman’s Goodlife Guide: Things I Wish I’d Known When I Was 20. Or… Learn From My Pain, and How to Train Your Cat: Using a Clicker and Leash to Keep Your Indoor Cat Happy and Healthy, and the Goodlife Guide to Nutrition.