Religion Matters

IN MOST pre-modern cultures, there were two recognised ways of thinking, speaking and acquiring knowledge. The Greeks called them mythos and logos. Both were essential and neither was considered superior to the other; they were not in conflict but complementary.
Each had its own sphere of competence. Logos (science/reason) was the pragmatic mode of thought that enabled people to function effectively in the world. It had to correspond accurately to external reality.
Logos was essential to human survival. But it had its limitations: it could not assuage human grief or find ultimate meaning in life’s struggles. For that, people turned to mythos or ‘myth’.
Today we live in a society of scientific logos and myth has fallen into disrepute. In popular speech, a ‘myth’ is something that is not true. But myth is not self-indulgent fantasy; rather, like logos, it helps people to live creatively in our confusing world, though in a different way. A myth was never intended as an accurate account of a historical event; it was something that had in some sense happened once but that also happens all the time.
Yet a myth would not be effective if people simply ‘believed’ in it. It was essentially a programme of action. It could put us in the correct spiritual or psychological posture but it is up to us to take the next step and make the ‘truth’ of the myth a reality in our own life. We find many examples of the use of myth in religion: the depth and richness of our knowledge and experience cannot be explained by reason alone.
Most people today think that religion should provide us with information: is there a God? how did the world come into being? But this is a modern aberration. Religion was never supposed to provide answers to

questions that lay within the reach of human
reason. That was the role of logos.
Religion’s task, closely allied to that of art, was to help us to live creatively, peacefully and even joyously with realities for which there were no easy explanations
and problems that we could not solve: mortality, pain, grief, despair, and outrage at the injustice and cruelty of life.
Over the centuries, people in all cultures discovered that by pushing their reasoning powers to the limit, stretching language to the end of its tether, and living as selflessly and compassionately as possible, they experienced a transcendence that enabled them to affirm their suffering with serenity and courage.
Scientific rationality can tell us why we have cancer; it can even cure us of our disease. But it cannot assuage the terror, disappointment and sorrow that come with the diagnosis, nor can it help us to die well. That is not within its remit.
Religion will not work automatically, however; it requires a great deal of effort and cannot succeed if it is facile, false, idolatrous or self-indulgent.
Religion is a practical discipline, and its insights are not derived from abstract speculation but from spiritual exercises and a dedicated lifestyle. Without such practice, it is impossible to understand the truth of its doctrines.
Religion is not an easy matter. Religious insight requires not only a dedicated intellectual endeavour to get beyond the ‘idols of thought’ but also a compassionate lifestyle that enables us to break out of the prism of selfhood. Aggressive argument, which seeks to master, control and kill off the opposition, cannot bring this transcendent insight.
Experience proves that this is only possible if people cultivate a receptive, listening attitude, not unlike the way we approach art, music or poetry. It requires ‘wise passiveness’ and a heart that ‘watches and receives’.
Peter Knott SJ