Defining Religion Is Like Playing Quidditch Blindfolded
Once upon a time I studied religion with scholars who lived in ivory towers and ate dinner in magnificent halls. Professors dressed in the fine regalia of their college gowns sat at the high tables while the rest of us sat below them at the long tables. (Just like in Harry Potter! Yes, there are such places in the world.)
Now in that magical of magical places where the oxen cross the ford, we heartily and heatedly debated the definition of religion. Some scholars wanted one definition of religion to rule them all. You should’ve seen the brawls that broke out between the historians, the psychologists, the sociologists, the theologians, and the linguists. And don’t even get me started on the philosophers. It was like Quidditch! And trying to pin religion down to a single definition was harder than trying to capture the golden snitch blindfolded and without a flying broom.
Initially I jumped into the fray and tried my hand at seeking this one ultimate definition. I traveled far and crossed many mountains and valleys, but I still didn’t find what I was looking for. The longer this went on, the less fun it got. I found that all these scholars were less interested in knowledge and far more interested in winning that quite popular “I’m right and you suck” game. Ever play one of those?
So I stopped playing, turned in my uniform, slipped into Diagone Alley for some refreshment, and started making a few…observations. Instead of searching for ultimate definitions, I thought why not just sit almost child-like and just observe how religion presents itself to me.
When I stopped chasing religion, it stopped running away from me, quickly turned around, and came to sit right beside me. My burdensome and competitive search for ultimate definitions turned into a far more enjoyable exercise in observation and conversation.
Observations and Conversations
The first observation is that religion, first and foremost, has to do with a family of core questions that live inside a family of core conversations.
What are the core questions?
- Who am I?
- Where did I come from?
- Why am I here?
- How should I live?
- Where am I going?
- What will happen to me after I die?
You may say, “I’m not particularly religious, but I think about those questions sometimes myself.”
And I say, “Exactly.”
You can walk away from the answers that other people have offered, but you can’t walk away from the questions themselves. That’s why those questions are called core questions. They are part of the human mind & heart. Even when we’re not particularly religious, we’re still having a conversation with those questions. We’re all asking those questions, in one way or another.
It just so happens that religion has been raising and answering those core questions the longest and so it holds the most information about how those questions have been raised and answered. And that is a valuable source of information we would do well not to ignore.
As you look over the core questions above, have your own conversation with them right now and ask yourself:
- Which one makes you just stop and think?
- Which one do you skip over because you don’t want to think about it right now?
- Which one would you introduce first to your children or to a young person who looks up to you?
- Which one are you struggling with right now?
- Which one are you at peace with right now?
