I often imagine our prehistoric ancestors, sitting around a campfire, the scary night only yards from its periphery of illumination. Beyond, in the inky dark were strange sounds, calls and growls, and the spooky reflections off the retinas of beasts. I imagine that our ancestors knew, intuitively, but also by experience, that they were prey to these beasts, and that they soon discovered that one way of keeping them at bay was to offer sacrifice to them, to throw some joints of meet into the darkness, maybe, cruel as it may sound, sacrifice one of their own, an elder no longer of use, or a child (“there, but for the grace of God, go I”). The beasts were “demons,” in time soon to become devils, others demanding gods. Seers, and shamans would emerge who would claim to know that the demons and gods wanted and who would interpret events as their will. Their ability to assuage the fear would become a great power, and they would conjure rituals and sacrifices over which they would preside.
We fear what we don’t know. That’s what got religion started in the first place. That’s why we worship and pray, make sacrifices, prostrate ourselves before altars and statuary that represents . . . what? Something that terrifies us. So we create fables, or confabulate historical incidents into miracles and parables, because we need to connect our lives to something. So we get bibles and torahs and qurans and ridiculous books about the “end time” and the “rapture,” and then we grow afraid that if we are not acceptable to the priests, rabbis, mullahs, and pastors and others who pull their power from these myths, then we are not going to get the 72 virgins, the rapture, or will not spend eternity looking into the face of God, but frying our butts in Hell. We try to assuage the fear of the unknown with the fear of being excommunicated from organizations—religions—that are built of the hubris of alleging that theyknows the unknown, and speaks for unknowable deities.
That’s why religious institutions are ultimately about control; and nothing controls people better than fear. They need to make sure that parents plant the first seeds of that fear in their children, and then the nuns, or the madrassas , or the bible classes, prayers in the classroom, and all the other paraphernalia can pick up on it, whip it up, to the point where you’ll do just about anything to keep that fear of devils and going to hell at bay. You’ll pray and fast and tithe, and maybe lacerate your back with flails. You’ll go to Jerusalem and carry a cross through (what is erroneously reputed to be) the via Dolorosa. I didn’t do that, but I did go to the church of the Holy Sepulchre, and went into the inner sanctum and stood next to the sarcophagus that was supposed to have held the body of Christ for three days. I watched as some East European women dressed in black came in on their knees, hysterical, weeping, kissing anything that look like it might be holy. You might make a haj , swirling around thekaba and making sure that you perform all of the required acts, like stoning the devil, or whatever, so that you can be called “haji” and be regarded as “holy” in their neighborhood. Or you might dress up in a Hasidic silly suit, grow your sideburns into Shirley temple ringlets, have strings flapping around your ass, and wear a black Smokey the Bear hat or a phylactery box on your head at the Western wall. Or, you might skulk around women’s clinics waiting for a clean shot on a doctor who performs abortions. People will do a lot of stupid, silly, and nasty things if they think it will assuage the fear. They will call it faith, but the kernel of that faith is fear. They say that the “love God,” but they are much better at hating what and whom they believe is opposed to what they are told God wants. They’ll hate anybody who tries to breach the walls of credulity they have constructed to keep the fear at bay.
Then, of course, some of them feel that they can assuage the fear of the fate of their own souls if they get out there and win over some souls to their way of thinking. Never mind that for centuries they did this by threatening their “converts” with death, or torturing them until they would profess any belief. They wage wars, pogroms, inquisitions, whatever it takes to show others the “love of (their) God.” The fear comes to be represented in the form of theother faiths , the faiths of the infidel, the ones that are not the one, true faith . . Like most opiates there is always somebody coming along with one they claim works better. This is because the various infrastructures of power and privilege that are built on this foundation of fear are in competition with one another. They have been sending out their faithful, festooned with crosses, crescents, and stars of David to slaughter the infidels of other beliefs. They are doing it just as much, and as well, as they ever did it.
OK, I’m being ecumenically insensitive to several religions. But a lot of this stuff works . It helps to assuage the fear, and then the religious institutions have to deal with doubt. Doubt is that little nagging residue of fear than is sublimated, but not eliminated. Churches have to do a lot of what I call doubt management . This is especially necessary if the faithful begin to doubt that the institution itself is really the right one
Where did religions get this idea that God has anointed them as the one, true faith ? Would this wonderful God, up there, decide: “Oh, I think I will create all these religions, but only one of them will be the one that will win and get to spend eternity looking at my face. It’s like a game, and will keep Me from getting bored, since I’m up here with all these boring saints. I’ll watch them scramble around, fighting and killing each other, so that the winner from all the carnage can claim that they are the one, true faith, the only path to salvation. But maybe I’ll fool them with a trick ending. This game is even more fun than the one I created where I make people of different colors and then watch them go at it over who is the best color. Nah, I wouldn’t want to believe in a trickster God.
Benedict XVI can kneel at his prie-dieu with incense burning, Gregorian chant chanting, and inspirational frescoes by Renaissance masters inspiring, but he’ll get no closer to God (maybe further away) than a simple priest, or just a real Christian, comforting a dying AIDS victim in the Congo. He doesn’t know any better than you or I what is on the other side of death, if anything. Of course he can’t show his fear; that would not be good for his job. He is the prime salesman of a form of immortality, of being resurrected, “saved,” joined with your creator for eternity. It’s a heady promise, but you must cede him the power to control your life, you must follow his way, not that of the others, the infidels, apostates, and devil-worshippers. You must give him the power, power that is fashioned from your own fear. And you must give him your children, so that they in turn may be inducted, their fears nurtured and fashioned so that they will, unquestioningly, be willing to praise, tithe, and if necessary, march to the battlefields of Armageddon to defend the true faith. Throwing him a mere bone of propitiation just won’t do these days.
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©2005, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 7.23.2005)