Because You Never Asked

    

MORE ON RELIGION

 

     (This essay was written around 2001. As I put it up on my website in 2006, anything more I might add about religion does not seem excessive in today’s American political climate.)

     If there is one realm of human behavior where a misanthropic, cultural renegade like myself can find hypocrisy in tidal wave swells, religion is it. This is probably the field of endeavor the most people claim devotion to while adhering to its teachings the least. I know no religion which makes dropping bombs on defenseless people the cornerstone of its philosophy; I know no religion which favors conquering one another over loving one another; I know no religion which would look fondly upon the scheming shenanigans of third class mail; I know no religion that would put the quest for money at its emotional center … I could go on … but I won’t, except to say that now that The Wall has come down and the anti-Christ has supposedly been defeated, the behavior alluded to above seems to be flourishing.

     This essay was inspired by an incident I witnessed while passing by a well attended church one Sunday morning. Before getting into that, I’d like to talk a bit about my own religious upbringing.

     As any of you who have now become familiar with this mass of dubious philosophical patter can attest to (you know who you are), I was raised in the Jewish faith, though putting it in such terms is somewhat misleading. When compared against other “faiths” in the world, Jews seem to have a middling amount of religious devotion. Being Jewish, especially in America, is far more a cultural experience than a spiritual one. This culture’s effects are still somewhat evident in me in stark contrast to its religious teachings, a body of knowledge I can’t seem to draw upon in even minimal proportions. This is a condition coincidental in most American Jews, be they practicing believers or not. (For all you Christians out there now feeling smug about your own particular brand of spiritual voodoo, I don’t see things much differently amongst you guys either.)

     My family is the kind of family I now refer to as “2 day a year Jews”. Jews, like their brethren in the Judeo-Christian scheme of things, have their weekly Sabbath which should be respected with a visit to a place of worship. But most practicing Jews, except for the occasional wedding, funeral or Bar Mitzvah, will conveniently reduce such religious obligation from 52 to 2 by answering the spiritual call only on “Rosh Hashonah” (the Jewish New Year) and “Yom Kippur” (the Day of Atonement), 2 dates that fall within a week of each other. Throw in a bit of fasting on the latter date --- which, it must be said, is a monumental sacrifice for the average Jew --- and there you are … you can be Jewish too.

     Now, the real question is whether or not this average Jew (or Christian, as we shall see later on) takes anything away spiritually and intellectually from their twice a year jaunt to synagogue? Does this have any bearing on his or her behavior in this world of www.com opportunity? Undoubtedly, for those attending such ceremonies, there will be the predictable, tepid assertions that thou shalt not kill, maim, steal, or be overly concerned with the effects of gravity upon one’s breasts. There will be the routine calls to honor he who brings home the bacon and she who cooks it (the synagogue is not a hot bed of feminism … and oh, if you are scratching your head wondering, your basic “2 day a year Jew” generally eats such oinky delicacies), and one will be severely reprimanded for coveting Cameron Diaz, beating your meat, or surfing the Net in search of naked women swallowing forbidden secretions. Fair enough! For the next 50 weeks I  will give it some thought. For now, I’ve showed up, I have a religion, I believe in believing in God, I am an acceptable American. This country has religious freedom. Might as well take advantage of it.

     The problem with western religion is that it has become little more than a detached ritual --- like Super Bowl Sunday --- that has very little bearing on our behavior in society. It has become a routine manifestation of respectability that has almost nothing to do with shaping our outlooks, an outlook which is far more influenced by a lay culture which glorifies and propagates an aggressive, self centered individual. One might even say that our mainstream religions make a conscious effort not to oppose this lay culture, whose real shrines of devotion are located on the various Wall Streets scattered around the globe. Our religious establishments have become contented cows in the larger scheme of cultural behavior. If they still exercise any voice as a social conscience, it has almost become inaudible. The only thing they ever get passionate about is their unending crusade against erotic behavior. Even their heart wrenching defense of the unborn is a thinly disguised version of their horror for human sexuality. Greed, envy, violence, vanity … that’s not too big a deal. Just keep your dick in your pants and your knees pressed together … amen.

     Considering the media power now possessed by the lay culture, I doubt if even the charismatic spiritual power represented by Jesus Himself could overcome the Nasdaq Gods now in power.

     The hard core reality of human behavior is shaped far more by economic factors than by spiritual teachings. Physical resources and how they are distributed will truly determine who we are and how we interact with each other, notwithstanding our annual 2 days in synagogue or weekly jaunts to church. In a society where we are exhorted to want and need more things with the persistence of surf pounding the shore, the western religions face a daunting task in trying to provide a spiritual niche in this hurricane of me, me, me-ism. Rather than fight back intrepidly in a sincere effort to combat this anti-Christ of economic indicators, they seem to have abdicated this role as their clergymen take their positions at the sides of the Generals and politicians in the burlesque of imperial self rationalization. They have become the witch doctors of the power brokers, legitimizing a global economy worked in the shops of Indonesia and Bangladesh, and turned to money in Frankfurt, London and New York.

     How little things have changed down through the centuries.

     I finish with the incident mentioned near the beginning of this essay.

     Like most Jewish boys growing up in your generic “2 day a year” household, my father would drag me off to synagogue on the 2 days in question in a luke warm effort at making me a “2 day a yearer” myself. During the first intermission, after an hour or so of unintelligible chanting and mumbling in a language that seemed light years removed from the glitzy shopping malls of our suburban world, me and the other young boys of similar condition would magnetically find each other and begin playing in a dervish-like release of pent up youthful energy. Our fathers, being the loving fathers they were, and notwithstanding the usual calls to not wander off and not dirty our good clothes (yeah, sure), would generally leave us in this recreational mode as they drifted back for the rest of the service.

     I recently witnessed a similar scene on the grounds of a Sunday morning church. Three roughly 10 year old boys, much as my friends and I had done so long ago, were playing outside the church as their parents paid lip service to God within. (They were running in and out of the church’s back door). All the boys were “armed” impressively with a varying arsenal of combat rifles and pistols in a mock display of the latest in global economy warfare. One of them actually looked like an extra from the set of “Searching for Private Ryan”, decked out as he was in full combat regalia --- camouflage fatigues, olive green combat helmet, even a few dangling grenades. As the soothing sound of Christian singing drifted out from the church, the 3 boys killed and wounded each other repeatedly in a theatrical display of glorious military fantasy.

     The ritual inside seemed to have no bearing on the ritual outside. They coexisted so effortlessly that I thought, “what good is a religion like that?”

     Which brings me to the next essay, “Jessie Ventura” … but first …

     Relevant Material: Perhaps the finest book on religious hypocrisy I’ve ever read is the novel, “The Greek Passion”, by the immortal Nikos Kazantzakis.