The Basis of Religion

Here I am finishing work and grabbing some grub before bed and I find myself pounding out the nitty-gritty of morality and the ideals among humanity with a Buddhist, a Unitarian Universalist, and some fellow Christians. This comes after a night of listening to a new aged lady go on and on about how we are a microcosm of the universe and how the stars are our cells and our cells are the stars because we all come from the same. She believed that, since I was born in the 80s, I am an Indigo child, as opposed to a Rainbow child. The same lady claimed to be from the future and from Jupiter. To most people, she would sound crazy but her charisma and passion seemed to capture the attention of many of the people around. Especially when she got everyone involved in her drum séance and then proceeded to literally give everyone a crystal. I went back to my room and somehow ended up watching ALF on youtube. I'm surprised I didn't have nightmares. I was terrified. Nights like that fill me with joy to be a Christian. Nights like that make me stand assured in my faith. Nights like that also raise deep dwelling doubts in me. Thoughts sometimes linger.

This comes after a week where a few friends and I decided to celebrate the summer solstice by going out for a few beers. Conversations changed from sports, to life, to religion. I drifted in and out of attention as a seemingly random hand guided the topic of discussion to religion. Eventually, we started talking about morality as a universal basis for all religion. I snapped back into the conversation and proclaimed that morals are not the basis of religion. I might have spoke to soon. The night ended but my thoughts did not. More and more I thought about what I had said and more and more I thought about the differences between religions.

The next week, a few of us got together to talk religion again, and by this time I was solid in my statement (at least about Christianity) the morals where not the basis. When I was hiking with Henry, he made a great point that with every question science answers, another question is raised. As far as I know, science will always be inadequate when it comes to ultimate proof. At some level, you have to grapple with the idea of creation's origin. How did something come from nothing? Look at a spoon, it is made of a combination of metals, derived from the earth and manufactured somewhere on its path to your mouth. But before that, where did those metals come from? What were those minerals before heat and other factors changed their nature? Unless one believes everything has always existed, the spoon had to have come from somewhere. It is here that I find an example of faith.

If what we know exists, didn't something have to have brought it into existence? This belief that something/someone brought creation into existence is what I feel underlies the basis of Christianity: a faith. The faith that underlies Christianity is not the faith of a God at the origin of creation but the faith that Jesus Christ is God's son who died for us and will come again. I cannot speak for all religions in saying that faith underlies religion but I brought this up to my Buddhist friend and he is currently thinking about the basis of Buddhism.

To others, the basis of religion may be perceived as morality but the morals are just an outgrowth of something deeper. The way I see it, after you dig past the visible layer of morality, Christianity has a faith that rests as its basis.