Magazine letter February 2024
“Religion is not, as people often assume, a set of beliefs to be adhered to, or arguments to be made and defended. It is an experience to be immersed in. Praying is meaningless until you start to pray… God makes no sense until you start to talk to him. Then, strangely enough, all sorts of other things start to make sense too. It is hard, if not impossible to explain, and yet it is the simplest thing in the world. We have always done it. We always will.” Paul Kingsnorth, writing for the website ‘UnHerd’.
In our increasingly secular world any kind of ‘organised religion’ is regarded as something strange and peculiar. People instead claim to be ‘spiritual’. Which rather sounds to me like claiming to be able to swim without getting wet! Religion is the embodiment of spirituality, it is what gives it shape and purpose, and allows the experience of generations to be shared and learned from.
There is nothing blind about faith that makes sense, and indeed what is believed should be subjected to sense. There is much that made sense to our forefathers that doesn’t make sense to us now. As it is with any field of human experience and enquiry, as the years go by new knowledge and experience should challenge old ideas and beliefs. We simply know now more about how the world works and this should lead us to question the understanding received from past ages. Question certainly, and lead to an evolution of those beliefs, but not to deny outright common and natural human experience and need – babies and bathwater spring to mind.
I recall that so much of my childhood and teen anxiety was resolved when I discovered talking to God. Not resolved through miraculous answers, but in the act of telling there was great comfort and even helpful revelation. I discovered that it really was ‘the simplest thing in the world’.
The first verse of an old hymn goes:
What a friend we have in Jesus,
all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry
everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit,
O what needless pain we bear,
all because we do not carry
everything to God in prayer!
Trite it maybe, but true it certainly is.