Without questioning, faith is idolatrous. Just as patriotism without questioning risks becoming idolatrous nationalism, so faith without questioning risks becoming idolatrous religion.
To explain: when faith is defined as unquestioning acceptance of “tenets or traditions,” whether drawn from the Bible or doctrine or both, then the object of faith is no longer God, but the tenets and traditions themselves. Something other than God has been given an absolute status – which is what makes it idolatrous.
Of course, there are different kinds of questioning. Some is unproductive, trivial and silly: “If God is all-powerful, can God make a square circle?” Only slightly more serious is the sophomoric, “If God made everything, who made God?” Some questions are based on misunderstandings that can be corrected.
And sometimes perpetual questioning becomes a justification for eternal fence-sitting and indecision.
But questioning also serves a necessary religious function: it prevents us from thinking that there can ever be a final formulation of “the way things are.” Our words and concepts, no matter how sacred or scientific, can only point to a stupendous and wondrous Mystery beyond all language. That is their function: they are pointers, and some point better than others. Sometimes language can even mediate the Mystery, the sacred.
But none of our “tenets or traditions” can be the last word, the final word. They are creatures, creations. To think of them as absolute is to give them a status that belongs to God alone.
Originally posted on The Washington Post website. For more discussion on Idolatry, click here.
Thank you, first let me just say your “Heart of Christianity” and “God I never knew” put into words what I have always wanted to express.
In reply to what you have said then, there is also a scripture in John, I think, that says many walks the path to God but some climbs in like a thief, or something like that, that particular chapter isn’t too familiar to me. But what I understood from first few readings is that it seems to suggests that Christ is The Way and all other ways are like cheating, climbing the fence, from a back door rather than the door proper. How is your view on that chapter in the Bible, if you know which one I’m referring to. Sorry I couldn’t quote it exactly nor know which particular chapter in the NT, but I do remember it in the Gospel of John, not the letters and not the Revelation though.
I couldn’t find a place to ask you a question, and since your post here is about questioning I thought I’ll ask here.
The question is: how do you understand “broad is the way that leads to destruction, narrow is the path to salvation”. I don’t remember that scripture exactly, but it has been used to justify Christianity as the ONLY true path to the exclusion of all other religions. I have just read your “Heart of Christianity” and I want to know your understanding on that phrase in the Bible.
Your biblical memory is good. Jesus (like much of the OT) spoke of two ways, one that leads to life and one that leads to death (both states this side of physical death).
As I understand the Bible and Jesus, “the broad way” is the way of convention, that is, conventional wisdom about what reality and life are like, and how then we should live. This is how most of us most of the time live. When we were children, we were socialized into a way of seeing life – which basically means seeing as our culture sees. Psychologically, socialization is about internalizing the cultural messages of our time.
It has always been so. This is “the broad way” – it’s “what everybody knows,” and how most of us live. In a state of “mass hypnosis” and “consensual paranoia,” to use phrases from Sam Keen.
The “narrow way” is the path of centering in that which is beyond convention and culture – namely, God, the sacred, “isness.” Not a particular religion’s conception of God, but the sacred, isness, beyond all words. Known in many religious traditions? You betcha. Misunderstood in equally many religious traditions? You betcha.
The narrow way – in Christianity, Buddhism, Lao Tzu, and others – is the path of centering in the sacred – “what is” beyond the conventions and domestications and projections created by our words.
Then your question moves to whether language about “the narrow way” in the gospels needs to be understood to mean that Jesus and Christianity are the narrow way, the one and only way. Have many Christians taken this for granted? Yes. Do a significant number of Christians today vociferously insist upon it? Yes.
But I do not think this is correct. “The way” that we see in Jesus is known elsewhere, in all of the enduring religions of the world (the ones that have stood the test of time).
For those of us who are Christians, Jesus “embodies “the way” – this is the central meaning of “incarnation,” which means “en-flesh-ment.” In Jesus, his life and his death, we see “the way” embodied. But to say this need not mean, and should not mean, that the narrow way is unknown elsewhere. It is known in the great wisdom traditions of the world’s enduring religions.
Did Jesus know and travel the narrow way? Oh yes. Do you have to know the word, the name, the two syllables Jesus, in order to travel that way. Oh no.
God is. There is one God. There is only one God. We are to worship and revere only God. We are to worship and revere God as the only God. We are to worship and revere God as our only source of spiritual authority. We are to worship or revere or give spiritual authority to nothing else – no person, no animal, no object. This singular God is to be worshiped directly and be worshiped only directly. The direct worship of God occurs only between an individual and God. Nothing is to interfere with the direct worship of God. There is no replacement and no alternative and no supplement to the direct worship of God. No enabling or intervening or representative object, animal, or person is needed or required for the direct worship of God. No intercessory, surrogate, substitute, guide, or leader is needed or required for the direct worship of God. The direct worship of God does not require any symbol in the form or presence of any person, animal, or object – including books and the content of those books. Certainly in the Old Testament, the longer historical purpose of the stories has not been to provide answers, but to provoke questions, inspire reflection, and initiate discussion. The more we try to elevate scripture to a level of indisputable sanctity, the more the scripture enjoins us from doing so. When “something other than God has been given an absolute status,” then that is idolatry. Faith, without a questioning spirit, is idolatry (Borg 2010). Having so much reverence for the scripture that we assume to have the authority to tell others how to live – is an act of idolatry. Holding the scripture in such high esteem that we assume to have authority to tell others what to believe and what not to believe – is an act of idolatry. Raising the scripture as an indisputable source that grants us authority to delineate how others can and cannot behave – is an act of idolatry. Dogmatic belief in the scripture or the authoritarian use of the scripture is idolatry and is not an act of faithfulness.