What if humans
have relegated all discussion of
truth to religion?

What if truth (the way we ought to live) were a set of natural laws (just like gravity and thermodynamics and motion and stuff like that)? What if the only reason humans have trouble knowing what is true and what isn't is because we've decided that we aren't subject to these laws? What if humans have relegated all discussion of truth to religion because, as far as they are concerned, truth can only be found in the supernatural, not in the natural? What if all this time, humans have been dead wrong?

A Heretic's Question

Most people are willing to
give up almost anything in exchange
for safety (even their souls).

Someone I consider a pretty good thinker posted this response to people who don't understand why he's critical of his religion, what it is that causes him to question the status quo:

"People always look for one instance that they can blame for my bitterness.... I'm hurt when people do this because they assume my reasoning is not based on logic but that I [just] haven't devoted enough time to finding answers.

"I have confidence in what I write because I have spent time reading and thinking. Where is your confidence? Why do you fear people will read what I write and believe me?

"This is why I am bitter. LDS people don't question. They won't read (and believe) anything by anyone who isn't LDS. They're guilted into thinking they could never find happiness outside of the religion. But their religion creates the sins that it frees them from."

Here's my response:

A reticence to face honest questions is not a uniquely Mormon issue. Institutions create cultural safety barriers, and most people are willing to give up almost anything in exchange for safety (even their souls). For this reason, you will find stilted logic and stunted minds in any and every religious institution.

Look at the Puritans who fled religious persecution in England only to create an American state in which more people were persecuted more harshly for their beliefs (and questions) than had ever been the case in England. Look at Richard Wright's experience within Seventh Day Adventism (as described in Black Boy). Look at Angelina Grimke's experience with Quakerism (kicked out because she wouldn't quietly give up her abolitionist work). She made people uncomfortable, questioned the tenets of a do-nothing faith on which their safety was built. So they revoked her membership.

In fact, look at fundamentalism wherever it exists. Fundamentalist Christians are no different from fundamentalist Jews (Orthodox today, Pharisees in Jesus' day), and fundamentalist Jews are no different from fundamentalist Muslims. They're all legalists. To question their rules is to admit that you don't belong, and the only way fundamentalists can cope with your questions is to soothe themselves with the notion that you must be in the wrong. (Whether traitor or lunatic, it all amounts to the same thing.)

The second type, however, is the
person who sees where others are going and decides from conscience or
context to head in a completely different direction.

Only two kinds of people make it into the history books.

The first is a well-known type. It's the individual with a gift, the person who finds something worth doing and does it better than it's ever been done.

On May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister became the first man to break the 4-minute barrier, running the mile in 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds.

With her discovery of radium near the turn of the century, Marie Curie set the stage for research in nuclear physics.

Takeru Kobayashi beat his own world record in July 2006, swallowing 53-3/4 frankfurters in 12 minutes to win the annual Independence Day hot dog eating contest on New York's Coney Island.

The second type, however, is the person who sees where others are going and decides from conscience or context to head in a completely different direction.

John Woolman's work -- started among Christian slaveholders in the 1740s – ultimately resulted in the abolition of slavery, women's suffrage, and the Civil Rights.

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu – later known as Mother Teresa – petitioned the Vatican in 1950 for permission to start a mission that would serve "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone."

Harvard Professor Henri Nouwen left the academic life in 1986 in order to live with and minister to the mentally handicapped residents of L'Arche community of Daybreak in Toronto, Canada. His books, which openly share of his struggle with depression as well as his amazement at God's limitless love, are often cited by both Catholic and Protestant clergy when listing those works that most affect their own ministry.

Of these two types, the first is often better known, celebrated in popular culture, showered with gifts, idolized for its ability. And there are hundreds of millions who want nothing more than to set such a record. A handful may even succeed.

In spite of its relative anonymity, however, it is the second type that makes a difference.

Unfortunately, the gate is small, and the way is narrow, and few are those that find it.

When Words Fail

We are imprisoned in a society held up by words that are not our own.

Often, while speaking of God, I will talk in one direction, stop, turn, and stop again, only to find that I’ve run out of words without completing my thought.

At the beginning, the issue seems clear enough. I’m moving along under a full head of steam, when I suddenly spot a break in the track up ahead. I jump to another line, engine shuddering, as I try to maintain speed. But just around the corner, there’s that same break. Except for now, it’s a chasm. So I stop, try another metaphor, pull out a different analogy, hoping that this time I’ll jump the divide. But there it is again, looming ever larger.

And I wonder at this gift of words that is also a curse. After all, language gives us freedom to relate, to connect and create. What is the Church? It’s just a word. But the collection of our shared understandings, of our hopes, of our fears, of our deepest needs has made this word into a physical place of refuge for some, a family for others.

This same language, however, also confines. We are imprisoned in a society held up by words that are not our own, and we are isolated from those we love by a failure to communicate what we really mean, what we truly need.

What then can I do when my experience of God — of the very source of love, truth and life — transcends language? What dare I try when words fail me?

Read more of my writings for Barclay Press.