What is religion but a way of grappling with the unknown? Of being able to somehow express, be a part of, that strange spirituality, that strange “something more” that we humans feel about life?
It is not necessarily a way, like science, to try to know the unknown, but to accept its power, resign oneself to a place in the scheme of life, a scheme that we don’t understand, and yet feel ourselves to be part of. It is both a burying of one’s own head in the sand and the problematic notion of a leap of faith.
And thus, as it is a way of reconciling with the unknown, religion is a form of seeking; but unlike the sciences, it is also a way of accepting. It is indeed important to learn the wisdom of acceptance, and yet at the same time to accept the idea of possibility and to be open-minded.
The art of acceptance without credulity, acceptance without advocacy/endorsement. This is the tension of religion in a life teeming with possibilities too numerous and varied for the human mind to grasp.
How can there be religion without belief? And how can there also not be ignorance and a certain amount of arrogance and close-mindedness cloaked in that veneer of belief-faith, a false humility in the context of thinking you know? For to claim that you know what you yourself say you cannot know (God) is to say you know something you cannot know. What could be a higher yet more simple form of ignorant arrogance?
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From my personal notes, 12/1/99.
