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Excerpted from Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in
an Age of Disbelief. (c) 2001 by Huston Smith. Reprinted with
permission of HarperSanFrancisco. All rights reserved.
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The crisis that the world finds itself in as it swings on the hinge of
a new millennium is located in something deeper than particular ways of
organizing political systems and economies. In different ways, the
East and the West are going through a single common crisis whose cause is
the spiritual condition of the modern world. That condition is
characterized by loss -- the loss of religious certainties and of transcendence with
its larger horizons. The nature of that loss is strange but ultimately
quite logical. When, with the inauguration of the scientific worldview,
human beings started considering themselves the bearers of the highest
meaning in the world and the measure of everything, meaning began to ebb and the
stature of humanity to diminish. The world lost its human dimension,
and we began to lose control of it.
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The sandwich man between placards announcing that the end is near
is telling us something important, even though it is not what he thinks it is.
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The beginning of a new millennium presents itself as a fitting occasion
to ponder this situation. The movements that precede millennial shifts
have come and gone for this round, but before they get shelved for another
thousand years, they merit moment's reflection. The anthropologist
Victor Tuner suggested that these movements are to cultures what rites of
passage are to individuals. They signal moments of change and transition,
calling individuals and societies to connect with the symbolic roots in their
past in order to prepare themselves to take the next -- often frightening --
step into the future. To grasp this point, we need not take the
rhetoric of such movements literally. The sandwich man between placards
announcing that the end is near is telling us something important, even though the
end is not what he thinks it is. He is not just protesting our reigning
culture. However falteringly, he is gesturing toward a heavenly city
that offers an alternative to this earthly one, which is always deeply
flawed.
This gives me a way to think about the book I have written, for it does
indeed look back at our ancestral roots in the hope that doing so can
help us understand the confusions of our present period. Cultural critics
have been taking this approach for a century or more, so I owe it to the
reader to explain why I have taken it upon myself to add to the library. In
short, what is new here?
In a word, what is new is simplification. The danger it risks, of
course, is oversimplification, and I take that risk on every page. If it be
wondered where I get the courage to take on that risk, the answer is
from the example of Irving Berlin. Do not laugh, for in philosophy, I am he.
I will explain.
I happened to catch the Today show the morning after Irving
Berlin died (at the age of 101, as I recall), and I was surprised to find that
Today had invited a world-class musician, Isaac Stern, to
reflect on the lifework of this tunesmith. The host of the show wanted to learn
from Stern the secret of Irving Berlin's success. As a musician, Berlin was
so mediocre that he could play only in the key of C, and to modulate to
other keys, he had to build a piano that transposed by pulling levers. Yet
this run-of-the-mill musician became the most successful songwriter of the
twentieth century, composing over one hundred hits, many of which will
continue into the new millennium. How did Stern account for the
discrepancy between Berlin's modest musical talent and his achievements?
Stern's answer was so direct that it was breathtaking. Berlin's
philosophy of life (Stern proceeded to explain) was simple. He saw life as
composed of a few basic elements: life and death, loneliness and love, hope and
defeat -- not many more. In making our way through these givens,
affirmation is better than complaint, hope more viable than despair,
kindness nobler than its opposite. That was about it. But because
Berlin believed those platitudes implicitly, he helped people cut through the
ambiguities and complexities of a confusing century.
So, piggybacking on Irving Berlin, what is obvious to?
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Built into the human makeup is longing for a "more" that the world
of everyday experience cannot requite. This outreach strongly suggests
the existence of the something that life reaches for in the way that
the wings of birds point to the reality of air.
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First, that the finitude of mundane existence cannot satisfy the human
heart completely. Built into the human makeup is longing for a "more"
that the world of everyday experience cannot requite. This outreach
strongly suggests the existence of the something that life reaches for in
the way that the wings of birds point to the reality of air. Sunflowers
bend in the direction of light because light exists, and people seek food
because food exists. Individuals may starve, but bodies would not
experience hunger if food did not exist to assuage it.
The reality that excites and fulfills the soul's longing is God by
whatsoever name. Because the human mind cannot come within light-years
of comprehending God's nature, we do well to follow Rainer Maria Rilke's
suggestion that we think of God as a direction rather than an object.
That direction is always toward the best that we can conceive, as the
formula of theology's Principle of Analogical Predication indicates: when we use
objects and concepts from the natural world to symbolize God, the first
step is to affirm what is positive in them; the second step is to deny
to God what is limiting in them; and the third step is to elevate their
positive features to the supereminent degree (which is to say, to the
highest point that our imaginings can carry us). With God and the
world categorically distinguished but nowhere disjoined, other things fall
into place in the way that this book indicates.
Related Links
Mystics Speak The Same Language
Huston Smith, a leading expert on world religions, discusses the
similarities of world religions, and the relationship of science and
religion in the next millennium. Interview.
World Religions: A Status Report
In this insightful and heart-warming conversation, Huston Smith draws
on his years of wisdom and experience to address the challenging questions
of how the faith traditions survive in our increasingly multicultural world.
Forum.
The Best Spiritual Writing of 1998
Huston Smith offers his unique perspective on the similarities and
differences among religions. Noelle Oxenhandler also discusses the
gray area between religions--her eclectic spiritual background is uniquely
American. And John Loudon, executive editor at HarperSanFrancisco,
explains how these questions, arguments and discussions, become the
best spiritual writing. Forum.
