© Pierre Maré,
2004 - 2007
Offbeat 140
Spirituality, particularly religion, is a bit like smoking nowadays: everyone, or almost everyone, used to do it, but it has become a furtive thing. Don’t do it in public, especially not on the pavement, and don’t ask anyone to share unless they ask first. Apparently it is toxic. How do I know? I am a smoker.
Given the massive complexity of life, for instance, whether or not cappuccino should be drunk after lunch, what to wear when drinking cappuccino before lunch and where to drink that cappuccino in order to be seen by and possibly interact with ‘people who make a difference’, humanity appears to be retreating into its shell-like facade. Can you blame them?
Appearances count, and with the modern multiplicity of cultures that makes the Tower of Babel look like a well-heeled gathering of old ladies around a teapot and a jug of milk on a Sunday afternoon, appearances are counting in the very high numbers. Throwing in an additional facet is like reciting random numbers in a loud voice as an accounting clerk tries to total up the cash book.
Small things, so-called lifestyle choices that should more appropriately be called faddish moments or nine day wonders, define us to our neighbours. Given the hundreds of choices and factors that have to be taken into account on a day-to-day basis, is there really room in the mix for a thing like religion?
Try this for fun… At the next bistro gathering of the stylish, as the conversation heads towards the latest in diet trends or circles around the latest self-help trend, utter the words, “Has anyone noticed that Pope Benedict’s conservatism had more apparent impact on sexual morality when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger?”
If anyone is left in the room by the end of the sentence, follow this up with a riff on whether or not the papacy is still relevant, and if a charismatic council of cardinals would not better reflect the humanism inherent in the central tenets of Christianity?
Anyone left in the room at the end of your riff will probably be a theologian, so you may do well to break out a bottle of red and get in the spirit of things.
What about all those who left the room so quickly? Faced with the apparent importance and impact of their lifestyle choices, they had to leave. There was no room in their heads for spirituality. And as they could not politely shut you up, they had to leave in order to prevent an unwanted dimension of thought from entering their heads.
But, to be fair, it is not entirely the fault of superficial choices that is eroding acceptance of spirituality: charismatic religions also have to bear their share of the blame. Speaking in tongues never makes for a great dinner conversation, unless the guests decides to skip all five courses and go straight to the sherry and port on arrival.
Then there is the problem of intolerance. It’s not just embittered Moslems, Christians and Jews, who have a go at one another. Sincere Catholics and Lutherans haven’t sat comfortably in the same room since the reformation.
And there is also the little matter of the glib ability of the religious right and fundamentalists to eschew the tenets and commandments of their religions in search of an earthly kingdom built on oil money and conformity.
So for the sake of simplicity and peace, many people are shifting spirituality into the background, and going for the hollow relevance of lifestyle.
Giving something up implies some form of loss. What are we losing?
The core principles of religions extend beyond belief. They govern behaviour between people in two manners: firstly by laying down laws such as ‘thou shall not kill’, and secondly in a spiritual manner, ‘love thy neighbour as ye love thyself’.
A world where that sort of thinking is pushed to the background in favour of choices about tea or coffee in context of the time of day is ugly to say the least.
I am not a huge fan of angry street-corner preachers and their spot judgements, but I am a fan of belief. Without something bigger, we are nowhere.
