I have spent much of my adult life wrestling with the complexities of religion, its effect on my own life and the world around me. So, when someone asked last night at dinner what my core spiritual value was, I felt a little stuck. I don’t live my life by the rules of any key statements, and my core beliefs, if they do exist, aren’t exclusively religious. That might be surprising given that my life has been so intimately wrapped up in religion.
“There is no God and we are his disciples,” was my initial reply. Paraphrasing the philosopher John Caputo, when it comes to God I think in terms of insistence, rather than existence. I don’t believe in a supernatural being who watches and controls everything, but I do think an insistence to live in particular ways is wrapped into the folds of our religiosity. So, I said that living a life of love is key for me and that such a life will do you no harm. But it will cost you.
Attempting to live a life marked by graciousness and loving kindness will fuck you up; it will expose flaws deep in your psyche; it will challenge your sanity daily; it will expose hypocrisies, weaknesses, and blatant bullshit like nothing else. And there will often be little in the way of positive result because, as Amy Winehouse once sang, “Love is a losing game.” She was singing about romantic love, but I don’t think it’s very different with any other kind of love.
What I probably should have said is that I am just trying to be a nicer person, because that’s the truth. There are so many assholes in the world, and I don’t want to be one if I can help it. I have let go of so many lofty religious aims and drives, not out of resignation but because I don’t think they work in people’s lives. I came of age with forms of Christianity riddled with obligations to “win the world for Jesus” or “take back the culture.” That kind of moralism made life more of a duty than a joy. I saw many people crumple under the weight of lives they were not capable of living once their resolve or willpower ran out. And I ran out of steam as well. I didn’t walk away, but I did seek to reframe my thinking about these things.
Years ago, I saw U2 in concert. The band was touring on the back of its album All That You Can’t Leave Behind. The tour’s logo was the outline of a suitcase with a heart in the middle. I’ve always been interested in that album’s title. It’s a strange inverted statement—rather than thinking about what you take with you, what can you not afford to leave behind? It begs a different kind of inventory. Having traveled a lot in life, I know you can’t take everything with you (I’m not a multiple-suitcase traveler), but some things you do: passport, socks, underwear. The basics.
When it comes to religion, I feel similarly. In its static form, we accumulate lots of stuff: ideas, dogmas, opinions, and doctrines on anything and everything. But when religion goes mobile, when it shifts and turns, when conventional wisdom is questioned and it’s time to move on, a cull is called for. That heart in a suitcase became a talisman for me, giving visual shape to the one thing I can’t leave behind: love. Some have told me it is not enough—that there is more to life, religion, and Christianity than love. But I don’t think the problem is that love is not enough; it is that we are not ready for all that love entails.