First Principle

The first principle: I am a keeper.

**

A meteor is headed towards earth. When it hits, all life on this planet will be instantaneously extinguished. There will be no suffering. Everyone will be gone before they realize what hit them. We only have two months left. Our demise is sure. Nothing can be done about it.

Here’s the thing. You are the only one who knows that this is about to happen. You have a wife/husband and two kids. If you tell them what you know, they will not take the news well. In fact, they will be nervous wrecks. It is assured that the news will ruin the little time they have left on earth. Of course, if you keep the truth from them, you will be effectively living a lie. Do you tell them?

I’ve realized that one’s answer to the above problem highlights an essential aspect of their philosophy. Namely, do you find truth to be an end in itself? Or, alternatively, does the truth need to serve some greater good to be valuable?

Those who lean towards the former – truth as an end itself – would tend to tell their loved ones, despite its ramifications. That is to say, truth is so valuable in and of itself, that its presence ‘justifies’ the harm it would cause loved ones. “Sure it may hurt them,” they say, “but it’s THE TRUTH!”

Those who lean towards the latter – that truth ought to serve a greater good – would tend to withhold the truth, because of the harm that divulging the truth would cause. For them, protecting their loved ones from harm ‘justifies’ living a lie. “Sure it’s technically a lie,” they say, “but it’s for THE BEST!”

Everyone falls into one camp or the other. The early returns from the informal poll I’ve conducted around town has shown about a 50/50 split between tellers and keepers. And if you were wondering, yours truly, is a keeper.

So which one are you? And why?

**

It is in the above question that I believe I have found a tenet to my creed and some direction in my quest to find a religion.

What is religion? It is a mode to rectify your relation with God, or the universe, or yourself, or whatever. Some people mistakenly think that religion, itself, is the truth. They lose sight of the fact that Christ-ianity is a different thing altogether from Christ, or that Buddhism is not the same thing as Buddha. By conflating the two, they have elevated a lower level truth – that which was clearly intended as a method to a greater truth, or in a word, a means – to the level of Truth in and of itself, or in a word, an end. Thus, people call themselves Christian and act as though that’s the end of the story. Or, the call themselves Muslim and expect eternal life. But living the good life, or finding salvation, or discovering the way, or however you phrase it is surely more complicated than simply associating with a group, be it religious or otherwise.

I got into an argument with a friend a mine a few weeks back. I took exception to the fact that he called himself Christian, even though he didn’t believe that Jesus Christ was divine, that he performed any miracles, that he died for our sins, that he rose from the dead, that his mother was a virgin, etc. Basically, he rejected all the central tenets to Christianity, as noted in the various Creeds, except the Golden Rule and he added that he “saw the face of Jesus when he prayed.” In his mind, that was enough to be “Christian.” It didn’t matter that he didn’t believe in Christ. It didn’t really matter how he conducted his life.

So the question occurred to me, why on earth would someone self-identify with a club for which they disavowed every core belief? Why would someone self-identify as Christian only to then have to back up and say, “BUT! I don’t believe in a, b, c, d, x, y, z, which most Christians do.” Why not call yourself something else? What’s so special about being called Christian? Why not call yourself a Golden Rule-ist? Or a Face of Jesus When Praying-ist? Calling oneself a Christian without believing the tenets of Christianity or practicing the tradition is like calling yourself an alumnus of Yale and then saying, “BUT I never actually applied to the school, I don’t meet the criteria for admission, I’ve never attended a class, and have never received a diploma.”

I think what’s going on is that people believe there to be some value to being a Christian independent of practicing Christianity. It’s as though they picture God awarding points for being part of the club. Thus, if Christianity happens to be true, those standing before God who called themselves Christians would have a couple of points in the bank already before judgment begins on their deeds (assuming that’s how it happens). Or maybe they picture St. Peter at the gates of heaven eyeing their resume and saying, “Alright, off to purgatory you go!” But then, right at the last second, one whips out one’s wallet and shows Peter the Christian Card. And Peter says, “Oh, I didn’t know that you were a card carrying Christian, you’re one of us, so I’ll wipe the slate clean and let you in. Enjoy eternal paradise!”

But, if we understand religion in general as a means to the greater good of growing into proper relation to God, or the universe, or oneself, then self-identifying with a religion without practicing it is absurd. Religion, in this sense, is a practice. Therefore, if you don’t practice the practice, then you don’t reap its value. Why self-identify with valueless shells?

What's at play here, I think, is an over-emphasis on Truth and a de-emphasis on the position that truth should “work” for the truth-seeker. For example, what good is spending all one’s life trying identify the true nature of love, if doing so would not make one (or others) better able to love? To study love in the academic sense at the expense of its practice would surely be a tragedy. In the same way, what is the sense of holding on to a religion that you believe to be true if it doesn’t further the goal of religion – to get you closer to God, to understand the universe or the way, to set things right with yourself, or whatever. What is the sense in revealing a truth (about the meteor) to your family when no other discernable good can come of it? Is the central role of family to propagate Truth or to serve, protect, nurture, love, etc?

This relational approach to truth (or religion) asks wisdom to serve as a guide. Some knowledge is good. Some knowledge is bad. Wisdom is the ability to discern between the two and to formulate plans of action based on the former rather than the latter. Wisdom is the awareness that only some forms of knowledge are worthy of pursuit. It is wise to stop and ask, will any good come of this? And the answer to that question depends on who is doing that asking. It is in that sense that I’m arguing that the value of truth is relational.

While this point was clear to me with respect to the meteor scenario, I failed to see that it applied to religion as well. I was doing the same thing I had criticized my friend for, only from the other direction. He was holding on to a religion that didn't work for him, because he thought it might be true. I was trying to find a religion that was true, so that it could work for me. But if we each, instead, sought out to rectify ourselves with relation to God, ourselves, the way, etc - which is to say, if we sought to find what works for us, religiously speaking - we would have discovered both a religion and the truth.

Of course, the larger problem with the truth-for-truth-sake paradigm is that one can never know for sure whether one is right. This was the impetus for Socrates to proclaim that the best you can hope to do is to identify what you don’t know. I agree with Socrates that finding one’s own ignorance is part of wisdom. This fact casts doubt on Truth as a whole, which is more problematic for tellers than keepers. Because keepers only view the truth as a means to a greater ends, this problem only brings one means into doubt. For tellers however, who pursue truth at all costs, this fact casts a shadow of doubt over the very ends to all their pursuits. BUT! What we can know - perhaps better than anything else - is what works for us, so that should be our focus.

Drumroll please. In the end, I reject the teller paradigm on two grounds. First, it does not take into account the effect the truth will have on the truth-seeker and the world. Rather than this approach, I believe the “wise” thing to do is to see knowledge as a servant to the seeker. We should further “the good,” which is to be understood in relationship to the truth-seeker. Knowledge worth pursuing and worth propagating is only that which furthers this good. Truth in and of itself, unguided by wisdom, is not one such good. Second, one can never be sure if one possesses Truth in the abstract. In contrast, one can know oneself well enough to determine whether or not a particular truth is good to the individual. For those reasons, I advocate for the relational keeper model. My new approach with respect to religion will be to identify the people that are good at the religion and ask whether or not the religion "works" for them. If so, I have to ask whether or not it can work for me in the same way.