Before I begin, it is important to emphasize that to think of yourself as religious does not require you to be a member of a church, or any adherence to dogmas. Rather, religion is defined by your relationship to whatever you deem as divine. Or, like William James wrote, “… (religion) is the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.”
A few years ago I moved from Italy to the US, for university. Alone, I should add. No sooner had I said goodbye to my parents when that very night, in my dorm room, I was pulled into a black abyss of existential dread. What was I doing there? Why had I put so much pressure on myself to get the proper grades, only to live in a country which I did not (yet) like, with people I did not know, studying for a job somewhere down the line which was not even guaranteed. As the days progressed these sentiments, instead of subsiding, increased. In a surprisingly short time I became incredibly nihilist.
Fast forward a few months, a friend asked me to go to Hillel with her — a Jewish community just down the road, which met several times a week. The people were extremely hospitable, and I felt a connection with almost everybody. Though, surprisingly, what kept me coming back were the weekly Torah readings. Why? What did those religious texts convey that my otherwise (somewhat) logical mind was so willing to accept as truths?
Undoubtedly, religion has played a significant role in sculpting civilization throughout history, in its attempt to answer fundamental questions about the existence of human beings in the universe. Religion gives an answer to the inadequacy of the world presented to us in our everyday life. Many, if not all (even if unconsciously), are haunted by a fundamental anxiety of which our so-called “reality” can find no relief — our fear of death. If we allowed ourselves to be completely consumed by this thought, we would no longer be able to function.
How does one deal with their existential dread in a world where our extensive scientific knowledge has placed religion in such a perilous position? Science tells us that religious dogma is an illusion and false. It tells us that the enlightened individual should not live by those fabrications. But while we might not need a divine being, or divine beings, to explain the phenomena which occur in our natural world, does religion not have something to teach us about how to live our life? What good does it do us psychologically to depend wholly on the picture science paints for us? An infinite, indifferent, dark cosmos, lacking in every way subjective human values. Has our abandonment of the religious worldview placed us in a void of cynicism and confusion?
It is difficult to be a religious / enlightened person when the very facts of life supports the results seen in lab experiments and mathematical equations. What helped me out of this logic-obstructing mental space was the realization that the belief in something more does not equal the belief in God. The belief in, for example, Spinoza’s God, which finds itself in the lawful harmony of all that exists, is not equivalent to the Judeo-Christian God.
Just as you can have an inner “demon” lurking in the back of your mind, speaking down to you, you can also find your own inner god, housed in the crevices of your unconscious. That, I think, is the “god” I found at Hillel, and that is the god which helped me back on my feet and fed some sense into my otherwise cynical mind. It is also the god which has for thousands of years spoken to philosophers and theologians alike. Most of whom have alluded to the idea that a larger power exists and expresses itself within the depths of our psyche. “Behind your thoughts and feelings there stands a mighty commander, an unknown wise man — he is called Self.” - Nietzsche.
In this day and age, we seem to pay for having been religious for all these two thousand years. Through technology and science we can deduce that a divine God presumably does not exist. However, it is important to remember that there are things that occur everyday which are inexpressible and inexplicable. We do not know the depth of our mind. The intricacies that go on within to make sense of the world without are a mystery to both philosophers and scientists alike. In order to live a fruitful life one should not shy away from living, and if the belief in an inner, or outer, god or God makes life worthwhile, then why not?
The hidden man is God’s own being
I totally feel religious without being religious! As though rituals add depth to life, even if they don’t add meaning.
This was a beautiful Shifra!
I love it when it comes to be that other people are writing about the same thing as me. You might be interested to read about Isaac Newton; he was of quite his own mind. Here's a couple snippets of my own writing from just yesterday that follow your thinking quite closely.
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I accept a fundamental commonality of all things, God in effect, because we’re part of a universe that at some times must be allowed to exist in totality for the sake of our mental sanity. However I find myself unwilling to address God directly because God can be addressed at all times in our life in a multitude of indirect ways. Simply refraining from the dialectic is enough.
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I aspire merely to a spiritual life of reasonable faith that matches time for all it’s days as it goes it’s way.
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To illustrate the necessity of totality let me pose a question. Is it the Earth that pulls the Moon or the Moon that pulls the Earth? For in truth the Moon orbits us so faithfully that it’s face never turns away and the Earth is the free and lusty soul which spins beneath it’s gaze. And yet in another truth the Moon is a drag tearing at our clothes and digging in it’s toes thereby ruffling the fabric of our surface, creating the ocean’s tide and molesting our most delicate tectonic plates. Yet more and more poetry of this raging life can be brought before your eyes and so totality must be answered by concluding that it is the both of them who are dancing with their arms wrapped together and yet it is the conceptual objective of our scientific method to place a pin in the space between them where the material phenomena makes itself apparent—here’s where of gravity has sung. Eureka, we’ve found it! The Nobel prize!
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Nihilism is rather like the ultimate stick in the mud of forgetting every other perspective in the universe and God is the offer to release the hand you've unknowingly clenched. Absolutely there is something to what religion's selling because nothing in the secular world feels anything like a ritual does to experience; you just have to try it. It's wise to acknowledge the powers apparent and to leave control to the unconscious. Time passes in mysterious ways.
GG