Sacrebleu
What happens when we no longer believe in the sacred?
It’s a question that bounces around my brain from time to time, and I can’t seem to decide whether loss of the sacred is a good, bad or indifferent thing.
On the plus side, of course, is the dismantling of beliefs and systems that hold us captive, stifle our free will and spirit. So the destruction of the sanctity of empire, of royalty, of apparently defunct gods (where did they go?), and all systems that thrived on oppression is an indisputably good thing – except, perhaps for those who got their heads lopped off.
And I’m very uncomfortable with remaining systems that have yet to be properly questioned, but we do seem to have a innate propensity (or need) for reverence, be it the power of power, deity, celebrity or money – not to mention our dire need of purpose.
A little while back, my daughter was required to read Camus’s L’Étranger, and I was a little upset that it didn’t rock her world the way it had mine when I was her age. It wasn’t until I was telling someone about it later that it occurred to me that this was in fact the book that had freed me from Christianity – turned me inside out with the idea that I didn’t need an institution to live as a highly ethical being. So it was only natural that it had no such effect on my agnostic offspring.
But I respect those for whom religion is a framework for quiet morality; the purest, most astonishing man I’ve ever met was a deeply devout Muslim. And I suppose it goes without saying that I abhor all those who wrap themselves in that man-made loftiness to claim moral superiority. Thank goodness Christian thugs have no voice in France.
Of course the idea of a God so narrow-minded that he’d allow only those who believe in him – no matter how good and compassionate – to dwell in the clouds after death, or one who reviles any creature that he, by definition, created, is so silly that even Hollywood wouldn’t produce it (well, okay, Mel Gibson notwithstanding).
In the same vein of dangerously unfounded veneration, I’m still gobsmacked whenever I hear people in the US being reproved for disrespecting (the office of) the President, the Pope touted for his infallibility, sanctity of life used as an argument for keeping vegetal humans artificially alive for years and years on end…
But there you go.
On the downside of the loss of the sacred is the floodgates being opened for all that is most vile in us, secure in the belief that we have no-one to answer to but the shareholders. I was reminded of the awful possibilities as I wept my way through The Corporation, the neo-feudalism, taxing rainwater, the greed, the greed, the greed. Knowing that it is naïve to believe that, left to their own devices, the majority will take the righteous path, the path of common good, so wondering whether the awe induced by what is universally held to be sacred is not crucial for keeping all our worst impulses in check.
Even if sometimes we have to fake it.
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Comment
- I ain’t no churchgoer either but…
There are specific Protestants believe that no one except “Christians” step into “the Kingdom of Heaven.”
But Catholics don’t think that.
In the Catholic Catechism, under the first chaper “Man’s Capactiy for God,” basically stating that “He never ceases to call everyman” is preached in the Catholic Church to mean that anyone of any religion can get into Heaven.
Take that Mel Gibson.
— indefense Jun 7, 10:07pm # - Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer – Voltaire.
— roger Jun 7, 11:01pm # - I had a similar reaction to The Corporation. The profit motive has become a moral imperative in many areas of society. I fear that, in the absence of other “gods”, our “propensity (or need) for reverence” has latched onto the capitalist creed. And, like infesting zebra mussels in a water system without natural predators, this “morality” is creeping into many areas of our lives that were once occupied by sacred things. And yet, I wouldn’t be the one to invite our toppled gods back onto their pedastles.
— Peter A Jun 8, 2:39am # - In Montreal, the church is running an advertising campaign to re-reclaim the words that la peuple has been reclaiming as swears for the past 50 years. See – http://amywelborn.typepad.com/openbook/2006/05/reclaiming_the_.html
Calisse!
— James Jun 9, 7:03pm # - Stonehenge was built by priests who wanted an imposing structure to impart fear into their subjects in order to maintain control over them. Priests early-on saw eclipses as a predicted threat as to what they could do if the people did not bide by their wishes, and to prove that they had power to protect them by making the darkness go away. Churches have always used fear to hold over church-goers with scares, like “god-fearing” and threats of “purgatory.” Religions have long divided people (“Mine is the only true religion”), and have demanded tithing for monies to further gild their altars and supply their expensive robes and accoutrements.
I, too, feel that people need something to lean on in times of stress or fear; however, that something could very well be a positive belief in themselves, not in a man-made god. If I were to believe in God, I would believe in many gods, as did the ancient Greeks: gods of earth, wind, truth, hearth and home, love, harmony.
— Robert Jun 10, 5:00pm # - I have a really different perspective on things, being brought up with no religion to speak of. I did a lot of searching around in my teens and twenties, had a couple of strong mystical experiences (no, not drug related) and some very good mentors.
Now in my fifties I can see that having a sense of the sacred, if not perverted to serve divisiveness and hatred, can be a strong source of humility and perspective.
I have no proofs to offer about the existence of God or the meaning of life, but my non-specific belief in something bigger than myself helps me maintain a sort of moral compass to counter my egocentricity. I don’t have any guilt that makes me feel dirty or unworthy, I’m just not the center of everything.
And I do see Love and a sense of the sacred as a powerful force against the hatred and chaos swirling around me, even though it doesn’t seem to be ‘winning’ at this moment in history.
— wizmo Jun 10, 7:21pm # - beautiful gail. thought provoking and very very pertinent. thank you.
one of the biggest gifts my (agnostic) parents gave me was to encourage me to be interested in and open to all religions (they could so easily have closed me down); to look at the political and historical and spiritual importance of religions. I do now feel able to choose a spiritual path if I like, without, as so many do, having to destroy the religious prison I have been born into first.
Whatever one chooses, I feel the search is important, (yo Camus) rather than dogma. And, as you so rightly imply, a framework for love and compassion over ego and greed.
— ruth Jun 11, 8:01am # - I, too, was born into a family with no specific religion. I’ve been asked how I survive with no belief in salvation, how I can possibly endure day-to-day existence by living a meaningless corporeal life, only to become worm food in the end.
I believe in everlasting life, in the continuation of myself in my son, and in his children, along with all those that preceded me to make me who I am today. I believe in goodness, in doing unto others…, in truth and honesty, beauty, nature. I’m in love with Love, family, tears of joy. As much as I dread it, I will eventually celebrate the deaths of my parents for the lives they lived, the love and nurturing I experienced at their hands, and I will (and do) deeply cherish the part of me that is them and forever will be… and will be in my son… and on and on.
I don’t need more than that.
— Stuart Vail Jun 11, 2:36pm # - It’s damned near impossible to get to the sacred outside the boundaries and proprietary confines of codified intellectual property – the legal copyright, the royalties that get charged automatically as soon as the word is used in public.
The mundane sacred – domestic love and comfort, the consistent beauties of the real world – we’re taught to trivialize and disregard that as unimportant, the way the word mundane is itself a reduction of value.
Key to all of it is the maddening fact of the technology’s efficacy, that clamping down the minds of the young delivers the mature – and we’re all caught up by that, and in it.
So training the great mass to think of anything metaphysic as belonging to the sanctioned professional caste blocks access to the transcendent.
Your wistful query begins with the assumption of a commonality of interpretation of the sacred – like we all know what it means, so we don’t have to kick up a definition.
Are glaciers sacred? Coral reefs? Birds?
Aren’t there things we know to be sacred, before proof, before even speech?
That’s what’s been sundered, broken into and looted like every other aspect of the commonly held – from the woods to the sky to songs that were linked note for note back to the beginning of music.
Until the public domain was strip-mined.
Maybe we should begin the discussion by talking about the profane. It might be easier to find some common ground.
— rollo Jun 13, 6:34am # - Reading the thoughtful comments above reminded me of an “Ideas” broadcast I heard on CBC Radio long ago. I forget the exact topic, something to do with our relativistic culture. What stuck with me was an exhortation to those who have humanistic values, who have a sense of the sacred, but do not belong to a specific religion or belief system, not to evacuate the field of debate.
One of the most insidious afflictions of relativism is an acceptance that because someone is from a different culture, religion, or ethnicity criticizing their beliefs is out of bounds. As a result, political debate about values and rights can not amount to anything more than interest-groups squabbling after their rights and public-purse dollars. “You’re entitled to your rights; I’m entitled to mine. I’ll seek to get mine recognized, and you can go after yours.” Discussion over shared values is not on the table.
The point that hit home is that those who profess a humanistic value system (and I’m throwing myself in with this lot), unlike those with religion-based value systems, tend not to participate in this debate, political or otherwise. We don’t proselytize, we don’t demand recognition of our special rights. Generally, we don’t talk about what we hold sacred.
Maybe we should.
Not that we should proselytize. But if we truly believe there are shared human values, if we believe that the sacred matters and is to be found outside religion and power, then the only way to discover it is to engage other humans on the subject.
Reading the above, it looks like that is exactly what’s going on here. Thanks, Gail!
— Peter A Jun 13, 2:47pm # - ‘Sacred’ might not be the right word, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with elevating something (an institution, a position, a state of being, etc.) that we value—it’s a mark of its importance to us. However, there must be strong reason to do so, and this designation is not an expemption from criticism and questioning.
Take disprespecting the office of the President (of the U.S., I gather is the implication); people should be reproved for so doing. But calling out the President for, say, abusing his power would not be disrespectful—to the contrary, it is a mark of our respect for the importance of the position that we denounce those who improperly exercise its influence. Likewise, we respect the office by advocating the election of an opposing candidate, rather than by storming the White House with torches.
At least from a governmental perspective, we cannot have a civil society without some notion of the sacred. Institutional respect (which is essentially the same thing) is the only tool available to a government that does not rule by the muzzle of a gun. The Supreme Court has no army, no legions of bureaucrats to carry out its will; the decisions handed down by the justices are respected (though not necessarily agreed with) simply by virtue of their source. This is not to be lamented. One must only be careful to hold the tools (i.e. principles) themselves as sacred, extending it not to those who merely wield them.
— Matt F Jun 14, 2:57pm # - Karen Armstrong in her book The History of God argues that humans have an instinct for the sacred, for the spiritual, for some essence that transcends the everyday.
I think we see this in the way we turn to things that are bigger than we are—whether those things are God or The Supreme Court or the latest American Idol or sports demi-god.
Given the possibility that there is such an instinct in us, perhaps we need to be more aware of this tendency and try to evaluate and analyze and understand what we hold sacred. And we need to do this, I think, so we don’t make the latest American Idol a god, for example.
My problem with a lot of religions is that they don’t want people to think seriously about those spiritual things, those sacred things, we all apparently strive for.
— john guzlowski Jun 15, 8:20pm # - In the words of the Leiber and Stoller song made famous by Peggy Lee, “is that all there is?” To me this question speaks of the endemic ennui of the human condition governed by disaffection, disappointment, and dissatisfaction. How many of us have asked; “is that all there is?” because we’ve had this deep down feeling that not all is as it should be? That we want something more – something this world can’t offer?
Its no secret that we all want more. We want to live better lives. We want to be healthier, wealthier, better looking. We want to be liked, loved, and lusted after. We want more and when we get it it’s never enough. Is that all there is? The more we want the more we condition ourselves to live in ‘lack’ – where we lack this or that or the other thing that somehow will make our lives better, make us happy, and bring us contentment/fulfillment. This is the message that we are being massaged by daily through the milieu/media/television/consumer culture/society – the element/environment we exist in and absorb from the moment we’re born. Awash in a materialistic world surfeit with so many temporal and worldly, carnal and mundane enticements and deceptions, like addicts we’re addicted to an ever increasing diet of ‘more’ to satisfy the caustic carvings of the ‘lack’ in our lives.
Augustine, in his Confessions, wrote of this gapping gnawing need. He said that every person is created with a God-shaped hole inside of us. No one and no-thing will fill that hole except God. But God, it seems, is the last person we want in our lives. So we create and worship through our consumption, idols – you know, those things we invent that we deceive ourselves will ease our lives yet end up enslaving us, be they food, drugs, sex, motorcycles, sports, drinking, knowledge, travel, whatever. But have you noticed, the more we stuff into that hole the more restless we become until we realize that these ‘idols’ do not truly fill that hole?
Why is it that, like children railing against the restrictions of their parents hand as they cross a busy parking lot, our thirst for freedom ends up being more about greed than a quest for enlightenment? Just as Kurtz ‘kicked himself loose of the earth’ and became lost to himself, just as Ozymandias’ stumps mock his hubris; human-kind is not capable of becoming a God. What we are capable of is far less lofty in which we reduce ourselves to hunting for a ‘Piggy’ to victimize.
If I were to choose between a world in which ‘chance is a kind of religion where you’re damned for plain hard luck,’ and ‘singing in my chains like the sea,’ I’d be content with knowing that there are ‘things too wonderful for us, which we did not know.’
Faith in something bigger, better, more beautiful is not naïve – nor is it simplistic: in a world adrift in ambiguity, despair and decay, faith in God is almost defiant and counter-cultural and unselfish.
— GMR Jun 15, 10:25pm # - Is it a world adrift in “ambiguity, despair, and decay”?
Probably not. The American Religious Identificatioin Survey of 50,000 Amerricans found that about 14% don’t adhere to any religion. The rest are Christians, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and members of other religions.
So I guess my next question is: Why is the world the way the world is given that 75%, more or less, of Americans are Christians or Catholics?
— john guzlowski Jun 16, 3:07am # - There was a monk on a radio show I was listening to recently, and he gave a good analogy for the “perversion” of religious belief. He said, if you think of a religion as a building, what those people who use it as justification for war, exclusion, etc. are doing is taking just one pillar, one piece of that whole, and making that their centrepiece, or even their entire religion.
I think that there could well be a significant number of people in that 75% who are doing just that. Picking and choosing those bits of their adopted religion that fit with how they want to live, what they want to believe about themselves and their country. How can killing be wrong if it’s in the name of God? So we’ll disregard the Commandment (there was another poll that suggested that, in that great mass of Christians, an astonishing number could not name the 10 Commandments.) And we’ll disregard Jesus’s abhorrence of pursuit of wealth, his pleading with us to look out for our fellows, love our enemies…
Merely calling yourself a Christian does not make it so, nor does going to church every Sunday to pray to win the lottery.
I agree that living a truly Christian (Buddhist…) life would be a daunting challenge, particularly in a capitalistic society, and if we do seem to be adrift I think in many respects it is because we have torn down so many idols without replacing them with something equally awe-inspiring. And because of our apparent innate need to look to something larger than ourselves, we attach ourselves to whatever seems the most dazzling, sparkling & ephemeral facsimiles, because we haven’t been taught to think properly for ourselves, to think critically. Such a crucial element for intelligent life in the universe is sorely absent from our school curriculum.
Doris Lessing wrote a lovely little book about that, The prisons we choose to live inside, arguing primarily that no government would actually encourage its citizens to think for themselves.
For a capitalistic society to work, the masses need to be unquestioning, contented with the lure of pretty things, and believe in the possibility of rising out the muck of working day drudge to the stratosphere of wealth and bright white smiles by the pool – believing that wealth=power=good.
Until we really believe in the power of the individual and force ourselves to examine how we are living and its implications beyond our back yard, we will be stuck in the mire of looking desperately around us for someone to tell us what to think, and get excited about ½ price sales on crap we don’t need.
— gail Jun 16, 9:55am # - The issue isn’t faith – or the belief in something divine – but is the modern/postmodern shift toward total subjectivism. With everything torn down and revolving around us we’ve become godless. The challenge of faith today is that is isn’t about us, it’s about the other: it’s about making the shift from a position of spiritual arrogance to a posture of spiritual humility.
Unrelated, I have always wondered whether God, out of love, when Foucault died, scattered his atoms for eternity so that even he could have his ‘heaven.’
— GMR Jun 16, 8:08pm # - I find faith positive and liberating. And I don’t need my church—I like it. Yet my experience appears increasingly anomalous, with emphasis on “appears.” Pardon my noise, but I think this is important.
Tonight in Chicago a bus delivered sandwiches and hot dogs to some of the city’s neediest residents. Unsure which neighborhood this time, I can at least verify the hundreds of servings prepared in the basement of my church; I personally bagged around 80 ham and cheese sandwiches. I mention my involvement not because I hope to derive some benefit from the effort but to vouch for a community of believers acting on their faith: Christians actually being Christian.
The people on that bus, with the the rest of the “quiet” faithful, undertake the challenge of a faithful life not for personal reward (not even a real sense of satisfaction, to judge by the stories of past bus-riders), nor from some feeling of moral superiority (Bonhoeffer: “Discipleship does not afford us a point of vantage from which to attack others”), nor fearing eternal punishment, nor cowed by ecclesial authority. We accept the challenge despite a world that compels us to pursue our advantage. GMR’s very near the truth: The challenge of faith always is that it isn’t about us.
Which helps explain why it’s also always Falwell and the Pope, the Inquisition and German quietism. There’s nothing glamorous about real faith, and glamour sells ads.
We don’t need to dismantle the institution to regain our freedom. It’s all there. Really. What we need is to reset the balance and turn down the volume.
— Justin Jun 17, 9:10am # - have only just returned to this fascinating debate, probably too late.
yo gail on your comment.
just a question:
how many people have been killed in the name of christianity/catholicism/the muslim faith?...
how many people have been killed in the name of buddha?
the beauty of debates with the dalai lama, for example, is that he does NOT want to spread a religion. he wants to create understanding and consensus between faiths and non-faiths, philosophy and science. he wants to find common ground and he does not need to be right. he practices tolerance and tolerance is the opposite of anger.
ps i am not a buddhist but interested in the discussion.
— ruth Jun 25, 9:41pm # - How do you know you’re not a buddhist?
Maybe that’s the essential element of buddhism: being interested in the discussion.
— john guzlowski Jun 27, 8:52pm #
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