Seeking Answers in a Time of Spiritual Uncertainty

It’s hard to recall a period in my lifetime in which God was as busy as he has been lately.

It was God who attacked America on Sept. 11, according to Osama bin Laden, the Islamic fundamentalist who seems privy to divine truths.

Another true believer with God’s private number, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, outdid himself with the claim that God destroyed 5,000 lives as a way of telling us we’ve got too many gays and lesbians on the loose.

Meanwhile, President Bush, a born-again Christian, has led a national “God Bless America” rally. He has been flanked at times by Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, a Pentecostal Christian whose faith prohibits dancing.

To tell you the truth, all these invocations--not to mention the specter of God being commissioned as a five-star general on both sides of the conflict--are more than enough to confound a committed agnostic.

That is why I found myself back in school Thursday afternoon, searching for meaning in a religion class called the Spiritual Quest.

“Whenever a nation is at war, it’s inevitable that it’s going to put God on their side,” says USC professor Donald E. Miller, director of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture. “Religion ends up sacralizing, or giving authority, to the public policies they’re announcing.”

It makes perfect sense. How could God be wrong?

Already this semester, Miller has been through Marx’s theory of religion as opiate for the masses, and Freud’s theory of religion as illusion. He has pointed out that some of the noblest deeds in the history of man, and some of the most evil, have been performed in God’s name.

On Thursday, he began zeroing in on Boston sociologist Peter Berger’s theory of religion as a man-made creation to help people confront chaos and terror in their lives.

“Why was it,” Miller asked his class, “that people flocked to their churches, synagogues and mosques after Sept. 11?”

“Because they were scared,” said student Glen Gabel.

The rest of the class liked Gabel’s answer, and this is a class made up of Buddhists, Jews, Muslims and Christians, a class that has deeply religious students, the religiously disaffected and those still trying to figure it out.

Despite the diversity, there was even agreement when Gabel said people also were afraid there might be a God after all. And with planes falling out of the sky to mark the start of a holy war, now was the time to race to the nearest house of worship and “clear the books” with the Man.

“That’s it exactly,” said Sara Pollan, an agnostic who has one Jewish and one Catholic parent. “When death is so close, we’re willing to go to church or temple so we don’t end up in hell.”

That might sound a little more cynical than it really is. Pollan and the others seemed to have equal contempt for Jerry Falwell and Osama bin Laden, so there is hope for the world.

They haven’t given up on God as a source of meaning and spiritual guidance simply because of the idolatrous kooks who inhabit the fringes of organized religion.

Professor Miller says he sees hope in them.

“For all the religious differences in this class, there was never any finger-pointing at the Middle East or any other source after Sept. 11,” Miller said. “And we’re talking at deeper, more profound and more respectful levels than we ever have.”

It’s all the same God in the end, said Gabel, whether the name is Allah, Jehovah or Yahweh.

“I got on my knees and prayed,” student Matt Sherman said of his response to Sept. 11. “Not for myself, but for the whole terrible thing. I broke down and wept, and I prayed God would somehow be seen in his true light.”

As to what that might be, it’s still early in the semester, and early in the war too.

The spiritual quest continues.

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Steve Lopez writes Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at steve.lopez@latimes.com