How Religion Can Remain Relevant in 21st Century

Many, including myself, hunger to find meaning in the world that is not purely mechanistic, and is more satisfying than anything traditional religion can offer.

If religion is to ever be taken seriously by people who are capable of critical thinking, it is going to have to drastically realign its world view to become more compatible with reality as a rational person in the 21st Century experiences it. Here are some suggestions.

Quit being literal

My father, who is as good of a Christian and an open-minded humanist as you’ll ever meet, was recently attempting to explain the significance of mass to my eight year old daughter. What prompted the conversation was that my daughter asked, “Why do they eat crackers and drink wine in church?”

My father explained that it was to commemorate the last supper. “What was the last supper?” my daughter asked.

My father explained that it was the last meal that Jesus and his friends had together before he was killed by the Romans. “He was killed?” my daughter asked.

“Yes,” my father continued, “He died on the cross for our sins and was then put in a tomb. A little while after being put in a tomb, Jesus came back to life and went up to heaven.”

My daughter looked at my father quizzically and deep in thought. Finally she spoke. “Do you really believe that?” she asked incredulously.

Quit anthropomorphizing God

You know how the opening chapters of The Bible are full of terrifyingly dull begetting? Here’s some begetting of my own. Horace begot Zeus. Zeus begot Jupiter. Jupiter begot God. And none of them are that different from each other. Michelangelo’s God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, all muscled up in a display of potent masculinity, looks a hell of a lot like his Greek and Roman predecessors.

The real sin of anthropomorphizing God is that God becomes a psychological crutch upon which we can project our shortcomings and thereby make them divine. If I believe that women are inferior to men, then so does God. If I harbor prejudices against other races and creeds, then God does, too. If I am a football player and believe God is firmly on my side, then he is against the team that my team just beat.

I’m reminded of the old comedy skit where a sports reporter is interviewing a quarterback after his team had crushed the Kansas City Chiefs. The quarterback thanks God for the victory. The reporter asks, “So, why do you think God hates the Kansas City Chiefs so much?”

If there is a God, a prime mover, the fount of all that was, is and will be–the alpha and omega–we need to give up assuming we can know who God is. It’s too big, too complex, and we aren’t smart enough to come to any pat conclusions on that front. It would be like a dust mite assuming it knows my shape and motives by the view of things in a wrinkle of skin, between my toes.

Oh, hell, did I just anthropomorphize God with that analogy?

Quit hating on science

That has to stop. Science has its method, and that method has served us exceedingly well, and will continue to do so, so long as we have ethical scientists.

All that occupies this world does so between the very small and the gigantic. At the edges of both, science falls apart. Take the journey to the edges, which is paved all the way by science, and there you will find more mystery than a soul can manage.

Science’s expedition is to answer how. Religion is the why. So long as we have mouths with which to ask “why,” mystery and religion are alive.

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” ̴Albert Einstein

Go inside

Or, to state it in the negative, quit looking out to the world for salvation. Quit waiting for the second coming, Armageddon, the apocalypse, a band of angels or an anthropomorphic God to lift you up and skyward, or the winning lottery ticket you have prayed hard for. Sit quietly and look inside. If there is anything divine in this world, that’s where it will be found, as close to you as you are to yourself.

Religion needs to get more mystical and contemplative, and employ technologies and methods to help achieve inner exploration.

Jesus repeatedly used the phrase “kingdom of heaven.” Take “kingdom of heaven” and replace it with “inner divine wisdom” and see what you get.

“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter [inner divine wisdom].”

Get cozy with uncertainty

And that’s what it is really all about. There is no shame in admitting that we can’t know it all–it’s not possible. Paradoxically, I find the more I know, the more I don’t, but the more I want to. I don’t think God would have it any other way.

Oops. Am I anthropomorphizing again?