I'm Religious. So Be It.
In his travelogue Notes From Little Dribbling, Bill Bryson describes walking atop a thirty foot high bridge in the city of Durham, England.
By chance, he glances down at the footpath along the swiftly flowing River Wear. He notices two moms with strollers. Suddenly a toddler plops into the water, sinks, bobs to the surface and makes direct, horrified eye contact with Bryson.
In a split second, while the boy swirls in an eddy, he yells down frantically. Just a second before the baby floats off to certain death, his Mom yanks him out. Next thing, the other mother looks up at him, waves at him in thanks, her eyes saying “everything’s OK.”
Numbed, he continues across the bridge to Durham Chapel where he was to partake in a university function. He reflects,
I am not a religious soul, but I must say it does seem a little uncanny that on that morning of all mornings I should have looked over the bridge at such a propitious moment.
As a former unbeliever I know what he’s trying to say: I’m not a God-type. I just live my life because this is all that there is. But sometimes I witness things that surely seem like they might not have happened if some kind of personal divinity weren’t up to something.
For instance, I look up while a flock of sparrows dart east to west at sunrise, and I’m squinting into a lustful air show of blinking torches. Or, a word I’ve never heard before arrests my attention. I consider its sound and wonder at its etymology. And then, not two hours later, someone on TV uses that virgin word in a sentence.
But not religious? I’m not so sure after hearing Dr. James K.A. Smith last Friday at The Row House Forum. I’ve also been mulling over his Cultural Liturgies trilogy and his recent volume, You Are What You Love.
He has convinced me that the unconscious liturgies we all live within indicate our true religious hearts.
Perhaps Bryson is not religious in the Christian sense. He doesn’t acknowledge a personal God at work in the world. Perhaps he is a religious agnostic, though. I am not his judge. I simply love his books.
He writes as a sympathetic human traveler. He also cracks jokes about death and drops the F bomb seemingly for shock value (It works; I laugh out loud). At times, his cynicism is palatable.
His evening liturgy at a plethora of local pubs comes up in every chapter. If that’s not liturgical and religious, I don't know what is.
So, I’m coming out. Call me religious. If not in the obvious churchman sense, which I hope I am, I’m also steeped in cultural liturgies. So be it.
For instance, I’ve been shaped by a small town, white, middle class set of assumptions that are not neutral. They are practiced. They are protected. They are religious whether or not I realize it. And just so you, it’s what makes me better than you.
Like Bryson, I’ve also habituated the mechanism of humor to dissipate emotionally disturbing situations. I’ve gotten good at presenting myself unfazed in a jolly kind of way.
And I’m a Christian. My individual story is caught up in the grander scheme of the religion called Christianity. I go to church to aid me in this pilgrimage. I am willingly being re-storied.
I am learning a better way to be class clown by choosing words according to love's demands. A tough habit to break, that.
I’m engaging in uncomfortable acts of service that are focused on joy instead of laughs.
I’m being transformed into the image of Christ through, dare I say it, religious practices.
I wince at the label “religious.” The Christianity I was birthed into as a young adult disparaged religion.
Christianity, I was told is fundamentally a relationship, not a religion. Jesus saves, and he offers a personal dynamic that rescues us from religiosity.
Actually, I still believe everything in that paragraph.
Protestants, and I'm one of them, have historically emphasized grace and personal communion with God. For me, God’s work in my heart is the spring house for my love for him.
But what I’m coming to appreciate is that any practice that is meant to aid me in holiness is fundamentally religious, and that’s good.
Imitation and habit are the roads to virtue, Dr. Smith reminded the sold-out audience at Wheatland Presbyterian Church. In his words,
Believe the Gospel, and go to church.
It’s in true religion that we become indexed by the values of God’s kingdom in the context of people who are worthy of imitation (some of them, at least!). Getting there, being there, and leaving there are all religious habits.
So, there. I’m religious. Go ahead and call me that. Sorry to self.
The next guy on the basketball court who tries to compliment me for being religious will not get an immediate “p-shaw.” I’ll try to take it and say, “Thanks. And what’s your religion?”
After Bryson’s encounter with who-knows-what, he mentioned the story to a cathedral member who pointed a finger to heaven. Bill’s response to the so-called religious person is telling:
I nodded and didn’t say anything, but thought: ‘Then why did He push him in?’
Religionist Byrson, despite equating God's existence with brutal determinism, became the savior of another human being that day on the bridge. How wonderful and mysterious.
He caught a whiff of what the Christian God is up to everyday in countless ways. He became grace incarnate.
Our agency in life and in religious practice run parallel to God's person-hood. That's the religion the Bible invites each and every one of us into.
Perhaps the sublimity of that thought is more threatening than the possibility of God existing in the first place.