The Progress of Religion?

I read today an account of a British NHS doctor who had taken a year from his medical training to become a jihadist in Syria. The story was told by a couple of journalists who had been taken as hostages by a radical group, to be exchanged for money. The journalists were freed by Syrian rebels. The jihadist doctor is part of a small network in Syria (neither Assadists not rebels) who are taking the opportunity of disorder to bring in a society based on Sharia law. In other words, they wage a holy war, based on religious principles, to construct a religious society. The doctor had told the journalists that those of the opposition who were captured ought to be beheaded. The source of the story is the London Times, so from a source we might think is reliable.

Such stories add to the clamor of secularists that any religion is as bad as any other. Religion, at the end of the day is a matter of barbarism. The human race would be better off without it! Reading such stories makes me sympathize. I can also hear my friends who are Muslim reading the story and responding, "But I'm not that kind of Muslim." I have heard myself saying much the same, "But I'm not that kind of Christian," when I hear of the excesses and silliness of Christian fundamentalists.

Perhaps we can only protest so long before we give in. Religion on too many occasions is exactly like the kind professed by the British born, NHS trained, jihadist doctor. Primitive, brutal, extreme, foolish, divisive, deadly, scary, ...

Yet, I remain a religious person. I would like to make the move that so many have that says "religion bad, spirituality good." However, "I'm a spiritual person, but not a religious one," doesn't quite work for me.

So how to deal with the dilemma?

An evolutionary approach to human religions is a helpful way to look at things. Scholars who study religious development tend to see primitive humans worshiping the sun, the earth, animals and such in awe of the sheer power of the "other than human." In time, local people groups developed their own deities who they claimed as their own. As people groups fought each other, the winning side had the better god. The defeated, if they were sensible, adopted the god of the victors. In other words, primitive religions were about tribal deities who defended the worshipers, often in return for something, some kind of sacrifice. This development is seen in the ancient Jewish writings where the Israelites worship multiple deities, finally settling on one who is known as the God of Israel. This god demands sacrifices to keep it happy. Much Jewish history (which Christians have a the Old Testament) is the story of other peoples and their gods being defeated by Israel and its god. The fate of Israel's enemies is not much different to the fate the British doctor wants to hand out to his enemies—a gruesome death by beheading.

Much of the religious landscape as it developed is about whose is the best religion, and why the god of that religion is better than the god of the other religions. This we still see today around the world. More fuel for the secularists. Not much progress.

But it is not the whole story. Running at first on parallel tracks, but later to diverge, is a progressive view of the development from the many to the One. As human understandings of God developed, the sages, saints and wise ones In all religions moved from exclusion to inclusion. From limited views to unlimited views of God. From "our god," to the "God of all." From the particular to the universal.

There is a story in the Jewish Torah about King Solomon, who we are told, was the wisest of all kings. He also built a temple for god in Jerusalem. When his temple was completed we have a recorded prayer of Solomon where he extols god as the "God of Israel," that is, particular, tribal, looking after "us" and not "them." But he has second thoughts. He says, "But how could God possibly live on earth? If heaven, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you, how can this temple that I've built contain you?" in other words, he begins to see that God is bigger than "my god" or "our god." God is universal not particular. How foolish to think it could be any other way, as if any of us could put God in a box! How could any of us claim God as our exclusive property!

If this insight is followed it leads to a universalism in religion. At our best we are all seeking the same God. The different religions are human attempts, in different contexts, to grasp the Ultimately Real — Goodness, Truth, and Beauty as the ancient Greeks would say.

The progress of religion is found in Huxley's perennial philosophy, in all forms of non-exclusive spirituality, in love and goodness, in truth-seeking, in friendship, in universalism. This is far from the kind of religion espoused by the jihadist doctor. The religious landscape is presently a little scary. We hope for something better.