There’s More to Religion Than Words, Labels

Southern California has a diversity of population that can be found in few other places in the world. The issue facing us on the eve of the next millennium is whether or not we will be able to live constructively together. If we can, then we can become a constructive model for a world filled with intolerance, prejudice and conflict.

What causes human beings to hold such hatred against each other that they willingly and without feeling destroy their neighbors? Religion has often been the identifying label for the conflicting sides, but has religion been the cause of conflict the way historians and reporters tell it?

It is true that the roots of the current conflict in Yugoslavia go back more than 600 years to the battle of Kosovo, where Muslim Turks defeated Christian Serbs. But we will not understand the contributions being made by religion to promote tolerance or intolerance unless we move beyond the labels to the way religion functions in human societies.

Religion is a universal characteristic of humanity. We are a secular culture now, and we find that people have lost the basic practice of etiquette, mutual respect and courtesy as we have lost our dedication to our religious traditions. Can we live without religion? Many thinkers have said so, and major psychological and economic thinkers have predicted that religion would soon pass away. Yet religion becomes ever more powerful as the world becomes more secular and technological, and the void left by the denial of a wide religious consensus is being filled with countless sects giving answers to the issues of life.

The centrality of religion as the framework for meaning in life places it at the center of human identity and community. The quest for a place in the universe is universal among all the great world religions. The Hebrew Bible says God created the heavens and the Earth, and declared that creation is good. The Hindu Bhagavad Gita has Krishna declare that he placed the stars in the heavens like jewels on a string.

Some who grasp this transcendent and mysterious quality of religion like to take the next step and claim that all religions are essentially the same--that all religious paths lead to the same place and the same quality of life. This is clearly not so. It is an insult to every particular religious tradition to say that it has no greater value than any casual opinion human beings might choose out of the shallow and superficial world views held all around us.

Religion is a quest for truth and reality. Religions are not the same in either their approach or their conclusions. There is a vast difference between the description of the mystery and reality experienced by a devout Hindu and his/her conclusion that the way to peace and wholeness leads to a denial of the world, while the Jewish-Christian view is that God calls people to redeem and change the world. Adherents of each religion believe that theirs is unique and authoritative; however, it is probable that one leads to more truth and understanding than others even if we are not clear about which way that is. The promise of dialogue and mutual interaction is that we may discover deeper truth together.

Religious faith is not simply an individual opinion. Religious faith is a deep commitment to a set of interpersonal relationships between God (or the gods or ultimate principles) and a human community. When religious experience brings a perception of the meaning of life and a sense of how we are to live together in this world, there is nothing more precious or more powerful. There is fire in genuine faith.

It is that fire that leads people to give their lives for what is truly important to them and that makes people susceptible to following the lesser and more worldly promises of salvation or power. Genuine faith is not relative; it is absolute and central for the faithful. That brings both health and the possibility of error and abuse. Therefore, it is very important to examine the central themes of religious faith.

The Torah teaches Jews to welcome the sojourner and the foreigner. Islam teaches that the Jew and Christian must be treated as brothers because they are people of the book. Confucius taught that people ought not treat others in ways that they would not want to be treated themselves. Jesus gave his disciples a new commandment that they must love one another, and that people would know his disciples by their love. The foundations of true religious relationships are clear in every great religious tradition.

The media are free with religious labels to describe abuses and conflicts. What if reporters told whether or not the people in their reports were actually living the faith and the teachings that define a Jew, or a Buddhist, or a Christian? That would take a little more understanding, but it might be both informative and uplifting for the society in which we live as we try to find our way through this tremendous mix of traditions and beliefs. Judgments about religious affiliation ought to be made on observations of life, not labels about claims and words.

The attempt to water down all the great faiths into a lowest common denominator has failed. The result is that we are raising a whole culture without faith and our young people without values and guidance as to the meaning of life. Are we afraid to allow God’s truth to stand on its own? If our faith is true, then we can certainly risk open examination of it and open ourselves to the beliefs of others. Maybe then we will reach understanding and genuine mutual respect. We might even find countless ways to cherish and affirm our differences rather than fight over them. We can hope for the next millennium for what we have failed to find in the past one, can’t we?

Jon S. West is pastor of Morningside Presbyterian Church in Fullerton and has taught in the department of comparative religion at Cal State Fullerton.

On Faith is a forum for Orange County clergy and others to offer their views on religious topics of general interest. Submissions, which will be published at the discretion of The Times and are subject to editing, should be delivered to Orange County religion page editor Jack Robinson.