The Nature and Influence of Religion

September 9, 1962
Rochester

Sermon Series: Our Judeo-Christian Heritage

1. The Nature and Influence of Religion

None of the great living realities of religion can be known in their fullness when experienced only second-hand. In the weeks to come, the values and treasures of our Judeo-Christian heritage will be considered seriously. However, nothing is more sure than that we will exist in spiritual poverty if we try to live solely on the religious capital inherited by our forefathers. To possess religion, we too must meet it in personal experience, and follow in our lives the directions it charts for our efforts. In his poem, “The Buried Life”, Matthew Arnold wrote,

“But often in the world’s most crowded streets,
But often in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us – to know
whence our lives come and where they go.”

Not only is it natural to know a “longing to inquire into the mystery ... so wild, so deep within us,” but also the signs of the times demand that unless we turn to high values we shall perish in conflict or flounder in triviality.

Man has probably been on earth in (or close to) essentially his presently evolved form for considerably more than a million years. But using the million-year figure as the measurement of man’s place on the time-span, together with 4000 BC as an estimated time when the dawn of civilizations represented hunting man becoming farmer or city dweller, “then all the human major technological advances may be said to have occurred in less than 1% of all our time on earth.” (See DeRopp, SCIENCE AND SALVATION). But long before civilizations, man had the intense desire to stay alive, eat and propagate. So he became a killer of animals and human enemies. His philosophy had to be the opposite of Coleridge’s later couplet,

“He liveth best who basheth best
Both man and bird and beast”

In our time, sometimes it seems that the 99% emphasis in the history of human learning to bash best, submerges our evolved ethical truth, that “he liveth best who loveth best.”

Suffice it to say that we should now know there is no discharge in war; everybody will be bashed, convincingly.

The threat of total war is by no means the only menace confronting us. Our values seem tarnished and confused. In John Steinbeck’s WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT, Ethan, who deserts the cherished integrity of his cultural inheritance for money and power, discovers that when he reaches his material goals, life is no longer worth living. Security is too many times associated with dollars and stocks, which, no matter how formidable their reckoning, are precious little help when one needs a reason for being, when one searches for living purpose which can be justified in the moments of self-searching loneliness.

Furthermore, a religion of easy slogans and antiquated generalities just will not do for difficult problems and specific, formidable situations. Huston Smith, in his book, THE RELIGIONS OF MAN, (p. 311), reminds us of the 1928 debate about the REVISED PRAYER BOOK in the English House of Commons: an English M.P. came out after the debate, muttering that “he didn’t know what the fuss was all about. ‘Surely,’ he said, ‘we all believe in some sort of something.’” Belief in ‘some sort of something’ is not very nutritious religiously, and in spite of the M.P., [man] needs a vigorous infusion of moral vitamins.

Without feelings of either arrogance or inferiority, we can be sure that anxieties, confusions and “foggy bottom” indecisiveness can be turned to positive aspects of living if we are willing to face up to the nature of religion and maintain faith in its influence. I say this as one who views supernaturalism as an outmoded concept and the expectation of receiving special attention in the form of cosmic favors as a singularly inept way of understanding the nature of God. For, although the supernatural antiquities and old comfortable certainties have faded, we can aspire still with Tennyson (From Ulysses),

“Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are, --
One equal part of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.”

The definitions of religion are as numerous as cars on the expressway. Just as cars and roads are means of transportation, so definitions of religion are tools to carve meaning. Religion is “the serious and social attitude one takes toward those forces which he believes determines his destiny.” (J.B. Pratt). But definitions of religion without explanation and application are reminiscent of the conversation between Alice and the Queen in THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS:

Red Queen: “When you say hill, I could show you hills in comparison with which you’d call a hill a valley.”

“No, I shouldn’t,” said Alice, “A hill can’t be a valley, you know, that would be nonsense.”

Queen: “You may call it nonsense if you like, but I have heard nonsense compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary.”

I’m sure your experience, like mine, records times when discussion of religion becomes overcast with dense clouds of confusion.

Thus, when religion is defined as a “serious and social attitude toward those forces which determine one’s destiny,” there is a three-fold implication: A sense of origins – what is man; a purpose for living – why must I do what I must do; a feeling for destiny – what is the goal of our human striving. Dr. James L. Halliday, a British physician and scholar of human affairs, proposed that when there was decay or loss of a sense of origins, purpose for living and feeling for destiny, this was sure evidence of the loss of self-respect in a culture.

It follows too when we trace out the implications of religion so defined, that there can never be an end to inquiry, because all the achievements of religion, science, the wisdom of all the humanities and the experience of political and social institutions continuously contribute deeper insight and widened knowledge. Religious truth, then, is neither spaded up from secret excavations nor translated from ancient and mysterious ciphers, but re-defined and refined in the never-ending process of human experience. The nature of religion is truth; the influence of religion is measured by the quality of its commitment to living purposes.

Consequently religion is both individual and social.

Religion is individual – what “man is in his solitariness.” Religion is personal. Think how convinced Jesus must have been that religion was personal when he advised his disciples to shut themselves off in a closet when they prayed. He moved away from the others in the terrible personal struggle of Gethsemane. Moses was alone on Sinai and Paul by himself on the road to Damascus. It is just foolish to try [to] escape personal religion by attempts to whirl endlessly in social and business activities. Sooner or later, one must meet himself.

In the Times Union, August 8, a dispatch from Miami, referring to previously established cases of husbands and wives being allergic to each other, Dr. Samuel Feinberg reported to a medical seminar that a person may have auto-sensitivity – allergic to himself. No cure was prescribed. Now this is suggestive. If a person does not develop personal religion, then spiritually, he is allergic to himself. The Hindu Scripture, the Baghavad Gita, possessed this wisdom centuries ago in the verse,

“To him who has conquered himself by himself,
His self is a friend.
But to him who has not conquered himself by himself,
His self is hostile like a foe.”

(Quoted by Campbell, ORIENTAL MYTHOLOGY, p. 339)

Religion is social, too, and collective. Otherwise any notion of religion’s influence would be without meaning. Personal religion is an inner experience. Social religion is an outward expression in group fellowship, worship, work, service. Social religion is not an after-thought. It is no less basic than meditation in aloneness. This truth has never been said more succinctly than it was by the prophet Amos in the 8th century B.C.,

“But let justice roll down as waters,
And righteousness as an overflowing stream.
Hate the evil and love the good,
And establish justice in the gate:
Then shall the Lord of Hosts
Be gracious unto you and hear you.”

Justice, righteousness, evil, good – these values have meaning only in the social life of persons.

Thus the influence of religion is inseparable from both the individual in his aloneness and the individual in society.

The inquiring mind not only cherishes ideas in solitary, but communicates ideas in society – the editorial, the argument, the commentary, the discussion, the sermon, the debate, the poem, the novel, the essay and perhaps above all, that wonderful possession of the human family, the conversation between persons who agree on each other’s worth and dignity and are willing to disagree on almost anything else.

One of the talented writers of our time, who died too soon, was James Agee, novelist and journalist. In a collection of letters posthumously published, James Agee wrote sensitively about this miracle of human communication, “I care mainly about two things: 1) getting as near truth and whole truth as humanly possible, which means several sorts of ‘truth,’ maybe, but on the whole, man’s spiritual life, integrity, and growth, 2) setting this (near) truth out in the cleanest and clearest possible terms.”

But the inquiring mind and the communicating mind are not enough, for a large part of the influence of religion swings on the emotions. We express our emotions in song and service in affirmation and denial. The mind which praises good and condemns evil would be deprived of power without the strength of righteous indignation of the hope which expressed gladness gives. “While I was musing, the fire burned,” the psalmist said. How true that is. How can one face up to one’s errors without authentic penitence – and penitence is an emotion as well as an intellectual exercise. How can one really forgive another’s wrongs without the cleansing power of emotion, for forgiveness is feeling as well as verbal adjustment.

Then too, beyond the inquiring mind and felt emotion, the influence of religion is an incomplete experience without the energy for action. For action brings together creatively the forces of mind and heart to fulfill the purpose of living. It is religion in action that represents the true application of one’s professions.

Not long ago there was a reference in the SRL (8/11/62) to the poet Robert Graves and the power of poetry. Robert Graves said a poem saved his life. “[I] had been wounded in the lung in World War I and was vulnerable to the killing influenza afterward – desperately ill, but one thing kept me alive; the obstinate intention of getting my poem right. By the thirty-fifth draft I had all but solved this and was tottering about on a stick. The ‘troll’s nosegay’ saved my life.”

This is the saving power of religion, too – the obstinate intention to get things right.

The nature of religion is the search for truth and the celebration of life. The influence of religion is in ideas, for “ideas have consequences.” The influence of religion is in emotions, for feelings convey real attitudes with bluntness that conciliatory words can seldom conceal. The influence of religion is discovered in the effort to get things right because action or inertia measure the degree of love for truth and the depth of feeling.

A Canadian preacher referred to a Gaelic poem which described a mother playing on the harp while her fascinated children gathered around. Suddenly she stopped. The children picked at the harp-strings, trying unsuccessfully to reproduce the melodies and harmonies.

“Mother, why doesn’t the harp answer us as it did you?”
“Children, the music is in the strings – but the power to draw it out is yours to seek and develop.”

The nature and influence of religion is like unto that. Religion is in the great dialogue of ideas. Some will emerge as the dominating ideas for generations, perhaps centuries. Those who reflect and apply skill, training and candid expression will create the new themes. Religion is the universal intermingling of peoples and cultures, hungry peoples and over-fed peoples, under-developed cultures and highly industrial cultures. Those who apply humanity and thoughtfulness, care and foresight will bring out human notes of growing harmony. Religion is the rhyme of the seasons, the vastness of the cosmos, the changing light. Fear and superstition produce the wrong song for our age. But research, appreciation for cosmic order, reverence for beauty, wonder for creation and commitment to ethical values can compose a song of the world that may be as awe-inspiring for us in our age as ever was the burning bush to Moses, the dream of angels to Jacob or Isaiah’s overwhelming experience of the majesty of God.