I've been wondering for some time how to explain the Christian / religious viewpoint—and thus some of the preoccupations of Christians and other religious people—to the irreligious or areligious. From the outside, Christians, Muslims, and other religious people seem to do some completely unreasonable and bizarre things. Those who don't believe (and in what... well, I'll get there in a second) shake their heads in disbelief and think, "These people are either crazy fanatics or fools. Who else would do such things?" I know. I used to be on the outside looking in, shaking my head, too. That was before I left the majority and joined the minority, and even then after I started to absorb the message and think about its implications.
So, there came to me last night what I consider the key to this puzzle: how to explain to those who aren't religious what all of this strange behaviour is about. It's a lot of ground to cover. I tend to ramble, so the explanation may extend to ridiculous lengths, but I'm going to try anyway.
Before I start, I want to reassure the non-believers in the audience, which these days is probably most of the people who will read this. I don't want to spook you, or turn you off with the idea that this is some effort at conversion. It's not. It's an effort to communicate to you the mindset of religious folk, and an understanding of why those actions and customs that to you seem so bizarre and even idiotic are in fact logical and reasonable. You've probably watched the Discovery Channel with fascination as the narrator explains why women in Africa put huge discs in their lips, or weld metal rings around their necks. In the end it all seems to make some sort of sense, although you wouldn't do it yourself. Well, I hope that this is what this essay does: lets you see inside the religious world, allows you to understand why people do things and avoid doing other things, even as you wouldn't think of doing it yourself. So, here we go.
Like all good stories, I'm going to ask you to suspend disbelief once. I'm going to give you a premise and a little context around it, and then take you through the logical steps of seeing where that premise leads. I'm not going to ask you to believe everything in the Bible, or the Qu'ran, or any other book. I'm going to ask you to imagine, for the sake of argument, only one thing.
Imagine that you have a soul.
Now, by "a soul," I don't mean that amorphous, ill-defined concept that most of us carry around that there's more to us than our physical bodies, and that there may be something rather undefined after death, but that there "must be" something afterward. When I say, "a soul," I mean the kind of soul that is outlined in the Bible, or the Qu'ran: something of vital importance to you, as real as your body, or your house, or the countryside or cityscape where you live. As real as the planet. As real and important as anything else that concerns you. The kind of soul that can be nourished or damaged. That last bit is important: imagine that you have the kind of soul that can be healthy, energetic, flabby, sick, or horribly diseased. Imagine it like a second body: something you can look after, or not look after. Something that can be affected by its environment, for better or worse. There. Now you're getting the picture of the kind of soul I'm talking about. Hold that thought.
Look around at other things that are important in your life. Your body. Your relationships with other people. Your home, your property. The planet. The other creatures that live on this planet. How do people treat these things? How do they see them?
Well, if you lived in Vancouver (you might, I don't know), you would see the majority of people almost fanatically opposed to smoking. Catching a whiff of second-hand smoke, according to some of the more strident anti-smokers here, is akin to being beaten with a metal pipe. It's not just that some people choose not to smoke, but that most people are horrified that they should ever have to smell cigarette smoke. Smokers are belittled and vilified as weak, inconsiderate dolts who don't care for their own bodies. They must be stupid, apparently, because so many people shake their heads and say, "If only they knew what they were doing to their bodies, they wouldn't smoke." Cigarette companies are held up as examples of evil incarnate, of being staffed by people with no morals and no concern for humanity, who care only about making a buck and hooking young kids on their cancer-inducing death sticks. The language that Vancouverites use to describe cigarette company executives is extreme; the horror is palpable.
You would also see hordes of fitness-crazed, organic-food munching people, obsessed with what goes into their bodies and what activities they do. They care for their bodies the way some teenaged boys from my school used to care for their cars: carefully checking and rechecking them, only using the best fuels, and only taking them out on sunny days. The vast majority of these people are simply interested in staying healthy, but there are those that are so fastidious about their own bodies that it leads them to do odd things, such as request a detailed list of ingredients for half the items on a restaurant menu. My buddy's wife insists that everything their children eat must be organic, including the chickens. You get the idea.
You would also hear a lot, here, about hunting grizzly bears, wolves, and various other animals. Hunters, apparently, are sickos who like killing things, let loose to pillage our forests of their natural riches. They damage the ecosystem and damage the planet, and besides, their pasttime borders on the sadistic.
Don't even bring up the topic of logging at a party, unless you're the type who likes to start fights. Logging is either a way to support families and towns in remote areas, or a violent rape of Mother Nature, depending upon to whom you're talking. A sixty-something grandmother was just let out of jail for going—for the umpteenth time—to whichever valley the environmentalists have decided to save this year and chaining herself to something important. People feel so strongly about leaving the planet intact that several have been severely injured in the process, and those on the other side of the fence from the injured find the fact that there are fallen opponents vaguely satisfying. It is, in fact, a war in the woods.
Then there is the problem of air pollution. How many people despise SUV owners, not just because it seems that they can't drive worth squat, but because their huge monster vehicles spew three or four times the crap into the air that my tiny car does? We even have The Bicycle People, who hate all cars and think that we should all park our cars and walk or cycle to work (although my current 50km trip would be problematic on a bicycle).
At the broadest level there is also climate change. Many people believe that the earth is heating up, and that this is a direct result of pollution of various kinds. Governments meet about these sorts of things, and try (often in vain) to abandon local interests for global interests and so make the world a better place for everyone. The personal becomes political, as the aforementioned SUV drivers are accused of frying future generations because of the crap their beasts are spewing into the air now.
So these days, at least in first world countries where very few people are stressing over basic survival problems, many, many people are concerned about their bodies, their cities, and the environment in general. On personal, local, and global scales, many people are concerned, talking, and acting to change the world they can see and touch.
Now, think back to your soul. The one we're supposing, for the sake of argument, that you have. The one that was described above. Remember, this soul is as real to you and important to you as your body, or any of these other things that people are getting all hepped up about. As you'll recall, this soul can be healthy or ill. It can be in a "good" environment that will help it, or a "bad" environment that may injure it, just as your body can. Remember also that, according to many religions, your soul is more important than your body, because your body will eventually die but your soul won't.
So, you have a soul, and whether you choose to look after that soul or not, you can't help but see things in your environment and your own activities in terms of how they might affect your soul. Just as someone going for a half-pound Lardo Burger and a big tub of greasy fries is fully aware that this will clog his arteries, since you believe that you have a soul you will be aware that certain activities or certain environments may damage that soul. You may still choose to do those things, or hang out in those environments, but the awareness is there.
Now, let's say that you want to take care of your soul. You want it to be healthy and in good shape for the afterlife. You want a good relationship with God, because a good relationship with God is very good for your soul. Obviously, you want to avoid activities that will damage your soul; the greater the potential damage, the more you'll want to avoid those activities. You'll also want your loved ones to avoid activities that will damage their souls, just as you would want them to avoid activities that would damage their bodies. In this context, seeing your son head off to a Marilyn Manson concert might be as worrisome as having him tell you that he's taken up "extreme parachuting." It's easy for non-believers (in souls) to laugh at believers, seeing their worry over the more violent, anti-everything music, or radical art, or teaching homosexuality in the schools as nothing more than the nervous ravings of people who long for more innocent times. However, if you can imagine that these people see a different dimension to life than you do, and that from that point of view these things take on a radically different appearance, then you're beginning to get the drift.
Believers see some activities as damaging to the soul. Some music is soul-enhancing; some is soul-destroying. Just as some lifestyles are good for your body and some not, some lifestyles are good for your soul, some are toxic. Just as homosexual sex carries with it a high risk of your body catching AIDS, so it might (depending upon what you believe contributes to the health or sickness of your soul) be toxic to your soul. Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe in blood transfusions. People who aren't Jehovah's Witnesses (including many Catholics, I might add) think that they're nuts. They're not nuts. They simply see blood transfusions as procedures that, although they help the body, destroy the soul. To them, it's not some simple life-and-death decision. It is, instead, a decision between one life (in the body) and another life (in the soul): saving the body may kill the soul. Not an easy decision for someone who sees both as important. So, in the area of personal choice, soul-believers may make very different decisions from non-believers, because their decisions have an additional dimension.
However, beyond personal choice there is the choice of others around you. Since you believe that you have a soul (for the purposes of this essay), you also believe that other people have souls. So, it pains you greatly to see a loved one doing something that would damage or destroy their soul. How many children have urged their parents to stop smoking? How many parents have tried to prevent their children from jumping off the cliffs at Lynn Canyon into the river? How many teachers have tried to educate children about sex so that they won't ruin their lives through sexually-transmitted disease and/or unexpected pregnancies? We try to influence, even control, the behaviour of other people all the time, and it's not always a control freak thing. Often, we see someone we care about doing something that we know will damage them, and we try to stop them. So, then, if you believe in a soul, and you believe that they are damaging their soul, or destroying their relationship with God, and that this will result in lasting (or eternal?) harm, wouldn't you try to stop that person from damaging themselves? Even if your definition of "themselves" and their definition differ? What would you do if you met a man who believed that they didn't have a body, who was about to jump off an office tower? "I won't get hurt," he tells you, "I have no substance. I'll just float off into the clouds." He looks solid enough to you. Would you try to save him? Or would you shrug and say, "Oh, well, jump then"? If you see someone whom you believe has a soul doing something that you think will damage them, but they don't believe, wouldn't you just as much try to save them?
Now think about the effects of others' behaviour on you. If you're a non-smoker, how do you feel about smoke? If you own a house, how would you feel about your neighbour dumping garbage on your side of the property line? Even if they dumped trash on their side, how do you feel about the stench? In Vancouver, there have been several instances of people living in rural settings complaining about pig farms or mushroom growers several houses away. These places reek, and that smell affects the health of nearby homeowners, not to mention property values. I know non-smokers here who freak out if they catch a whiff of smoke while sitting on an outdoor patio. "Your smoking is now affecting me, so it's my business" they cry. Personally, I think that they're overreacting, but can you see how someone who believes in their own soul and wants to keep it healthy might object to wading, all day and every day, through a culture full of soul-damaging images, music, entertainment, and education?
So here you are, trying to care for your soul, and maintain a close relationship with God. According to your religion (for example), this requires that you have reverence for God, and disrespect toward Him is certainly going to cause some problems. You try to think and act in ways that will improve your relationship with God, just as your health-conscious sister eats only organic food and doesn't smoke. However, your next door neighbour is into hard core rap and heavy metal groups that worship the devil (or purport to for publicity reasons). Isn't this like living next to someone who smokes like a chimney, or someone who dumps smelly garbage in their own back yard? Sure, it's his back yard, but it affects you, too. You worry that your kids are going to hear his music and decide to try listening to it, just as you might worry that your kids are going to see him smoking and decide to try that, too.
What if part of protecting your soul is avoiding the seven deadly sins: pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, and sloth? How would you then feel about coworkers of the opposite sex in your office strutting about in outfits that show deep cleavage, accentuate curves, or reveal... um... more intimate things? How about coworkers telling racy jokes? What about all of the ads on television telling us to consume, consume, consume? How do you feel about living in a culture that thrives on pride, envy, gluttony (materialism), lust, and greed (more materialism)? When Christians speak out against these things, "enlightened" people (as they like to call themselves) snicker. However, a lot of those enlightened people are also very concerned about pollution, the ozone layer, and global warming. They're concerned about violence in society, sexism, and patriarchal oppression. The only reason that they're not also concerned about moral values in society is that they don't believe that they have the kinds of souls that can be damaged by a decadent society. They don't believe that society is toxic to their spirituality, so they laugh at those people who do.
Think about your soul again, and look out into the world you live in. Think about the seven deadly sins, which for the sake of argument we'll say you're supposed to avoid. Do you live in a society that helps you do that, or one that works against that goal? If you're an activist type, wouldn't you work to change the world so that it will be more healthful for souls? Heck, there are lots of environmental activists working to make the world a better place (as they define "better"). Why shouldn't there also be spiritual activists trying to change the world to make it a better place (as they define "better")? The only problem is that these activists are condemned for being backward-looking, and for wanting to restrict the liberty of others, even as we laud environmental activists who want to restrict our liberty to drive gas-guzzling SUVs. The difference in perspective comes from lack of understanding: everything changes once you believe that you have a soul.
