PP/1H/01/14
RELIGION AND ALL THAT
I suppose that a good many of you object to religion. You don’t like it, you fail to see why you should be bothered about it, and you think that the world is a difficult xxxxx enough place to live in without adding God and the Bible to its dullness and complications. Like the soldier xxx on the Eastern front, who was tired of his wife’s letters about difficulties at home, you ask to be left alone to enjoy the bloody war in peace. In certain moods I am inclined to agree, but I know that my agreeing is what we call escapism. It is no use for a man who has fallen into a shark-infested sea to say that he is not interested in sharks; his disbelief in sharks may be sincere enough, but they will eat him all the same.
Why bother about religion? Look at all the harm that it has done. How many innocent people have been mudered because of it, in wars between one religion and another, as in the crusades; or what is perhaps worse, in wars between one xtn church and another, in quarrels between Catholic and Protestant. Such things make us want to get rid of it as soon as possible. But one thing we can’t do is to get rid of a thing until we understand it. We never got rid of malaria and smallpox and cholera by saying that we weren’t interested.
And look at what religion means in some of the towns we know; how it is associated with had art, and often with narrowness, rotten thinking, and all kinds of xxxxxxxxxxxx uncharitableness. It’s so stuffy. But one never got air into a room without finding out where the windows were, or being drastic enough to knock down the walls.
Thus we cannot ignore religion. It is a force in the world; it is simply there, like the sea. We may, of course, object to many things in the world: the sea prevents communications, xxxx separates nations, causes misery and misunderstanding. But we can’t just say that there isn’t a sea. And it is much the same with religion, which also has prevented communications, separated nations, and caused misery and misunderstandg. Now the sea also makes beauty, on the beaches, in sunsets over its waters; religion also makes beauty: it has its saintly and noble captains; it inspires human progress and sacrifice. Like the sea, there is something to be said for it.
By this time, of course, you will have seen through this piece of neat arguing; and were it not that this was a Sunday assembly, you would, like the old man in a play I heard last night, loudly complain that it was trying to make you say something that you didn’t want to say, and think things you don’t really think. So let’s go back. Religion is in the world. I’m afraid that you can’t deny that: there are church towers all over the place; in Spain Roman Catholics put Protestants in prison, and in Hungary Roman Catholics get themselves put into prison. Religion is just there, like the land. But you may say, with a good deal of justice, that it is a bad thing. It has been an obstacle to progress, and enemy to truth: didn’t it interefere with the free development of science, and doesn’t it make some people have rather peculiar views about evolution: But wait! What is wrong about being an obstacle to progress and an enemy to truth: What is wrong with persecuting those we dislike, and settling down to have a good time when we’ve got rid of them? We do most of think that hindering progress and spreading lies is wrong; In thinking so, we are making a moral judgement, and we have started to make a religion. For a simple code of right and wrong is a religion; the religion of Confucius is just that.
We have criticised religion for causing strife between man and man. But in wishing that there was not much strife, in saying that peace is better than war, that friendship is better than quarrelling, we are making a moral judgement. We are attacking something, in this case religion, because of what we believe to be right. In other words, we are attacking religion on religious grounds. And in this we are in very good company, for that is what the Hebrew prophets did. They attacked religion – the religion of their day – because it was a bad religion, a religion of ritual without any morals, one which allowed a man to maltreat his fellows, and then escape the consequences by making sacrifices to God. They struck a contrast between a religion that was superstition and one that was a way of life. That is what we are doing when we say we dislike religion because it makes people live badly; we are attacking bad religion. I agree with you that religion may be a very bad thing: but I don’t think that the solution is to have nothing to do with it. I think the solution is to drive out the bad by putting the good in is place.
Because, you know, we all of us have a religion, just as we have a stomach. If we don’t take care to have a good one, we may have a bad one; but we can’t just not have one at all. A Latin poet once said that though one may drive out nature with a pitchfork, yet she will always come back. It is very true. If one tries to squash an instinct, whether it is a religious one or sexual one; if one just squashes it, and goes on living as though it didn’t exist, it will later show you that it does exist, often in a rather unpleasant way. If you have a bad temper, and don’t try to deal with it, but assume that you haven’t got it at all, you’ll probably find that one day you will hit someone with a pick-axe. No one ever succeeded in this life by assuming that facts weren’t true.
Think for one moment of a common enough type – the racing man. His whole life is centred on race-horses: he worships them, really and truly. The word worship describes the attitude of a racing-man to race-horses; that is what it means. Would this racing man miss a Derby Day, if he could help it? Of course not. He has this solemn religious feasts, just as Itas celebrate Easter and Christmas. He may say he hasn’t a religion; but he has. It is complete with gods, festivals, and saints in the form of trainers and jockey.
The ardent nationalist is just the same. His national festivals, his portraits of the leader, his processions, his places sacred to the memory of the fallen, is just the same. He has his gods, his relics, and his altars. The Communist is also living on the same pattern, and he has also his sacred books, and catch-phrases that dupe the mind more effectively than the worst Creed.
We cannot, however much we want, escape from it: we have to do something about religion. Otherwise it does something to us. It is a powerful force, for evil or for good. If we do not make it good, it will become evil, or at the best pointlessly childish.
By now you will probably all know that I am fond of gypsies; you will probably know also a little book called Prayers and Graces. If so, you will have read this: Pand G p. 17.
That is childish religion: it may be very charming, but it doesn’t go very far. What I call bad religion is a development of it. It is superstition. **
A religion that believes in appeasing God by sacrifices, or by going to church so many times or by performing suitable rites, is superstition. To act wrongly, and think that by performing certain rites we may escape the consequences, is superstition##
It is the sort of religion that many attack as though it were the whole of religion. But it isn’t the whole. There is also a religion that teaching a way of life, that prevents strife, that leads to kindness and friendship. It is along that way that I think our religious impulse should be directed. I happen to think that when one starts with the ethics, the right and the wrong, one will find oneself somewhere else in the end, because I think that good is not an idea developed by experiment but something permanent and eternal. But that is another story, or a second chapter of a story of which I have given you the first.
There once lived in a wide forest a savage tribe, oppressed in summer by great heat and in winter by bitter cold. After many years one of them discovered fire; the effect was at first appalling - he started a forest fire, and men became afraid. They therefore appointed guardians of the fire, to prevent disaster. The guardians protected the fire, and used it in ritual, but refused to allow others to use it, or anyone to benefit by it. Then a few men gathered in a group, and argued that though fire was dangerous, it could also be useful: It would give heat in winter, and cook food all the year. They stole it, studied it and used it. They passed from superstition to real religion. There were then two tribes, each in its way solving the problem of fire. But those who xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ignored both groups either died of cold, or were burned, xxxxxxxxxxx when the heat of summer set light to the trees.
It may be seen in certain members of any religious sect I’m not xxxxx criticising any particular one so don’t leap to conclusions.
**[Indecipherable hand written section in left hand margin]