Religion, at its best, is a cultural expression of that enquiring impulse; of an awareness of and openness to a God or gods; of a context that transforms our understanding of the world, and which enables this sense to be shared and celebrated with others; in other words, it involves community, in space, but also over time. Indeed, it helps to bind a community together: that is what religion means (from Latin religare, to bind). It makes tangible the betweenness, the relational nature of existence. And in this respect, if no other, it is hard to replace…The myths of religions convey truths that are absent from everyday thought and language, and speak directly to us at the deepest level of our understanding of life itself.
(quote from Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, volume II, p. 1219 in a section entitled “The Sense of the Sacred”)
As McGilchrist reminds us, the word “religion” comes from the Latin root religare. The “re” part of the word means “to do again.” “Ligare” refers to “binding or connecting.” Our anatomical word ligament comes from this root and refers to the connective tissue which binds bones to bones. Religion involves the recognition and practice of connections. What binds/connects us in life? What creates community at its deepest level? Not much imagination is required to reveal that religion defined in these terms can be good or bad, constructive or destructive, holy or hellish, loving or narcissistic. It all depends on what we give our hearts to (which is what the word credo, from which the English “creed” means.) Our “creed” is what we give our hearts to. For those familiar with Jesus’ teaching “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,” we learn that what we value and give ourselves to is who we become.
Creeds can be brittle or transforming, literal or metaphorical, confining or expansive, excluding or embracing. All religious creeds should be understood as metaphorical in nature. In fact, all words are metaphorical, something biblical literalists and Fundamentalists never understand. At best, words point to something beyond themselves. To call the maple tree in our neighbor’s yard with the breathtaking beauty of its autumn colors simply a “tree” is to miss the essence of our connection with that exquisite part of God’s good creation. To be human is to be dependent on metaphors and to acknowledge that dependence. We need to recognize the limitations of words. Much of life, especially those parts which give us joy and meaning, cannot be adequately expressed in mere words. That’s why we need poetry, music, and art. Such mediums point us to something that cannot be captured or expressed in analytical words.
Much of life, especially those parts which give us joy and meaning, cannot be adequately expressed in mere words.
Regarding religion, McGilchrist reminds us that “words have their place, but only up to the border of God.” Any authentic encounter with the Divine involves transcendence, the ineffable, the infinite, the holy, the sacred, the Other. At best, we experience a “piece of the wholeness of the Divine.” The experience is real but partial. God will always be more than any of us or all of us together can ever know. In the image of the Early Church Fathers and Mothers as well as the Rhineland mystics, God is an ever-flowing Spring—eternal and creative, foundational and relational, dependable and dynamic. As Meister Eckhart said, “What does God do all day long? He gives birth. From the beginning of eternity, God lies on a maternity bed giving birth to all. God is creating this whole universe full and entire in this present moment.”
That’s why I refuse to call the Bible “the Word of God.” Both in the Jewish and Greek cultures, “word” (logos) referred to a flowing, dynamic, creative energy involved in the process and experience of relationality. Consider these words from Isaiah 55: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and return not thither but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the things for which I sent it.” (The Christian faith maintains that this creative, dynamic, energetic Word became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth.)
Sometimes, words are a necessary evil. We need them to express reality as we experience and understand it, but mere words are inadequate to unveil our most profound experiences and intuitions. Even the exquisite beauty and magic of poetry can only open our minds and hearts to truths too deep and expansive to express in prose, let alone explain. We need the wisdom of poetry (and music and art) to turn our eyes from the mundane of this world and to focus on what is only possible through wonder, awe, imagination, and intuition. Only then, in the words of William Blake can we, “see the world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wildflower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.” Only then can we become aware of and an authentic part of the connectedness of God’s beautiful creation. Only then can our religion/re-ligamenting become both healing and fecund with eternal possibility.
Churches which seek connections through an idolatrous allegiance to words (dogma, the fundamentals of the faith, literalism, bibliolatry) are bound to a fixed, sterile, truncated, lifeless faith which is not worthy of our Creator nor our identity as children of God who are destined to become “partakers of the divine nature.” (II Peter 1:4) Churches which have experienced the communion/connections made possible by the presence and energy of God (who includes all in Her infinite web of relationships) are celebrating an ever-expanding journey of joy and love.
Theology is no more than our feeble attempt to put into words what is beyond our capacity to express.
Theology is no more than our feeble attempt to put into words what is beyond our capacity to express. Theology (human words about God) is a good servant as we try to communicate and understand our religion. But theology is a poor master. The experience of God is always primary; the expression of that experience is secondary. We have two choices in religion/binding: we can be bound to the Living God whom we recognize will always be beyond “our thoughts and ways” but out of love always seeks the best for Her creation, or we can enslave ourselves to fallible and inadequate ideas about a static God we think we have nailed down. The latter choice will result in the sins of certainty, exclusion, and inquisition—sins which the church has inflicted on the world too many times in the past.
(Iain McGilchrist is a psychiatrist, scientist, philosopher, 21st century renaissance man whose writings have the most profound implications for every part of life. I plan to share in my blog some of his research and conclusions, the knowledge and assumption of which might just save us and much of creation from extinction.)
