by CCW | 20 April 2023 17:00
There is all the difference in the world between education and indoctrination, the one opening us out to ways of understanding, the other compelling thought and expression. We live, it seems, in a world that looks more like George Orwell’s 1984 than Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Religion, like education, cannot be forced, a point which is constantly stressed in Chapel. Like classes, sports, and cadets, students are required to attend but no one can be compelled to believe, neither can Chapel affirm or confirm the various agendas and perspectives, personal beliefs or unbeliefs of students and faculty. It would be almost impossible to think how that could be.
The approach is rather that of the “dignity of difference” which has to do with a deeper sense of toleration. As Jonathan Sacks in a book written just after the events of 9-11 pointed it out, it means holding each form of religion accountable to its own principles. That requires having some understanding of different religions and the forms of their interaction.
Chapel belongs to the history and life of the School as an integral part of the educational project. While the service is Christian and derived from Anglican traditions that honour the School’s history, it is actually very generic and connects to the various practices in many other religious and philosophical cultures in terms of the reading of texts (scripture), of prayers and devotions and reflections, of ritual and symbol. There is not and cannot be any coercion of belief or thought, only the opening out of ideas and concepts that belong to questions that are perennial.
Religion or religions in their variety of expression have certainly been coercive and doctrinaire at times. Such is the sad and ugly truth of our brokenness and sin, our failures. And certainly, there are those who have very negative ideas about religion. Richard Dawkins regards the God of the Old Testament, as he puts it, as the most awful and vile figure in all literature. This prompted the former Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, Jonathan Sacks, to observe, “Oh, I see that you are a Christian atheist.” The term Old Testament is a Christian way of speaking about the Hebrew Scriptures. And while there are many difficult and challenging passages in the Scriptures, Dawkins overlooks the forms of interpretation that highlight the nature of human sin and evil in contrast to the idea of the Law and creation as intrinsically good.
The religions of the world also provide a constant corrective and a rebuke to all forms of self-righteousness, of presumption and indoctrination. Christopher Lasch notes that the spiritual discipline [of religion] is against self-righteousness and that while religion provides comfort, first and foremost, it challenges and confronts us with our short-comings. It is always self-critical. We confront the forms of our unknowing and the limits of our thinking. Only so are we opened out to what is greater than ourselves.
Just so in terms of the accounts of the Resurrection. They are not about any kind of triumphant assertion on the part of human thought and reason. They are instead about a breakthrough of the understanding about eternal life as the ground for our being and thinking. As such they connect to other traditions in the struggle to understand what it means to be human, about how to think the relation between soul and body, spirit and matter. What we see in the Resurrection accounts is similar to what we see in the accounts of the passion: our being opened to what is greater than ourselves and prior to ourselves. Life is posited; it is given and not by us. God is not the construct of our minds for that would be idolatry. And while the stories of the scriptures reveal in some sense or other what God seeks for our good in redemption, that does not mean that God can be reduced to simply what is for us, as if God were nothing more than a metaphor for human aspirations and agendas.
The stories of the Resurrection show the encounter between God in Christ and our humanity in its uncertainty and confusion. Along with the Road to Emmaus, the encounter between Christ and Mary Magdalene is especially poignant and brings out the radical idea of eternal life which does not negate the finite world and our experiences but transcends them without denying them. In other words, God cannot be reduced to our minds and experiences.
“Why weepest thou?” This is the question put to Mary both by the angels at the empty tomb and by Jesus himself. She came in grief and sorrow seeking the body of Christ. She encounters instead the risen Christ and is set in motion to the other disciples, “an apostle to the apostles.” She comes in grief and sorrow and leaves in joy and gladness. The breakthrough of the understanding comes to her by one word, her name: “Mary,’ Jesus says. At that moment she is opened out to something more though not less than what she had known and loved. There is a transformation in her but she does not become other than herself or another person or being; she becomes more fully herself and is set in motion towards the community; in short, to others. The Passion and the Resurrection belong to the essential insights about a reality greater than ourselves of which we are a part. It gives us a way to face the difficult realities of suffering and sin and evil. It is not a flight from the world but a way to face ourselves and our world. Such things belong to education, to our encounter with ideas and letting those ideas have their play in our minds.
(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, Head of English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy
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