Religion and confidence
Here is an article which shows that people with firm religious convictions have less activity in a part of the brain associated with anxiety when getting questions wrong in a test.
On a monitor, subjects see a colour spelled out in letters that either correspond to or contradict the meaning of the word – for example, red spelled out in red letters or blue spelled out in yellow letters, for instance. Volunteers must press a button to indicate the colour of the letters.
The students with strong religious beliefs, as measured by their agreement with statements such as “My religion is better than others” or “I would support a war if my religion supported it”, exhibited less ACC activation than students with less fervent beliefs.
Having read the article it seems to me that it’s simply a case of, people who are generally less anxious and less worried about getting things wrong, are less likely to have doubts about their faith too. I don’t see any reason to think that one causes the other but rather that they are probably just both aspects of the same confident personality.
As an anxious, neurotic person, I kinda envy people like that. I’ve met plenty of them. I suppose at one time I might have thought they were more mature, had a stronger faith, and so on, and aspired to be more like them. Now I think it’s probably just a basic personality difference. Many people – believers and non-believers alike – may look down on me for my religious ambiguity, but I don’t look down on myself, and I’d like to hope God wouldn’t. It’s the way I’m wired.
We just have to take what we can get. I enjoy pondering and if it’s prompted by underlying existential anxiety that is only abated by deep reflection and searching, it doesn’t feel like much of a burden to bear. The worst of my anxiety is when I deny myself this opportunity. Mainstream religion tends to have that effect.
I wouldn’t rule out being religious again, but I’d probably be non-denominational. I admire people that march to their own drum and I hope one day I will have the courage of my convictions to do that, in work, as well as in spiritual practice.
A middle way?
My home town church’s services were of a traditional format. Hymns, a Bible reading, and a sermon, all in a carefully crafted order. But the youth group regularly took trips, to other churches and events. These were memorable because I was exposed through them to a style of worship that was a bit more… radical. I encountered people for whom religion didn’t just appear to be a hobby or a social activity but a way of life.
In about 4th year of high school we started going to a monthly evening service in a church in Glasgow. This was called “Power Point” (before Microsoft coined the term I think!) and was aimed at young people. It drew in huge crowds. One of the youth group leaders took us in a minibus; we would go to the service, go to McDonalds afterwards for a late meal, and then go home. It was always a fun night out with friends, really. It was on the first one of these trips that I had quite a profound experience.
The service featured a lot of singing, in a modern style with a rock band. The words were projected onto a big screen and we would bop away with the upbeat tune and sing our lungs out. My friends and I always headed for the upstairs balcony section, right at the back, and stood on the pew during the singing (as long as the usher didn’t notice). It was during one of these songs that I found myself overcome with emotion. I don’t know if it was the music, the crowd, the words, the big wooden cross on the wall, or what, but I was electrified. At the time I considered it to be an encounter with the Holy Spirit.
I always looked forward to that one Sunday in the month when we would go to this event. Looking back, I feel gratitude towards the man who gave up his evenings to take us there. He also opened his house to us on many occasions for us to all hang out together and have fun. I think there was a sadness about him, but he put his energy into doing good and didn’t wallow. There were just the occasional glimpses of sadness. While my friends and I always made for the back of the balcony, he would sit in one of the side sections, and more than once I saw him looking over at us during the singing, as if for inspiration, for hope. I once heard him saying that seeing all these kids worshipping made it undeniable that there was something in it. I wonder if as much as anything, going to these events was about him searching for faith.
I think that there were people in the church back then, particularly those involved in the youth group, that had that more radical, practical theology and would have preferred a less stiff-upper-lipped worship style. But they coexisted harmoniously alongside the more traditional setup. As for the youths, I think that for some, seeds were sown and radical trajectories were embarked upon. For others, there was ultimately no interest in religion. But quite possibly none were set to become “traditional” churchgoers. It just seems that the days of being religious by default are over.
I was talking with my mum at the weekend about this and it’s kind of interesting really. Since I left home, the fundamentalist/evangelical influence in the church has grown, probably through more of such people moving into the town. They have rocked the boat, and a lot of my parents’ generation have left the church. In their case, coming face to face with stark views has triggered an unprecedented questioning. Many of the older traditional believers will continue to attend church until they die; they are the mainstay of the church and form the bulk of the elders, and, well, they tend to resist change. But the younger ones cannot. They are polarised. They either don’t find religion of significant relevance to their busy lives, or they make it their lives. There’s no middle way any more.
As a kid there was no middle way either. These monthly Power Point events and other similar trips were the only religious influence that stood a chance of holding my attention over the noise of teenage life. When the frequency of this spiritual input lessened in the last couple of years of high school because of weekend jobs and so on, my commitment waned. I never actively changed my mind, I just got swept along with whatever was going. And whatever was going usually wasn’t very conducive to maintaining a religion. So maybe it’s culture that doesn’t allow people to be religious by default any more.
It took a radical, vibrant, optimistic church to make me decide to be religious at university. And this is where it inevitably went to the next level. The carrots that were dangled before me may not have been about rewards in the afterlife but they were things I definitely wanted. Peace, hope, answered prayer, dramatic miracles. The church went through a period of obsessing over what they call “revival”, which is where outreach goes crazy, people start flocking to church in droves, and miracles happen left right and centre. It was around this time that I started to realise the church was adrift with no-one at the helm, as I watched people searching for the voice of God and hoping it would be saying that a revival was on its way. The worst part is, normal life had started to seem unsatisfactory. With such a clear picture of how life should be, the regular old world with all its messed-up beauty felt hollow, boring, even a little depressing.
Ultimately of course I have preferred to resist the naive lure of the dangling carrots and appreciate life in all its confusion, pain and beauty. I see goodness where I once might have dismissively seen only bad. I am still an extreme, all-or-nothing person, but stuck on nothing. Part of me still relishes the thought of making radical changes in my life. There is a tension between my head and my heart, and at the moment my head is winning out. But I hope that there is a middle way. Whatever paths I may walk in future, I hope I don’t try to live austerely in some sort of sterile utopia. I hope I find a way to be hopeful and gracious without needing empty promises. I hope I will be strong enough to live in the world with a radically big heart.
The Aramaic Jesus and the Sufis
Went to “The Aramaic Jesus and the Sufis” today. I’m tired because I was up late again last night, but I want to record my thoughts after the workshop before I forget them.
The guy leading it has written many books and is a Sufi teacher I think. He was very likeable, not in any dramatic or over-the-top way, but just quietly inspiring. He was another one of those people that just exudes contentment. The day was spent with him teaching us things, and reading things, interpersed with singing in Aramaic and Arabic and – shock horror – even dancing of sorts.
I was very pleased to hear about the diversity in early Christian traditions, and that the Aramaic tradition is still ongoing in small numbers although largely unknown to western Christians. They have other gospels and other stories about Jesus passed down orally that are unknown to us in western churches. A lot of the stories about Jesus in the Qur’an come from these traditions which Muhammad would have been exposed to while managing Khadija’s caravan business. There is much agreement between their view and the Islamic view on Jesus, and Aramaic Christians are pretty much unitarian. Although the Qur’an asserts that the Jews did not kill Jesus, it doesn’t explicitly say that he didn’t die, and the traditional Islamic position on this used to be that it meant he went willingly to the cross rather than being forced. The Qur’an also endorses the virgin birth and the second coming.
An interesting point was made that religious traditions start with diversity and then cohesion occurs and uniformity emerges later. Ideas about returning to an earlier “pure” form of a religion are common but the reality was probably that religion in the early days was a lot more messy than people like to think.
The Sufi take on “la ilaha ila allah” (there is only one God) is that it speaks of universality, of the connectedness of all people. Rather a different perspective from “our religion is right and all of yours are wrong”, or “you’d better not associate anyone or anything with God”. I wondered how it was possible to see universalism in the Qur’an. I think they interpret a lot of it in its historical context. When I see the harsh words of a punitive God, it scares me away, but this guy paraphrased them in a humourous way, as if he was completely comfortable in his understanding of God. I remembered preachers doing a similar thing with Old Testament stuff.
I actually kind of enjoyed the simple dances, they were what I would think of as Hebrew style, in a circle, going round with steps. I wasn’t crazy about having to hold hands with people though. One dance even involved embracing people! That was really extremely tough for me, to embrace strangers. But I managed.
At lunchtime I found myself realising that I still wasn’t getting anything out of the singing, and that the love for God that I used to be able to feel was not forthcoming, because I no longer think I know who God is. Or even whether God is, really. I’ve enjoyed discovering information that undermines the simplistic views I used to hold, but where does it really leave me? It leaves me wondering whether God’s hand was at work in the whole mess of history. It leaves me wondering what the truth about God is, and how it should be understood. It leaves me in limbo.
I asked myself why I am so happy to learn about alternative histories of religion anyway. It wasn’t just today: I recently relished finding evidence of a big ideological clash between Paul and the original apostles which is smoothed over in the writing of Acts; and I was pleased to read in someone’s comprehensive summary of the doctrine of the entire Bible that the notion of the trinity and of Jesus’s divinity is not Biblical at all, and neither is the idea of hell being a place of eternal torment. (Whether I believe in any of this is not the point; the point is, I am happy to see that there are a variety of plausible positions.) I am also happy to reject the idea that there is something special about the 4 gospels that made the cut and were canonised at the Council of Nicea, as compared to the other historical literature that didn’t. Islam treats the ahadith (historical sayings about the life of Muhammad) in a probabilistic way based on historical evidence for their authenticity; it’s not a simple pass/fail; and ordinary Muslims know about this. Why has Christianity treated its literature in a much less rigorous way, and come to regard the process of recollection, writing, and compilation as having miraculously been absolutely perfect to the extent that the New Testament can be viewed as the word of God?
I suppose the reason I relish all this is that it quite nicely justifies my abandonment of evangelical western Christianity. If I’m honest, which I haven’t really been with myself for a long time, I’ve continually wondered whether I made the wrong choice. Whether I should have just been stronger, and kept praying, and been obedient, and I would have found the way. Whether I’m at risk of going to hell now.
I don’t think I really got much from the singing and dancing until the very last one. I don’t know why but something in me just connected with it and I didn’t want it to end. I think my icy heart softened a little bit, and I caught a glimpse of the beauty of surrender and of fellowship. I felt that in singing the words, I was acknowledging that actually, I’m not afraid of any of it. Aramaic, Arabic, any of it. And I’m prepared to believe that God might be in there somewhere.
Because the thing is, although it’s become hard for me to believe that there is any one pristine, clear-cut path to God, I can’t rid myself of the idea of God. I don’t want to. Even if it’s not true, I’d rather believe in something good and never know I was wrong. As long as it is good. That’s what I am being so careful of.
I feel that after this workshop, my preference in religion is tending towards the simple, because the simplest of messages – love your neighbour as yourself – is the hardest, and anything else can easily become a red herring, a distraction from that hard task. He mentioned a verse from the Qur’an telling people to keep the message simple and not let it get turned into culture and politics (or something to that effect). But I am somewhat torn between on the one hand, this simple approach with its off-the-cuff morality, and on the other, my appreciation of the practical benefits of rules. I suppose I think that rules might have protected me from the nonsense I put myself through in the past, and as I’ve said before, I just think they are incredibly sensible. Having said that, they are not bullet-proof, and applying them in an extreme way across society can make them look far from sensible… so the jury’s still out.
When zeal exceeds maturity
Recently he admitted he had become too partisan, citing Muhammad Ali as another Muslim convert whose radicalism was tempered by time. “There’s always a zealous period,” he said. “I used to want to rebel against everything, and that was great. After that, you get back to the job of living.” Yusuf Islam/Cat Stevens quoted in an article quoted here.
This was probably true of me at one time too. Different faith, same mechanism. I don’t think it was about rebelling for me though. But I’ve often thought that converting to Islam is probably about that for a number of people in the west. After all, there are fewer and fewer ways to really rock the boat these days. Ultimate rebellion: become extremely religious. Society has come full circle.
Regarding the zeal exceeding the maturity, this kind of ties in with what I said yesterday about it not being as simple as more religious = more moral. Dogmatism is a trap that it is easy to fall into when you believe that there is one right way and you are on it, and it leads to drawing divisions between people. In my old church great effort was made to view non-Christians as “the lost”, which implies need, but when it came to fellow Christians who were not following the rules, “the guilty” might have been a preferred term. The first is patronising although fairly innocuous; the second loses all pretenses of sympathy and sits in judgment instead. It interested me the other day to read on another blog a comment, by a religious person, linking love of God with lack of compassion, and lack of understanding. Why should this be, if God is compassionate? Usually when we love someone we emulate their ways and grow more similar to them. I’m also reminded of the Pharisees of Jesus’ time who were word-perfect in their religion but “like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones”. It’s something everyone interested in religion should be wary of.
Older people are often the most inspiring. I guess there is no fast track to spiritual maturity.
Morality and religion
I find it interesting that when apparently sensible moral codes are applied in an extreme way across society, it simply does not make people “better” even by the standards of that moral code (let alone in an absolute sense). There have been comments on Lisa’s blog about how prevalent homosexuality is in the Arab world, linking this to the strict gender segregation that is enforced in these societies. You might think you could make people chaste by separating the genders, but it seems not. Another example is how much more dangerous it is for a woman to travel around North Africa alone compared to sub-Saharan Africa, even though the religious mentality is supposed to promote respect and dignity for women. I’ve travelled alone in the latter part of the world, even across national borders, but I wouldn’t dream of doing that in the former. In Cairo, women are sexually harrassed in the street, which is puzzling when you consider that wearing of hijab has become widespread there in the last few decades – the intended effect being the exact opposite.
I seriously doubt whether any society or culture is really more moral than another. The majority of people are probably pretty self-serving, even in a culture with a strong religious component. Different cultures have different emphases. My own – western Europe – emphasises fairness and equality and tolerance, and it falls down on this too of course, but this emphasis has shaped our cultural mentality. I think it’s possible for different cultures to equally view each other as being less moral than themselves.
Do our own efforts – for example, religion – make any difference? I think there’s room for free will, in the same way that there’s room for individual earthquakes’ sizes to be dynamically determined despite their following a well-defined distribution overall. I think that religion can be a tool to lead someone towards being a better person. At the very least it can inspire you to think about acting selflessly. But does being religious automatically lead to this? – no. Religions do not have a monopoly on morality either.
It’s usually taken for granted, but actually quite interesting if you think about it, that religion takes morality and spirituality and yokes them together. Why should that be? Why should it be that God (or gods) is about goodness? Why is that so universal a concept?
Wrestling With Religion 