When Doubt is a Good Thing

As a Pastor I've preached lots of sermons on the idea that it is okay to doubt. Usually the sermons come on the Sunday after Easter, when the church hears about how one of the disciples, Thomas, doubted the Resurrection of Jesus and (the risen) Jesus handles his doubts with compassion.

Until yesterday, though, I never thought how important doubt can be to one's own sense of well-being, until I heard a radio interview with Shalom Auslander on the program Fresh Air. I've heard Auslander before, on my favorite radio program This American Life, and I found him, like most of the contributers, to be insightful and funny. Until now, though, I had no idea that there was a darker side to his Ultra-Orthodox Jewish upbringing.

Auslander grew up in a disfunctional family with an angry dad, and in his heart of hearts is an image of God very much like his own dad--a mean bully. Years of therapy, cutting himself off from his family, and extensive study of religion have not budged his conviction that God is real, and also a meanie who is out to get him if he disobeys a long list of ridiculous laws that are impossible to obey perfectly and that he has therefore abandoned. If you've ever wondered why people hate religion and find it to be oppressive and evil, Shalom Auslander is Exhibit A. He wants to have doubts, he behaves like a person who has far more doubt than faith, but the fact is that he has never had a single real moment of doubting.

So, what is the solution? The Soviet Union outlawed religion and it just went underground. Today the Russian Orthodox church has regained its stutus in Russian culture. And, on a deeper level, the Soviet society never did away with the oppressive aspects of religion that folks like Auslander condemn. On a recent trip to Russia, we brought back Soviet propoganda that could have been written by Jerry Fallwell. It focused on the importance of avoiding strong drink, tobacco, and extramarital sex, and on taking care of your kids and working hard without expecting any reward except solidarity with comrades. I don't think I have to tell you how successful this propaganda was in reducing the Russian appetite for pleasures of the flesh. If anything, the lurid way it depicted these excesses may have given them the extra thrill of forbidden fruit for some citizens.

When it comes to religion and morality, there's the soft sell, the hard sell and then there is indoctrination. The United Church of Christ, my denomination, is dominated by churches that practice the soft sell and emphasize the postives of living a moral life--like, you don't have to keep your lies straight if you don't tell any! Soviet propaganda represents the hard sell. What Shalom Auslander experienced was indoctrination, and it led him to the opposite extreme of behavior after he left his home and school, because he had yet to develop a moral compass based on personal integrity.

I am personally morally opposed to participating in indoctrination, but according to how our US Constitution is currently interpreted, religious indoctrination of the kind Shalom Auslander experienced as a young child is perfectly legal. In a recent court case, the leader of a small sect in Utah was convicted and sent to prison for indoctrinating an underage girl that she must marry her cousin and submit to having sex with him. Most indoctrinated children are not encouraged to break the law or to submit to becoming a victim of a crime, however, so prosecution will do little to ease the pain of people like Shalom Auslander.

I think the question is, do those of us who find comfort and joy in religious faith owe some kind of moral debt to those like Auslander whose lives are shattered by religious indoctrination? Auslander resents people like me, what he would call religious moderates. He believes that people like me make it possible for groups like Al Queda to perpetrate unspeakable crimes against humanity in the name of religion simply because we lend legitimacy to religion. I don't agree with him, but how do I reach out and try to help someone who thinks I'm perpetuating evil just because I like to pray, read the Bible, sing hymns and eat suppers with others who like the same things? It's kind of hard to blame the guy for seeing things in black/white, either/or terms, given his first eighteen years of life, but I'm not going to be able to see things the way he does, so how do we bridge the gap?

Attack of the Cranky Athiests

Another day, another cranky athiest. Christopher Hitchens, who is apparently a respected journalist, has published a book called God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

Here's what he has to say about his friends who are religious, as excerpted in Slate online magazine.

Religious faith is, precisely because we are still-evolving creatures, ineradicable. It will never die out, or at least not until we get over our fear of death, and of the dark, and of the unknown, and of each other. For this reason, I would not prohibit it even if I thought I could. Very generous of me, you may say. But will the religious grant me the same indulgence? I ask because there is a real and serious difference between me and my religious friends, and the real and serious friends are sufficiently honest to admit it. I would be quite content to go to their children's bar mitzvahs, to marvel at their Gothic cathedrals, to "respect" their belief that the Koran was dictated, though exclusively in Arabic, to an illiterate merchant, or to interest myself in Wicca and Hindu and Jain consolations. And as it happens, I will continue to do this without insisting on the polite reciprocal condition—which is that they in turn leave me alone. But this, religion is ultimately incapable of doing. As I write these words, and as you read them, people of faith are in their different ways planning your and my destruction, and the destruction of all the hard-won human attainments that I have touched upon. Religion poisons everything.

I would say somebody needs a hug, but I think he's past the point where a hug will help.

Check this out, though: he says he just wants his religious friends to leave him alone. Maybe he needs some new friends? Cause, like, I don't remember ever getting in the face of my atheist friends, and I have plenty of them. And I don't EVER remember accusing Atheists of "Plotting...the destruction of all the hard-won human attainments..."

Maybe I shouldn't take this personally, but it's kind of hard not to, because he is lumping me in with, like, suicide bombers.

Why do people do this--educated people who know which fork they are supposed to use for the main course and which one for salad at a formal dinner, I mean?

Well, I'm guessing Mr. Hitchens is really frustrated with a lot of bad things going on in the world. I don't blame him for that. And I don't blame him for wanting something or someone to blame. I'd kind of like to be able to blame the Soviets, or the Devil, or whatever. But the Soviets had to go and self-destruct on me, and I've found that there is some good and some evil in everyone, so blaming stuff on the Devil doesn't really give me much satisfaction. Bad stuff happens, and I'll be the first one to admit that the world's religions have not come up with a perfect, all-encompassing explanation for the problem of evil. I guess it could be because, as a religious person, I am in fact the answer to the question "What is the cause of the problem of evil?" but I don't really think so.

I guess in Mr. Hitchen's mind, religion is about answering the big questions, and he's right. But not all religious people think that religion has the answers to the big questions. I sure don't. I guess religion that claims to have all the answers has a lot of appeal in uncertain, scary times like ours. It doesn't have any appeal for me. It makes me really sad to see so many people settle for easy (if imperfect) answers to what the Garrison Keillor charactor Guy Noir calls "life's persistent questions," but right now I'm not in an angry place about that. If it wasn't religion claiming to have the answers it would be (and in many cases is) political parties or multinational corporations or Think Tanks or some other institutions. Institutions are run by and for humans, and like the humans that create them, they are flawed. This includes the institution of journalism, I'm sorry to tell poor Mr. Hitchens.

I do feel that it is important to wrestle with the big questions, to wrestle with them together in a like-hearted community with a spirit of compassion, because none of us has all the answers. That is what religion is about for me, and for a lot of other people too.