Attend to the truth: A Beginning and Mantra

I plan to use quotes or brief selections I come across in my reading to bounce off of in order to spur some incidental thinking. The first quote is from Debra Rienstra's recent So Much More: an Invitation to Christian Spirituality. There are of course countless beautiful and inspiring words to draw on from down through the centuries. The reason I'm giving this quote the role of launch pad and mantra for this blog is partially because it is so beautiful and so poignant, but partially also because of happenstance. It just happened to be one of the most interesting things I read in the 24 hours before starting this blog.

So without further ado, here's Ms. Rienstra:

"Perhaps, you might propose, all notions of the transcendent are equally far from an astoundingly incomprehensible truth. In that case you could indeed say that all religions lead to God or are equally mistaken about God. The other viable possibility is this: no matter how astoundingly incomprehensible the truth, some notions represent a more accurate perception than others. I live by this latter option, because it seems to me that the minute you grant any notion of truth at all, it follows as a matter of human dignity that we ought to pursue this truth as ardently as we can. Perhaps we stumble; perhaps we are limited in our perceptions; but we ought to try. After all, we live by various notions of truth whether we attend to them or not; better therefore to attend." p. 8

What struck me about this passage besides the obvious beauty of it (don't you think - even if you disagree with the substance?), is that it occurs within a sub-heading called "Spiritual but not Religious". The whole phenomenon, perhaps even movement, of religionless spirituality, and what motivates it, is something that I've wrestled with putting into words before. So, while on the one hand I was a little annoyed to find that someone had already dealt with the topic so thoroughly, and with such apparent ease - taking up less than two pages; on the other hand I experienced the excitement of that old familiar sense of recognition; of seeing laid out perfectly, thoughts which had banging around in my head but which I had not been able get nailed down. I could barely suppress shouting "Amen!".

If I can restate her point less elegantly, Rienstra seems to be arguing basically that it is more respectful of someone else's faith to disagree with them, than it is to just flippantly assume they believe the same things as you do. For many, disagreements over religious beliefs amount to nothing more than tasteless criticisms and useless arguments. Certainly inter-faith discussions contain many criticisms that are tasteless and many arguments that are useless, but there is a world of difference between charitable debate and fearful shouting matches. What those who want to discount, or at least down play, differences between faiths, fear above all is being judgmental. (As Rienstra also says, this fear does stem from some of the best human impulses.) After all, we are told to "judge not". What Rienstra seems to be saying though, is that it is ultimately much more judgmental of another's set of beliefs to not take seriously how it differs from yours and thus how at least one of the two of you has something wrong, than it is to say everything is in fundamental agreement. If someone were to tell me that Christian teaching consists of basically the same thing as all the other religions, I would feel a bit patronized. If you don't grant me the dignity to even theoretically choose wrongly, then you have taken away my ability to choose at all.

So while Rientstra is primarily addressing the age-old issue of religious pluralism, I'm interested in how her thought applies within the Christian community. If truth between religions matter then truth within a religion matters, and we should attend to it too. This is not to say that the only way to attend seriously to the truth is by formulating pure doctrine and excluding from the Church everyone who is in error. Obviously we are not able to do this, and probably shouldn't even want to. But that does not mean that the opposite is true and that no lines should ever be drawn. On what issues and how tightly to define these boundaries are always the trickiest issues, but that's not even what I'm getting at here. For me the mantra: "We all live by various notions of truth whether we attend to them or not; better therefore to attend." is relevant for those of us who feel that itch to pursue theological questions. Reading theology is for me a kind of devotional practice, and also a way of trying to live out at least one quarter of the Greatest Commandment. I say all this because I sometimes get the impression that some Christians look suspiciously at those of us who enjoy reading abstract or esoteric books of theology. As if we're needlessly complicating the simple faith of Jesus or even somehow heretically flirting with earning our salvation through the 'work' of study or contemplation. The important part of the quote is that we all "live by" different truths. As a professor of mine used to put it: "Ideas have legs." The fact is, obscure questions matter greatly to the Church and to individuals in their everyday lives because they affect in myriad unknown ways how we live out our lives together. Attending to that pursuit of truth in my own small way is what I aim to do with this space.