There seem to be two contradictory tendencies today. One sees Religion as an archaic hangover from a pre-scientific age, interesting in a historical way as a cultural artefact but not to be taken seriously by those with any knowledge of the laws of cause and effect. The other, more reactionary approach, sees the rejection of Religion as the cause of most of the world’s ills. It opposes all forms of permissive liberalism and would like to impose the rules and values of Scripture – whichever scripture, this applies equally to many Christians and Muslims. As I have said previously, this imposition of rules and values tends to be selective with a very hard line towards sexual permissiveness and property rights and a very soft line towards justice and individual rights.
Religion for the reactionary tendency tends to be something external. It is heteronomous in that rules are imposed from without. St. Augustine’s dictum, ‘Love, and do what you will,’ would be alien to them and dangerously permissive. Their gaze is turned outward. God is up in Heaven. So are the Saints. They look for miracles, apparitions and revelations. They will cross continents to see a grotto, or a wall, or to see someone with the stigmata. Religion is ritual and right conduct. Graces and benefits come from above. Prayer is contrition, petition and adoration – usually in that order. When I was young the Nine First Fridays was a very popular devotion. This involved going to Mass and communion on the first Friday of nine consecutive months. Doing this guaranteed that you would not die without a priest to administer the Last Rites. These ensured that you would not go to Hell, although you might have to spend some considerable time in Purgatory. There were also various novenas, prayers said for nine days, or weeks, or months – hence the name – which infallibly (so it was believed) caused God, or the saint, to answer the petitioner’s request. Such a religion is myopic, unable to see beyond the individual, or the immediate family, or community. You are the chosen person, or people. God is your God. He rules your world, which you see from your perspective.
There is, however, another religious worldview and why it is not more widespread is unclear. It lacks the dogmatism and the certitude of both the scientific and the reactionary worldviews. This view proceeds from doubt. Not the doubt of Descartes, which was only a device with which to construct another set of dogmas; nor the Great Doubt of Zen which is the threshold of the Transcendent; but the doubt of ‘What?’, and ‘Why?’, and ‘Who am I?’, which initiates the search for understanding. It is said that theology is fides quearens intellectum, but religion is doubt seeking understanding. It is the search for meaning.
The old dogmatism provided all the answers, which were to be accepted on faith. Understanding was not required. Only theologians were encouraged to question and then only within the strict parameters of Scripture and tradition. Religion was a rigid construct of dogma and practice that had to be accepted on faith. Such a religion cannot grow from within. It cannot, like a snake, slough off its old and outworn skin because now it is only a skin, the living flesh beneath having suffocated.
In the search for meaning readymade answers are inappropriate. They are always another person’s answers, or they are made-up answers to stifle questioning. In the search for meaning it is not the answer which is the most important thing but the search. The answers may not come until the end of a long life, if even then. What is important is the search, because a search implies a journey and a journey implies leaving where you are now.
This is why it is so important to doubt because doubt provides that itch of discomfort, that dissatisfaction with the present situation, that uncertainty which deprives us of peace. But what has all this got to do with religion? At first – nothing. Only if the search is unsuccessful is it successful. If the search is unsuccessful; if answers are not easily available; if science cannot provide them; if other people, religious and non-religious, cannot provide them; if, having searched and questioned and still not found we are still in a state of doubt and uncertainty and have not given up the quest, then we begin to have an idea of what we are not looking for. And to know what it is we are not looking for is already to have some idea of what we seek.
To have searched and not found means that we know that money, power and pleasure do not have the answer. Nor do the gentler pursuits of art, music and literature, nor the contentment of family life, nor sport, nor the cultivation of gardens. None of these have the answer. But still we know there is an answer because doubt exists, the questions exist. Who am I? Does my life have meaning? The answers ‘Nothing’ and ‘No’ are not valid answers. To accept them is to despair. It is to go against our deepest instincts. Therefore, since the answers are not to be found where we have looked they must lie beyond where we have looked. And the search for the beyond, for the far side, for the Transcendent, is religion.
Doubt can be debilitating. It can also feed the thirst for knowledge and understanding. This is why it is so wrong to discourage children from asking ‘Why?’
Religion based on doubt is religion based on the search to understand the ‘why?’ of life, what it means to be ‘me’, to be a person. The answers are not to be found in books. I have wasted many years reading, researching, making notes and all I have done is to make it quite clear to myself that there are no written answers. The answer does not exist out there somewhere. It is not something that can be communicated in words. Nor is it something that can be reached by reasoning or logical deduction. I do not know what the answer is but, since I know what it is not, I am confident that when I find it I will recognise it. I have the strangest feeling that I have always known the answer without knowing it.
How can we know by not knowing? There is within us, deep within the depths, the essential part of our being and it is closed and locked. This is the root cause of our doubt and uncertainty, of the dissatisfaction that constantly plagues us. The search is for a key. We do not know what the key is because we have not found it – yet, but we do know what are not the right keys.