Stray Thoughts: Religion

So, what is religion? Not a specific religion. Just religion. I think that most people use that word to mean something like this: a set of beliefs about a God or gods, along with certain rituals and behaviors that follow from those beliefs.

I think that most people would agree with something like that. I would like, however, to suggest an alternative definition that I think is actually a bit more helpful.

A religion is an organizing principle (along with what follows from that principle) by which a person works to understand reality. If this definition is accurate, it means that everyone has a religion, even the atheist. Everyone is, to a greater or lesser degree, religious. And I say that because everyone has some way of understanding the reality that they live in. Religion is about understanding reality.

A person’s religion is the eyeglasses through which he views reality in the hope of understanding that reality and thus being able to live in it well enough.

Now, there are those who really work at this. They work at discerning how the basic principle that they are committed to explains reality. And they do this in the hope of being able to live in accord with reality. They hope to be able to live well. These people have a religion that, at least to them, seems to be working.

There are others, of course, who spent little time working at this. But even with these folk, there are some basic responses to reality, to life as it comes at them, that they continually opt for. And they do this with almost total disregard of how well their chosen responses are working, how well they are actually doing, when it comes to dealing with reality. They don’t make the effort to evaluate their lives so that they might make some changes that will work better. And so, they make the same sorts of mistakes over and over. They have a religion that isn’t working, and that can become very clear even to them. Sadly, one result of someone seeing this failure of their religion is to completely stop any attempts to understand reality. They give up trying. Life then takes a terrible tailspin into despair. And that sometimes results in suicide.

In referring to these two groups of people, I’m describing not their professed religion but their functional religion. There are those for whom these two kinds of religions - professed and functional - are actually one and the same. But there are many who claim to follow one religion but actually live according to something very different, some other understanding of reality.

Now, this definition also applies to the Christian religion. Its basic principle is that there is a God of a certain sort who has not only created but also rules reality. This God has described, in the Bible, what sort of God that He is. As a result, people can know that He is like this and not like that; He rules reality in this way and not in that way. As a result of knowing these things and accepting them as true (faith), Christians are able to live well in the reality this God rules. Life for such people is something very beautiful.

With all of this in mind, I’d like to bring forward another word to define. The word is ‘doctrine’. I think that it’s safe to say that for so many Christians, doctrine is something to be avoided. It’s dry and boring. And it’s just not at all practical. But that’s because too many define doctrine as ‘dry and boring stuff about that abstract impractical thing called theology’. I think that a better definition will help.

Doctrine is the explanation and application of the basic principle of a person’s understanding of reality, of a person’s religion, to the details of life. That’s true for the atheist just as it’s true for the Christian. Every religion has a body of doctrines.

So, a Christian who wants to work at understanding how his basic principle (the God of the Bible) explains reality, will want to know the doctrines of his religion. He will want to know more of how reality works in the nooks and crannies of life. He will work to know these doctrines in the hope of being able to live well in the nooks and crannies of life. Of course, there is a way of teaching doctrine that really is dry and boring - with all the big words and complex sentences and the lack of anything at all practical. But there is also a way teaching it, in its inherent simplicity, that makes living in this reality come alive.

Christian doctrine, well taught, is of tremendous help when it comes to living well. With this in mind, I think you can understand why I would say that much of the Church in America needs to rediscover the critical place of doctrine in the lives of Christians and, as a result, to invest in the effort to teach it in a way that is beautiful, enticing and so very helpful when it comes to living in this reality.