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This most eloquent article was submitted by one of our viewers in response to our May newsletters challenge entitled, "Religious Confusion". from: David Yehudah - Subject: Religious Confusion I feel this commentary may belabor the obvious. The only virtue this essay has is that it might be useful for focusing someone's attention on the real problem (as I see it). Religious confusion is caused by two things: the knowledge of choices and the feeling that one must make a choice. Small children rarely have religious confusion. It's not until we reach an age where we are confronted by differences that we become confused. And the more sheltered we are, the more devastating that knowledge can be. Even in families where the parents are of different faiths, we rarely have this conflict because the grownups have usually settled on one religion or the other "for the sake of the children." Example: James Cagney, the actor, grew up in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. He said in an interview a few years ago that until he was sixteen years old he thought everyone in the world was Jewish. When we were young the instinctive reaction was to close ranks, divide the world into 'us' and ----'everybody else.' They = bad, or wrong, us = good, on the side of truth and beauty, etc. That works until we begin to reach out to the wider world, the one unbound by friends and relatives. Suddenly the 'others' are seen as people just like us. We discover there are good Jews, Moslems, Buddhists, Protestants, Catholics, etc. that only yesterday were wicked or stupid or whatever other label we had put on them. In an open society such as ours here in the US we may date someone of a different faith. Interracial romance is still frowned upon, but even that taboo is being lifted in such enlightened places as Oklahoma and Iowa. So. We have arrived at an age when distinctions are blurred. The unthinkable has become the commonplace, and what was absolute is now relative. We have moved from complacent certitude to confused ambiguity. If one religion is right, then the rest must be wrong, for that is how we were taught as children. Is that the way it has to be? I don't think so. Certainly some religions teach theirs is the only path to salvation, but to me the premise is absurd on the face of it. I don't mean we should consider all faiths as being equal; that way leads to no faith at all. What I do mean is that we all have discretion. If we are religious we say God gave us a conscience; if not, we say we know right from wrong. I might add that for us to admit that while we may believe in one faith above all others, we admit we don't know for sure and probably never will in this lifetime, is to free ourselves from dogma and cant imposed from without and allows us to seek the truth wherever the search leads us. What we have to recognize is that no one sect has a corner on truth, or beauty, or whatever criterion we require of a religion. Ultimately it is a question each of us has to decide alone, for ultimately we alone are responsible for ourselves. What person, living or dead, can place limits on what questions I may ask or what conclusions I may accept as binding on myself and myself alone, that neither diminishes another's faith nor limits his own search for the truth? Religious confusion is part of the human condition; we can either control it or be controlled by it. The choice is ours. |
