Someone commented a while back that I was creating my own religion with this blog and personal reflections. I asked myself whether that was true. Someone–I believe it was Tim Keller, although I cannot find the reference anywhere–defined “religion” as a point of view on what causes the most human flourishing. He said that some religions (like Buddhism) don’t even strictly require belief in a diety. I used to be a huge fan of Keller, so I read the books and watched the DVD series and that’s probably why I can’t find anything free on the internet that contains the same ideas. I was able to find this video. Only about the first 90 seconds of it matter for our purposes, and then he gets into a totally different topic with a lot of strawmen. But here’s the video:
I find it unfortunate that I spent the first 26 years of my life reading exclusively Christian literature, because I still see things through a distorted worldview a lot of the time. If anyone can suggest another definition of “religion,” I’m all ears. But it seems that this is what I have to work with, at least for now. So for a working definition of religion, we can just say that it’s a view of what causes flourishing and everybody has one.
So if I’m going to create my own religion, it had better be a good one.
I looked around for the difference between ethics and morality so I could speak more precisely and found this video that I actually think is really great:
Knowing the difference between these words shows me that personal values have a lot more to do with morality than ethics. I wish so much that I didn’t have to rush through writing these because I could say a lot more about the video. But for now, I’ll just say that some of my values are:
-Empathy
-Not being too certain of anything/being free to change my mind
-Honesty
-Community
According to me, I have the right to defend my values. But some people’s values are things like self-aggrandizement and sadism. Technically, I cannot prove that one set of values is inherently better than another. However, given that my values are what they are, I have the right to defend them. I can absolutely disagree with someone else’s point of view and still recognize that their values are as important to them as mine are to me. And someday, when humans are gone from the planet and the roaches have taken over, they will evolve to have ideas about what does and doesn’t matter that would seem foreign to us. But, everyone has to do the best they can.
In Sunday School, we learned about the book of Judges, which repeated over and over that when Israel was basically in anarchy, “all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes” (New Living Translation). This was supposed to be a bad thing. However, I honestly can’t think of a better solution. If we all banded together and had the same values, isn’t it likely that some or all of us would get totally screwed? Uniting under a common religious leader can lead to fewer conflicts but I would say it would be far worse than all of us individually trying our best to make it through life.
So to answer the question, maybe I am creating my own religion. I don’t like that word because “religion” carries with it the idea of certainty, and I want to be more flexible than that. I think of myself as one human among billions of humans trying to get it right, and probably succeeding to an average degree.
And my phone time is up.
References:
Drishti IAS: English. (2020, June 15). Ethics vs Morality: Concept Talk by Dr. Vikas Divyakirti (English) | Drishti IAS [YouTube video]. Retrieved 23 December 2021 from https://youtu.be/AepNuP_Tf90
Fight for Together. (2017, January 7). “Everyone is Religious” – Interview w/ Tim Keller [YouTube video]. Retrieved December 23, 2021 from https://youtu.be/FjxbbJ1e2n0