Another excerpt of David Dark‘s wonderful Life’s Too Short to Pretend You’re Not Religious, this time the portions of the introduction that formed the basis of what I tried to say in NYC:
“Because religion can radically name the specific ways we’ve put our lives together and, perhaps more urgently, the ways we’ve allowed other people to put our lives together for us. To be clear, I’m not trying to encourage anyone to begin self-identifying as religious. That’s as futile and redundant a move as calling yourself political or cultural. But I am arguing that we should cease and desist from referring to others as religious as if they’re participants in games we ourselves aren’t playing, as if they’re somehow weirdly and hopelessly enmeshed in cultures of which we’re always only detached observers. On the one hand, this is a distancing move that keeps us detached from the fact of our own enthusiasm, our own rituals, our own enmeshments and our own loves. But it also holds another person–the ostensibly religious person–under a scrutiny I have yet to apply to myself. Calling someone else religious doesn’t answer the question of my own…
The voice, the tale, the image, the parable that gets through to you–that wins your heart–religiously is the one that makes it past your defenses. You’ve been won over, and you probably didn’t see it coming. You’ve been enlisted into a drama, whether positively or negatively, and it shouldn’t be controversial to note it happens all the time….
Religion happens when we get pulled in, moved, called out or compelled by something outside ourselves. It could be a car commercial, a lyric, a painting, a theatrical performance or the magnetic pull of an Apple store. The calls to worship are everywhere… Whether we spy it in ritual, symbol or ceremony, religion isn’t something one can be coherently for or against or decide to somehow suddenly engage, because it’s always already there. Or as the old Palmolive commercial once put it, we’re soaking in it.
Whatever the content of the script we’re sticking to for dear life–that would be our religions–it binds us for worse or for better till we begin to critique it religiously and relentlessly, in view of the possibility of conversion to better boundedeness, different and more redeeming orientations or, to put it a little strangely, less bad religion. And a person’s religiosity is never not in play. It names the patterns, shifting or consistent, avowed or not, of all our interactions. Religion is the question of how we dispose our energies, how we see fit to organize our own lives and, in many cases, the lives of others.” (pg 16-18)
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Thanks for this excerpt and for introducing me to him on the Mockingcast (I think it was the Mockingcast). I appreciate where David Dark is coming from.
A related excerpt from a “The Last Word” column by Ole Anthony published in the long defunct Wittenburg Door. In the column he describes a talk about religion that he gave to a MENSA chapter meeting:
I proposed that they were all actually very religious, and were in fact worshipping very stupid gods – themselves.
I asked them to consider some evidence:
All men tithe. If you consider that the first 10 per cent of your income goes for what you most highly value (your chief god) whether it’s your appearance, your family, an education, pleasure or entertainment.
All men pray. The constant mind-talk continues even in our sleep, focused on whatever we define as our chief god, our most highly valued concern, or fear or goal.
All men worship. We breathe life into the lifeless idol that we created by giving it importance. This is our worship, but we forget that it’s only air.
All men sacrifice. We sacrifice to what we worship. And if someone dares to defile our sacred value system or idea, we will kill them.
All men have rituals and liturgy. These are the activities directed by our value systems, whatever they are.
All men have a sense of sin. Everyone feels guilt when falling short of even their own standards.
All men recognize and follow laws. Even sociopaths have a conscience they either defy or choose to ignore. We are accused or excused, blamed or justified by that board of elders that is always in session in our minds.
Surprisingly, the MENSA crowd accepted my premise and even appreciated my making fun of their “stupid gods.” But if they reflected on it, they probably were as disturbed as I was.
I miss Ole Anthony and The Door.