December 16, 2015 - 15:49
“Language and reality are dynamically intertwined. The understanding attained by critical reading of a text implies perceiving the relationship between text and context.”
-Paolo Freire, “The Importance of the Act of Reading”
Our reality contains an ever rising feeling of insurmountable death and terror. The recent bombings, including those in Paris, Beirut, and Mali, are just part of that. There are hundreds of mass shootings every year in the United States, and every day’s news brings stories of hate crimes in violence and exclusion.
Most people are searching for some solution. Some hope. Some escape. Much of today’s global terror and war is tied to religious disputes, which conflicts with the justice and kindness preached by many of the main religions and spiritual practices around the world. Mark LeVine’s November 2015 article “Go ahead, blame Islam” for Aljazeera offers the idea that religion IS at the heart of the violence- this terrorism isn’t contradictory to scriptural code but a clear stem from it. . The transition from justice and kindness to death and destruction is contained in the blind following of religion common in many spiritual communities today, and an apathetic and subsequently callous religious world moving increasingly further away from the compassion and kindness supposedly preached. The Paris shooting was met immediately by an onslaught of calls for prayer. A hashtag campaign was assigned #prayforparis and each article and status that came up included an urge for prayer. The headlines on CNN that came up the morning after included assured that the GOP candidates’ foremost reaction to the tragedy was prayer for those affected. The Dalai Lama, in response to the Paris shootings, said that he “doesn’t see prayer as being the answer to this problem,” even though he believes in prayer, and “sees it as being illogical to expect God to solve such a horrible problem which people have created.” In a press conference after the 2015 Oregon shooting, President Obama said “our thoughts and prayers are not enough,” and then offered concrete actions for change. I am not saying that prayer doesn’t benefit the giver or the subject, but it is certainly less efficient than taking direct action to help a cause. In the same speech he talks about as a nation being numb to atrocities like mass shootings; I think our national approach to prayer is starting to reflect this.
The political response to terror being prayer is starting to feel empty. Where is the action? And, from belief standpoint, at what point does prayer start to feel like a hollow investment? Hashtags and Facebook filters that urge prayer are beginning to feel like a capitalization of spirituality. This obviously would not be the first time that spirituality is conflated with money or consumerism, but when the words are put out there thoughtlessly they take on thoughtless meaning in the hearts of the people. I think the power of prayer is in the reflection and meditation. Paolo Freire’s essay “The Importance of the Act of Reading,” speaks to the power of joining reflection with action. Prayer can be the intermediary action between reading scripture and making change in one’s actions. However, prayer is being used as an easy way to feign change without putting in the time and effort necessary to promote change. Prayer is effective in creating hope but alone it cannot create a world where prayer is not necessary.
In addition to the shift in how we approach prayer, there needs to be a shift in how we teach and learn about religion. Religion is often simplified to an extreme extent in casual reference. . I have rarely heard the people saying it encourages compassion also saying it encourages violence; the nuance is to be lost. It’s easier to focus instead on one part or another of whatever religion or denomination is being brought into discussion. Upon closer analysis, no scripture is truly as one-note as popular conversations suggest. LeVine’s article brings up the quote from the Quran President Obama quoted once: “Whosoever slays a soul it shall be as if he had slain all mankind; and whoso saves one life it shall be as if he has saved all mankind.” This excerpt suggests that Islam is promoting only preservation of life, compassion, and global solidarity, but is followed immediately by declaring that people supposed to be enemies of Islam deserve “execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet.” The Bible is also full of paradoxes and contradictions that prohibit a true one-lens reading of it. A benign example is the story of Noah’s Arc. Even in just one chapter of one book in Genesis there are multiple different stories of how many animals are loaded to escape the flood. There are so many options for the reader to believe in throughout the scripture. I’ve heard it said in some theories because it was written by numerous different authors over many years, and in some because the author(s) wanted to prevent simple minded belief. These texts are easily manipulated. There’s an ability to pick and choose what you want to see out of it. It would be extremely difficult if not impossible to believe in or enact every single Biblical recommendation. It is upon the consumer of the religion to create a hierarchy of beliefs, to choose what they want to extract from the teachings for their own set of principles. So much is contradictory that choices must be made. If it is followed blindly, then it becomes too easy to simply absorb at face value many of the more destructive tenements of these religions. True education of what these texts hold allows people to make a more informed choice of what they’re choosing to believe in and sometimes kill and die for.
There is no one authentic exhibition of a religion, as the authenticity of action is contained in the combination of the scriptural guide and the follower’s lived experience. Interpretations are perpetuated by whichever main leaders of the religion of the time believe in. What Martin Luther King Jr. chose to see in the Bible is different from the heads of the Westboro Baptist Church or the Pope. Even each Pope is different from each before him. Each human, with individual lived experiences, had codifications that they apply to each word of the scripture. A religious scripture or practice influence a person’s actions, but their actions and ”reading of the world” influence the way they interpret the religion. There’s an ideal that religion is an impenetrable imagined community, but realistically, spirituality is so specific to you and your experiences that there’s never going to be the assumed intense solidarity. Our beliefs can’t just be based off of one school of thought, text, constitution, scripture. It is impossible to make well-rounded and generally beneficial decisions if there is only one source for information and bias. Recognizing the individuality and personal nature of religion and spirituality, as opposed to a single-minded imagined community, is critical to moving away from violence and returning to compassion and justice.
LeVine’s article references a study done through the University of Chicago which found that while parents of religious households claimed that their children were more empathetic and “sensitive for justice in everyday life” than non-religious parents did, the presence of religion was “inversely predictive of children’s altruism and positively correlated with their punitive tendencies.” This is in direct contrast with popular social belief of religion being a basis and requirement for morality. The study suggests that this is contrast is due to religion-based morality being tied to rules and laws, not ration and reasoning. Popular religious education promoted in nuanced reading followed by reflection in prayer to apply the tenets of scripture to everyday life. The religion-based morality is problematic in that is presents an easy way to not reflect; the problems are not rooted in the religion itself, but how it is treated. Religion, spirituality, and scripture are not simple and should not be treated as such.
To be driven by the black-white binary for morality religion offers is to simplify the world and the people who live in it. This is all I can think of that explains how our politicians call for prayer one minute and murder the next. Clinging to large institutional forces as the basis for all morals and actions begins detachment from actual agency and compassion. I don’t think that religion inherently negates these qualities, but clinging unquestionably and unwavering to any one institutional way of thinking promotes withdrawing into oneself. It’s too easy to sink into a pattern; without the juxtaposition of other cultures, communities, and minds, there’s no room for growth, consciousness, or agency, and without those, we begin to forget that our actions and beliefs effect those outside of ourselves. We must be open to learning from others and applying our own experience to the religion we partake. The return to justice, mercy, and compassion that LeVine calls for in the conclusion of his article will be reached, I believe, by encouraging a more nuanced and analytical approach to scriptural reading. It is in education that the empowerment to consciously choose what pieces of a religion to choose to prioritize and enact.
WORKS CITED
Decety, Jean, Jason M. Cowell, Kang Lee, Randa Mahasen, Susan Malcom-Smith, Bilge Selcuk, and Xinyue Zhou. "The Negative Association between Religiousness and Children’s Altruism across the World."Current Biology 25.22 (2015): 2951-955. Science Direct. Elsevier, 16 Nov. 2015. Web. <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982215011677>.
Freire, Paulo. "The Importance of the Act of Reading." Trans. Loretta Slover. Brazilian Congress of Reading, Campinas, Brazil. November 1981. Rpt. Journal of Education 165, 1 (Winter 1983): 5-11.
Gross, Rachel E. "Children Raised in Religious Households May Be More Selfish." Slate. N.p., 06 Nov. 2015. Web. <http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/11/religious_children_are_more_selfish_in_a_sticker_study.html>.
Jackson, David. "Obama: "Our Thoughts and Prayers Are Not Enough"" USA Today. Gannett, 02 Oct. 2015. Web. <http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/10/01/obama-oregon-shooting-umpqua-community-college-roseburg/73169262/>.
LeVine, Mark. "Go Ahead, Blame Islam." Al Jazeera English. N.p., 15 Nov. 2015. Web. <http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/11/blame-islam-151115083644785.html>.
Mandel, Harold. "The Dalai Lama Says Prayer Is Not the Answer for the Paris Attacks." Examiner.com. The Examiner, 21 Nov. 2015. Web. <http://www.examiner.com/article/the-dalai-lama-says-prayer-is-not-the-answer-for-the-paris-attacks>.