I was having a conversation at work with the other chaplains and student chaplains the other day that got me pondering on my evening walk about the decline of religion.
The conversation we had was about an article written by a pastor who was talking about a recent personal tragedy in his life and how they article seemed to be filled with pious platitudes and lacked authenticity of what a real struggle with tragedy looked like. One of the other chaplains remarked that it doesn’t do the church any favors when a pastor doesn’t admit they struggle with life life just like everybody else.
it was this conversation that sent me down the worm hole thinking about why religion is in decline. Now, this is my more cynical side, but it seems to be what I’m best at so here goes…
If religion is a business, which it is, what are the products it has been peddling all these millennia? I would say two — eternal life and inner peace. Now, one of these products sold a lot better than they other one. Eternal life was the real money maker for most of the history of religion. The promise of heaven and the threat of hell sure built a lot of temples, mosques, churches and CAREERRS. But that product isn’t selling so well nowadays for lots of reasons I imagine. So, religion as of late has really doubled down on its secondary product, inner peace. But this doesn’t sell as well, because it can be more easily verified than heaven and hell. Ask any religious person, “So, how’s that search for inner peace going? Do you still need to see the therapist you’ve been seeing? Still taking the anti-psychotics?” You may not get an honest answer to those questions because religious people seem to be well trained in putting on a good face and making everything look all hunky-dory on the outside like the pastor in the article that spurred my thinking about this topic in the first place. I mean, if they are selling inner peace, they think that vulnerability is a lack of confidence in their product. But, in fact, this backfires. Whatever inner peace we experience in life seems to come from the knowledge that we are not in this alone, that our struggles are everyone’s struggles.
Inner peace has always been a tough sell for religions and even more so today. Back in the old days, you could use peoples restlessness to redirect them back to the primary money maker, eternal salvation. At least this had the positive outcome of acknowledging honestly that this life was rough for everyone. Saint Augustine used to say that we weren’t supposed to have inner peace in this life because this wasn’t our true home, that we are basically living in exile at the moment. “Our hearts are restless until they rest in God”, he said. And the prayers of the rosary that I say reflect this mentality….”to thee do we send up our sighs mourning and weeping in this valley of tears, to thee to we cry….and after this our exile…” I find some comfort in knowing that life is hard for everyone. But people don’t buy the whole, “just wait till you get to heaven and things will be better” anymore and promising religion as the path to inner peace in this life doesn’t seem to work either.
I am not consoled by the promise of eternal life. I am not consoled by the promise of inner peace in the hear and now. The only consolation seems to be the fact I’m not alone in the suffering.
ryanwriting 