V: What's wrong with religion?

There is a lot wrong with religions, in my view, and I propose to set out a few thoughts on the subject.

But in my post “Mission Report”, elsewhere, I attempted to establish an important thing that is not wrong with it.

A common attack on Christianity (to name the religion we know best) is that its beliefs are false. But this is not what is wrong with it, even if Christians insist that their beliefs are true and we know they are not. In “Mission Report”, I claimed that “all religion is magic”, and so by definition beyond reason and the laws of nature. For magic to work, it must be believed, and so it is not surprising that in a modern world which is well-educated in reason and the laws of nature, Christians want to claim that reason and nature are on their side: even if, for some, it means denying Evolution. If you want to stop a limpet clinging to a rock, you will not persuade it to let go by argument. If you use a hammer and chisel to get it off, you can do it, but it will claim martyrdom and the moral victory, so no point trying. A limpet is a limpet and will relax its grip only when it wants to.

OK, so what then is wrong with religion? I’ll confess that I have not drawn up a list of topics under this heading. There is just one I have in mind, which inspired me to write the article. Let me be leisurely (let us be leisurely, dear reader!) so that I can start with the background to asking the question “What’s wrong with religion?” It started from a Sunday morning conversation, in bed. It’s that time when the BBC gives a nod towards Christianity, and sometimes it plays hymns that we both remember from childhood. In Jamaica where she grew up religion is taken very seriously indeed. For me, the boarding school system was based on full-blown lip-service, hypocritical where necessary, to the Church of England. It was part of the landscape, one of the great shrines to worship at, along with cricket, the responsibilities of Empire and the Queen. Together they were a kind of unified package. Alfred Lord Tennyson in his poem The Charge of the Light Brigade got the spirit precisely:

Theirs not to reason why;
Theirs but to do or die.

There was an element of military discipline about it. We were being trained for adult life, wherein the rules might seem arbitrary and cruel. To us, kept in order by fear of the cane, they sometimes seemed that way already. Knowing the Old Testament was a good way to get into that spirit, for the Lord God of the Children of Israel set a more violent example than anything we’d ever be asked to do. I mentioned this topic in a Bible-reading post, “The anointing of Saul”.

For K, brought up in an ex-colony, favourite destination of missionaries,the emphasis was somewhat different. If you were a church member, much would be demanded from you. That was part of the price to be paid for salvation, I guess. The Pentecostal Church was one of the most demanding. You’d be in trouble if the hem of your dress was an inch higher than approved, and so on.

But then I reflected that every religion shares this characteristic of a price to pay. It would be false to say that it’s imposed from a higher authority and forced upon the worshipper, just as false as saying that in capitalism, you are forced to buy the products you see advertised on television. You are attracted to them, and part with your dollars voluntarily. The more you have paid, the less you are willing to ask yourself whether the benefit you have received was worth the cost or matched up to the expectation. But if you do so ask yourself, you may well come to the conclusion that you did not invest enough: you shouldn’t have gone for the cheapest option. Translating this back into the price you might have to pay (I mean in commitment) to be one of the faithful in church, you can understand the pressure (from within your own self) to do penance, to repent your sins, to attend revivalist meetings and all the rest. It is human nature “to throw good money after bad”. If you will forgive the change of metaphor, no one is going to choose a moment when you are on the deepest ocean and furthest from shore, as a good time time to jump ship. Or to put it even more simply, the true believer is in it up to his or her neck. Treat such a person like a poor animal stuck in a trap: with compassion.

The half-mad street-preacher, who rants about damnation in the marketplace to heedless passers-by, is desperate to recapture that feeling of being saved. He’s willing to be mocked and ignored for it. In this act, he is taking up his cross and following his Lord, the better to knock on Heaven’s door.

This, then, is wrong with religion. It is very bad indeed for those who take it too seriously, the screws in whose heads might loosen during life’s bumpy ride. What makes it worse is the pastors whose income comes from their flock. The shepherd metaphor has its sinister side, for in real life, metaphors apart, every lamb is being nurtured for ultimate slaughter. Real-life shepherds don’t just love the pretty lambs who gambol in Spring. It’s a business which works best when your flock is sheepish.

I’d better stop. Metaphors have a life of their own. They can run out of control, like wolves in sheeps’ clothing!