Words in the World

A friend recently paid me the greatest compliment.

He said “For someone who is studying theology, you are the least religious person I know.”

I laughed, but he said he was serious. I knew he was. The reason I laughed, I said, was this misconception about what “being religious” means that draws me to my studies in spirituality and the new cosmology.

What my friend meant, I think, was that I’m apparently not a moralistic, dogmatic, judgemental kind of person. I’m not out to convert. The words “God” and “Jesus” or “repent” don’t come out of my mouth every other sentence. I rarely feel the need to self-identify as “Christian.” Don’t get me wrong, I can be annoying and awful, and judgmental in my own way. But my friend didn’t see in me as what he would call “religious.”

This conversation points to what I see as a real problem for those of us who see the world through spiritual eyes: we’ve had horrible PR. For those who don’t consider themselves spiritual, or religious, we’re seen as, well, what my friend meant by religious. And this is not just a problem for us, it’s a problem for the rest of the world, too. Because having a sense of the Divine and a notion of a power bigger than ourselves at work in everything is important if we want to change the way we’re going.

In his work on the New Atheism, theologian John Haught shows the damage done by religion. And by religion, I mean much of organized religion, the kind that excludes, moralizes and, quite frankly, causes a lot of pain. Many of the New Atheists — Dawkins, Hitchens, etc… — focus on that religion’s version of God. Yes, it still exists, and yes it is still doing damage, but in sweeping aside that version of God, the New Atheists don’t stop to think about the version of God they’re dismissing. It’s as if nobody ever asked them “Are you sure this is the only concept of God out there?”

For example, my perception of God, of the Divine, includes evolution. It includes the Big Bang. It includes 13.7 billion years of cosmic history. My spirituality is not lessened by scientific knowledge; it is expanded. I am also comfortable with paradox, with not-knowing. Or, at least I try to be. My spirituality is not an “if I behave in this way I will go to Heaven” way of being in the world. It’s much broader, it’s much more mysterious. And it places just as much emphasis on science as it does the work of the unseen.

John Haught says we need a third way to look at science and religion. This third way, he says, makes room for both. Haught says that theology has no place in science. Science should explore and attempt to explain what is observable and verifiable. Where theology comes in, says Haught, is at the edges, at the liminal, where meaning and mystery and paradox exist. In the third way, science and religion inform each other. They are not enemies, but co-creators, co-explainers, of this reality we live in.

I think we desperately need this third way right now. People need to know that to be a spiritual person does not mean throwing logic, reason and science away. Rather, it means looking at what we learn from science with wonder and awe at what the Divine has brought into being. And this attitude of reverence is so important, because we need to see our world differently if we are to save it. It’s time that we end this false dichotomy between science and religion, because it’s not real. It never was. It was a human conceit that no longer serves any of us. In fact, it is damaging us all.

For me, I think the challenge from John Haught is to embody that third way in all that I do. As I continue on this journey, I’m aware of the words I use to describe the Divine, and how I talk about what I’m doing with others. I choose my language carefully. I don’t hide what is my passion, but I don’t overwhelm or threaten with it, either. I’m not out to convert people. I’m just hoping to show that what they may think about God or spirituality or science could use a little tweaking.

(Note: Links to books in this post are Amazon affiliate links. If you buy a book from one of these links I get a little bit of money from Amazon to put towards hosting and other costs.)

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