Theologically speaking

I’ve been obsessed lately with the question of theology, philosophy and what it means to believe in god, organized religion, etc. I grew up Jewish, attended Hebrew school and still consider myself a Jew — know myself to be a Jew.

But I have little use for organized religion, which I find to be nothing more than an excuse to promote the organization and proffer an array of rules designed to control us and rob us all of our free will as sentient human beings.

I describe myself on my Facebook profile as an Agnostic Jewish Existentialist, which means, I guess, that I have my doubts but remain culturally and ethically Jewish while also deeply aware of the tenuous nature of existence and the world around us.

Chris Hedges — quoting the great theologians — refers to it as an acknowledgement of sin, but not sin in the context of having done terrible things. Original sin in this context does not refer to individual deeds but to our collective nature, our inherent potential for doing wrong — a potential we share with all other humans.

But there also is awe — an awe that comes from the knowledge that amid the war and disease that plagues the planet, amid the hideous things of which all of us are capable, there remains the capacity for beauty and quiet and love.

I’ve been trying for years to put this kind of thinking into words, to explain my sense of the world, my sense that there must be a greater power. On some level, I guess, I am a deist, or perhaps a transcendentalist — I believe that this power is both within us and around and about us and it is contained in everything.

James Carroll, writing on Monday in The Boston Globe about the death of his friend Krister Stendahl, a theologian, explained it this way — paraphrasing Stendahl:

St. Paul’s notion of sin was not “sins,” the misdeeds that haunt a miserable penitent before a judging God, but rather the condition of being caught in flawed human structures. The good news for Paul consisted in Christ’s having submitted to those structures as a way of transforming them. Social justice, not individual perfection, was Paul’s concern.

I am not a Christian, as I said, but there is something in this passage that strikes me as very real, as true to the world as I understand it — a world that is certain, but that is full of humanity. We express our hope in the future by doing good works — by donating a few cans to the food pantry, by volunteering at a soup kitchen, by protesting injustice and war, by working to repair the world around us.

It also requires that we acknowledge and accept our imperfections. This seems connected to something Chris Hedges told me during an interview a few weeks ago. Faith, he said, “demands a greater intellectual commitment than the totalitarian approach and it accepts that we are not perfect.”

“I say that the prerequisite for me is to face the capacity for evil, to accept that no act that we do is safe from self interest, to see in the other our own imperfections and to understand the humanity of those who oppose us,” he says.

Democracy requires the same leap.

For democracy to function properly, he says, we need to accept our own fallibility.

“I think a democratic culture is based on the idea of human sin,” he says. “You don’t want to allow any single person or group to achieve absolute power because it will inevitably descend into totalitarianism.

“Democracy is a check in that nobody is allowed to achieve unlimited power,” he adds.

In the end, I think what this comes down to is an ability to keep moving forward, to keep fighting to make things better on both a larger and smaller scale even though the deck seems stacked against us, even though the uncertainties of the world are a given.

Albert Camus, in The Myth of Sisyphus, writes of this faith, though as an atheist he does not put it that way. To keep going, to commit to life, to remain connected (Buber’s concept) in the face of so much sorrow is to be committed to something beyond ourselves.

I can’t explain it any other way.

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Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet