The essence of theology--and religion [View All]

Over the past weeks several of you have raised questions about the meaning of religion and theology. Included in these inquiries: How do you tell good religion from bad religion? What do you know you didn’t know 50 years ago? Which sort of theology is helpful, and which is not? Why is it that more people don’t see what theology is at heart? What about the problem of evil?

And then, “Why can’t you answer these questions in six sentences?” It seems so simple. After all when you mix one atom of Oxygen and two atoms of Hydrogen in an electric atmosphere you get water. Simple! I will try and answer these questions as a theologian and not as a religious scientist. And there is a difference. Science asks two extremely valuable questions: “What” and “How”? Theology, at heart, asks “Why?” Science can split the atom. Theology asks what it might mean. Pure science is value free. Theology is value centered.

How does theology work? Picture an ancient primitive family sitting around their campfire. The brightest kid asks, “Why did grandmother die? Tell us about the flood. Why is getting enough to eat so hard?” And the grandfather replies, “Let me tell you a story.” Stories do not describe what happened, but are about the meaning of whatever happened. There was no Adam and Eve, no Noah’s ark. Religious stories are about what never happened but is always true. And these stories probe the meaning of events. It is so in all religions. They are all articulated in stories.

The stories are always about those who look over the horizon to what cannot be seen. Religious gurus are captured by what cannot be proved; by that which lures them on. They are like Hannibal, who when he came to the end of his maps, kept marching. Religious sages keep marching off all the known maps.

Some quick stories to illustrate. Abram of Ur felt a call to something beyond his comfortable life, and he went out, “not even knowing where he was to go.” Moses saw a bush that burned but was not burned up—it was the consuming fire within him that could not be extinguished as long as his people were slaves in Egypt. Gautama, the Buddha, in a chariot ride from his father’s secure palace, saw a old beggar, a diseased man, a decaying body and a mystic, and wondered if there was more to life than riches and comfort. Jesus looked at his own religious tradition and said, “you have heard it said of old, but I am here to tell you something new.” Martin Luther King said, “I have a dream.” They and millions of others had come to the end of their maps, and just kept marching. Why did others see the same things and were not lured to look beyond them?

“Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes - The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Science confronts mysteries which become problems, which can be addressed with enough money, time and smarts. Theology deals with Mystery (GOD) which is not solvable but before which we bow in awe. In Job chapter 38, a marvelous poem, God confronts Job who has been struggling with the question of why evil. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know.” The poem goes on at great length detailing the extent of the natural Mystery which surrounds life.

So far we have been talking about the essence of theology. Now we must get to the question of religion(s). And here is where it gets awkward. Instead of bowing before the Mystery and marching off the maps, some have attempted to control the Mystery. So they constructed rules, doctrines. They generated boundaries, walled out those they didn’t want in, insisted that their rules and doctrines had it right and everyone else had it wrong. Saw God as a controlling dictator.

In religious history there emerged parallel tracks. One sought to continually confront the Mystery and extended arms as wide as the world, and the other continually sought to construct fences to keep out the others.”

One reached out with new ways to humanize the creation, and to care for the creation itself. The other sought to wall out the world; convinced that they were God’s only people, and those who adhered to their doctrine were the only “saved.” They sought to guarantee a safe trip to some better world for their elect alone.

What is the evidence you ask for? On one hand you have universities, schools, hospitals, medical—agricultural--educational missions. You have liberationists, compassion for lepers, support of abolition, civil rights, women’s rights, labor rights, GLTB rights. You have not only peaceful people but also peacemakers. On the other hand you have the Inquisition, slavery, the Salem witch trials, fundamentalism on and on.

He drew a circle that shut me out. Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win.
We drew a circle that took him in.
Edwin Markham

Certainly good religion does not have a corner on or solely invent any of the positive things. Their generation is shared with people of all faiths and people of no faith. But in Western society the evidence for the Mystery is: Oxford University, monasteries—the first hospitals, those arrested inside the Capitol last month while holding a vigil on behalf of America’s poor, a group of totally bereft people living on the garbage pile in Mumbai, India who shared gladly what little they had with anyone whose need was as great as theirs (I was with these people a while back).

There are millions of other examples. Do you want hard evidence that there are people who follow a vision which is the Mystery beyond them? Just look around.
Read a bit of history. Listen to the testimonies of the visionaries. See Father Damien at work with lepers on the isolated island of Molokai. Go with me to the gates of an army camp in Georgia where they train generals for South American right-wing dictatorships. Thousands gather in protest in November year after year. Many are arrested. All in the name of the Prince of Peace. Then there is the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, Bach’s Mass in B Minor, beautiful liturgy, drama, literature of kinds, simple unexplained acts of compassion.

The opposite also exists, and it is the opposite that gets the press. American fundamentalism is alive and well. But it is only two generations old, started in the American South convinced that five fundamentals (doctrines) divided the saved and the lost. One can find multitudes of examples of the downside of religion. Anyone going through the Internet can produces startling examples and file them on r/t. But they are not the authentic heart of religion. They are perversions.

Jesus was asked about the heart of religion and he replied. “All the law and the prophets can be summed up in these words, ‘Love God and love your neighbor.’”
The apostle Paul writing to one of his churches put it this way. (I Corinthians 13). “Faith hope and love. These are the only things that last. And the greatest of them is love.” And that is what the world needs—all three. These are the ways in which the Mystery, which is God, is known and served, and the earth made a more human place.

As the great theologian Reinhold Niebuhr put it:
“Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.”

Have I honestly dealt with your questions? If you read carefully you will find most of the answers within this essay. Let me add a bit to two more questions.
“What do we know now we didn’t know 50 years ago?” All of life and thought evolves. History is not static. The creationists are just wrong. Religion evolves. There is a great progression from the slaughter of the Canaanites by Joshua, to the ethic articulated by Jesus. In the past fifty years we have been led to discover what must be done about a rapidly decaying and abused physical earth. We have discovered the injustices heaped on GLBT people. We have new insights and information about the documents which lay behind the writing of the New Testament. We have much new information about the sayings of Jesus (I am a member of the Jesus Seminar which has made remarkable discoveries—yes, using scientific literary tools.) ---and much much more.

What about the problem of evil? Does God interfere causing rain in Texas if people pray? Does God ask fathers to abuse their children—and the scores of other horror stories you find in r/t? Or is this just the kind of world we have, and the processes of nature unbroken? God is not a wise old man in the sky who looks down and plays favorites. Jesus said, “The rain falls on the just and on the unjust.” Nature is ours to understand and manipulate. Science is our vital partner. God is not in the businesses of interfering, but luring. Everything that is born dies—everything, and the human task is to make as much just sense in the lifetimes we are given.

I do not ask any of you to be convinced, but just to listen. I have been as honest as I can be. I trust your open minds might hear.