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Proselytizing For Certainty: An Impossible Task

Proselytizing For Certainty: An Impossible Task

Last updated on: September 29, 2024 at 7:26 am by John Beckett

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Proselytizing For Certainty: An Impossible Task 2024-09-29T07:26:33-06:00 John Beckett

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The Threads algorithm has always sent me a steady stream of Exvangelicals. Lately – and, I think, not coincidentally – it’s also sending me a steady stream of Christian apologists, people who attempt to use evidence and logic to “prove” the truth of their particular form of Christianity.

I like religious discussion – and even religious debate – as much as the next religion nerd. But what I’m seeing isn’t deep theological conversation. It’s mainly young men trying to bait atheists with strawman arguments, cherry-picking evidence for their beliefs and dimissing evidence against them, having very little success in the process, and then insisting they won despite all evidence to the contrary.

Much of this is aggressive young men treating religion like a competitive sport. It’s not enough for them to be on what they think is the winning team. They want to be a star player… and to be seen as a star player.

But it’s more than that.

Proselytizing is the aggressive attempt to persuade other people to abandon their religion (or the lack thereof) and embrace yours. It has two primary goals. The first and obvious goal is to increase numbers in the religion. Historian Ronald Hutton says that Christianity replaced the native Pagan religions in Britain “simply because it cared more about winning, and demanded absolute victory.”

But proselytizing also has an inward-facing component. If you can persuade someone to go out and recruit for your religion, they’re far less likely to abandon it – either because they figure out it’s not all it’s supposed to be or because they just lose interest.

If you’ve been told all your life that the eternal fate of your soul depends on believing the “right” things, the fear of being wrong is tremendous. I grew up in this environment – I know this fear all too well. The apologists of Threads aren’t trying to convert atheists so much as they’re trying to convince themselves that they really do believe the “right” things. They’re proselytizing not for converts but for certainty for themselves.

And that’s an impossible task.

Paganism is not a proselytizing religion. I have no desire to convert these apologists to Paganism. I do hope they find the religious comfort and security they’re looking for, where ever they can find it. And I hope their arguments never persuade someone to leave a religion (or the lack thereof) they’re happy with because of fearmongering and dishonest debate.

With those goals in mind, these are my suggestions for anyone who wants to find certainty in their religion.

Learn about other religions

I left a Threads comment that said “some of y’all really need to take a course in comparative religion, or at least read a book or three from outside your own tradition.”

If you’re going to argue against a religion – or just decide that it’s not the religion for you – you need to understand what it is. And you need to understand what it is from the viewpoint of those who actually follow it, not just how it compares to your religion.

A quote I hear occasionally says that in Western religion, God is the lightbulb, but in Eastern religion, God is the light. Now, that’s an incredibly vague and high-level statement, and it normalizes monotheism – which, as a polytheist, I try not to do. But if you’ve only ever thought of the Divine as “God the Father” then it’s an easy way to see that there are other ways of conceptualizing something that is far greater than we are.

Your challenge, as someone who’s trying to learn about other religions, isn’t to decide which way is right and which way is wrong – at least not at this point. Your challenge is to understand and accept that different people approach religion and religious questions in very different ways, for reasons that are perfectly valid even if they’re very different from your own.

One warning: don’t waste time trying to look for “universal” religion. It doesn’t exist. “Deep down it’s all the same” erases beliefs and practices that are very different for very good reasons. And also “they can’t all be right” misses the point. The search for truth is a question for metaphysics and philosophy. Religion deals with the question of how we form and maintain relationships with the Divine, with our highest values, with other humans, and with the rest of the universe.

So read some books on Buddhism – that are written by Buddhists. The same thing for Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, modern Paganism, the world’s remaining indigenous religions, atheism, and as many other religions and traditions as you can. If nothing else, you’ll learn about people’s deepest beliefs and values – and that’s a very good thing.

Study the history of your own religion

I grew up going to Sunday School every Sunday until I left home for college. I thought I knew a lot about Christianity. Turns out I didn’t.

I knew nothing about Eastern Orthodoxy. Most of what I knew about Catholicism came from TV, and it included nothing about the Church Fathers. My knowledge of Luther, Calvin, and Wesley was superficial at best. I was in my late 20s before I learned that “the Rapture” was not something “real Christians had always believed” but rather a 19th century American invention.

Oh, I knew the Bible… or at least, I thought I did. But I knew the Bible as it was interpreted by 20th century fundamentalist Evangelical Protestants. If you take the Bible seriously, learn how it was and is interpreted by other Christians… and how it’s interpreted by Jews. What Christians call the Old Testament was Jewish long before it was Christian. Jewish tradition has context and linguistics (which is not the same as taking a Hebrew class in an Evangelical seminary) that can keep Christians from making many errors of ignorance.

This advice goes for everyone, not just for proselytizing Christians. If you’re a modern Pagan, learn where our religions came from – and more importantly, where they didn’t.

Fair warning, though: when you study the history of your religion – real history, not mythologized history and hagiography – you’ll learn that while good religion can and should be built on divine principles and on peoples’ experience of the divine, it’s ultimately a man-made institution. Which means it’s impossible to believe it’s “right” with any degree of certainty.

And you’ll also learn that the line I heard growing up “religion is what other people do – we have the truth” is simply not true. We’re all doing religion as best we can.

But if you’re looking for the truth, honest doubt is far better than false certainty.

Practice your own religion as deeply as you can

So what do you do if you can’t be sure your religion is “true”?

You practice it anyway.

Worship your God or Gods. Or if you come to the conclusion that there are no Gods, worship the highest virtues and values you can find. Worship is not bowing down in subservience. Rather, worship is declaring what is most worthy. As a polytheist I believe the Gods are most worthy, but you prefer to say that honesty, courage, and respect are most worthy, that’s a good thing too.

Study your tradition. The fact that it’s not absolutely true doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value. Almost certainly it does, or it would have died out long before now. Good religion helps us connect to the divine, relate to each other, and – perhaps most importantly – deal with the Big Questions of Life.

Where do we come from? Why are we here? How should we live? What happens after death? Yes, it would be great to have precise answers we could accept with absolute confidence. But tentative answers are all our ancestors had for thousands and thousands of years. They worked for them, and they’ll work for us.

Make the world a better place

I’m trying to be as non-judgmental as I can in this post, but I’m going to be very judgmental about this: if your religion teaches that the main purpose of this life – this one life that may very well be the only one we get, even though I think it’s not – is to qualify for the “good place” in an afterlife, you’re following a decidedly unhelpful religion.

Instead, spend your time learning and growing, and helping others learn and grow.

Work to allieviate suffering, and to reduce or eliminate the causes of suffering.

Work to tear town systems that oppress others and replace them with systems that support and lift up others.

Do something, no matter how small, to make the world a better place here and now.

Religious certainty is not possible, and claiming that is possible is a great and harmful sin. You can’t have it. The good news is that you don’t need it.

Marcus Aurelius probably didn’t say it, but it’s still true:

Live a good life. If there are Gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are Gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no Gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.

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