Any preoccupation with the religious understanding of our time will often lead one to conclude that efforts directed towards its appraisal is much well spent in more lucrative endeavors. This instant disenchantment occasioned by the pragmatic outlook of modernity has caused a lot of individuals to drift away from value systems of the past and has prompted them to strike new paths in hopes of creating their own meaning in life. But on the other hand there also those who find contemporary times to be shallow and superficial in its attempt to offer purpose and resort to religious values of antiquity hoping to find what they had somehow lost in the course of their secular development. Both of these extremes are accompanied by their own tribulations and the polarizing rhetoric of our time appears to have widened the chasm that already exists between them. The former ascribing precedence to the autonomy of the human will while the latter in its predominant mode of expression seeking to subjugate volition through the postulation of divine providence. Both of these Weltanschauung has come to characterize contemporary religious and political discourse , vying to prove that the other side of the aisle is not only oblivious to the havoc wreaked by its ideological frame of reference but also willfully blind to the stultification of its exponents. I shall perhaps try to examine what motivations predisposes one to reject either of these alternatives and also in rare cases try to reconcile them.
As a child I had spent most of my formative years in the auspices of a religious school which, although seemingly aspired to engender critical thought, had been overly stringent in its attempt to ensure that none of us were exposed to perspectives that would prompt one to question the theological foundations of our religion. It was assumed to be proven beyond a shadow of doubt that not only do these values represent God's will and his supreme guidance bestowed upon mankind but also that our understanding of them were inerrant and in need of no reform. Perhaps they had thought it was prudent to shield us from predicaments which would have precipitated a crisis in faith given our feeble convictions but only at the expense of ruthlessly suppressing all forms of dissent from the religious status quo. I had come to notice that any kind responsibility they had felt to foster a genuine motivation to discover the truth was triumphed by an unswerving fidelity to defend their religion against external censure. The values they had sought to defend notwithstanding the immense scope and magnitude of their wisdom somehow in the process of their dogmatization had come to exercise a rather stultifying influence on those who believed in them. But is it reasonable to ascribe this influence to the values themselves?
Ruminating on the ill effects of dogmatic certainty and the extent to which if at all the underlying religious ideas had contributed to the former, I came to realize the story of the fall of Lucifer increasingly seemed like a prescient warning. Different religions of the Abrahamic corpus contain slight variations of the story but the central theme more or less remains the same, that the devil being a creature ensconced in the highest state of grace and exaltation was cast out of heaven because he dared to question God at the expense of his own fealty. Although the devil in some sense personifies the spirit of intellect, what particularly characterizes him is that his intellect is incapable of acknowledging its own limits. Lucifer regarded himself to be the ultimate arbiter of divine truth so his sin it seemed to me is not only that of pride but also of certainty. What constituted his evil mode of being was that he was a creature bereft of doubt.
Reducing Lucifer's cardinal sin partly to a lack of skepticism appeared to have staggering implications in the realm of religious discourse for it presents an almost insurmountable difficulty with faith in the sacred. How exactly is one supposed to have faith without falling into the sin of excessive pride and crippling intransigence? Doesnt faith necessarily entail an eradication of doubt as to matters of religion or does it perhaps indicate a state of human existence that is far more mysterious than what we usually presume?
Although it seems reasonable to assume that faith in a higher power would invariably instill humility and compassion, my experience indicated that more often than not it was also accompanied by an unassailable confidence in one's own aptitude to comprehend that power. I seemed to realize that notwithstanding the piety and discipline of all those who espouse allegiance to a divine being, they also come to tacitly regard themselves as capable of understanding the mysterious ways of an entity which by its very nature must remain ineffable and beyond human comprehension. I struggled to understand if faith in divine providence necessarily entailed faith in one specific interpretation of that providence. If so wouldn't that lead to the same mortal error which the devil had committed all those aeons ago that occasioned the dawn of humanity? If not what is the true nature of faith?
The more I deliberated on the nature of these questions, the more it became evident to me that faith was far from sheer certainty in the absence of reason. What particularly characterizes the seemingly pious individuals of our time most of who have dedicated their entire lives to articulating their religious paradigms is that instead of worshipping and submitting themselves to a God that existed outside the narrow confines of our feeble intelligence they instead come to worship an idea of God conceived by that very intelligence. Their adherence to a specific scripture and the belief in the perennial values contained therein renders them susceptible to the same primordial sin which the devil had once committed against God. It leads them to think, just like the devil once had, that their understanding of divine reality and of all its intricacies reflected reality per se, precluding any form of knowledge that might exist outside their constricted wisdom.
It is woefully ironic to recognize that the clutches of the devil become ever more gripping as one strives to walk the path of God and making such an association in the first place might even seem like a callous sleight of hand. But this ineptitude to detach the understanding of divinity with the divinity itself in my opinion produces an unbelievable inflation of one's intelligence that invariably leads to an uncompromising tenacity which at times might even border on religious fanaticism. Faith in such instances becomes distorted into sheer ruthless conviction as to the verity of one's beliefs, making way for the manifestation of nefarious impulses under the pretext of furthering the will of God.
On the other hand, a complete renunciation of religious values and of faith in their general validity is said to plunge an individual into the abysmal depths of moral chaos where the autonomy of the human will is no longer subordinated to the mystery of transcendence. The individual is liberated from the metaphysical systems of the past which prompts to act in a manner that is no longer constrained by the moral restrictions that had once governed his mode of conduct. Although it would be unreasonable to claim that a person who has forsaken religion or at the least finds it highly implausible finds himself divorced from ethical obligations, the metaphysical underpinnings that had once supported moral values in his eyes cease to be tenable. Consequently, the rationale behind traditions of antiquity is brought into diligent scrutiny while the subjects that had hitherto been shunned in human discourse due to their sacrosanct nature is resuscitated with a newfound vigour and discussed in the hopes of furthering the spirit of critical inquiry.
Notwithstanding the astute insights such discussions might furnish if they are brought into the forefront of human discourse, the values in question are also exposed to unwarranted criticisms because of their rationally inexplicable nature. The general attitude fostered by the Enlightenment renders not only the existence of angels and demons to be astronomically improbable but more importantly considers faith itself in the absence of evidence to be a precarious venture reserved only for those of the past who were unfortunately not graced with our incredulity. This skepticism for the most part informed the spirit of the Enlightenment, inspiring thinkers of that time to seek a means of apprehending reality that was more rational and objective. Although this epistemological method has immensely furthered our ability to represent what we generally describe as the objective world, it has also profoundly undermined the notion of having faith in absence of reason. The dogmatic subservience which was once regarded as a sign of piety now became an impediment to the progress of true knowledge. The individual refuses to be dissuaded by metaphysical exhortations in his pursuit of truth and seeks the stock of experience while accepting the tribulations such a path might entail. Faith, in such a context, is construed as being positively detrimental to any scholastic enterprise for it demands the cessation of doubt and regards intransigence as a sign of religious devotion.
This perennial conflict between faith and reason, the tendency to unquestioningly submit to a higher power and to seek truth in accordance with one's own merits has for long plagued the minds of sagacious men and brings us back to the aforementioned question. What is the nature of faith? Far from being absolute certainty in a set of propositions, what lie at the heart of faith, as paradoxical as it may seem, is doubt. Historically the story of the fall of Lucifer had been increasingly interpreted as an alarming reminder of the ramifications that would ensue if one disobeyed God's commands. But a deeper more profound reading of the narrative indicates that the devil's greatest sin was not that he dared to question a specific God but that he questioned the very notion that there exists things which might exceed the bounds of his all too finite comprehension. As a consequence, his rebellious nature was not born out of doubt towards God but out of a lack of skepticism towards himself. This sophisticated interplay between faith and doubt appeared to me as the cardinal aspect of the entire narrative and that the fundamental challenge of all religious endeavours was to balance these two proclivities. In an era of extremes where moderate political and religious opinions are considered to be a sign of weakness and reservation, the story of the primordial fall acquires new meaning as a cautionary tale of certainty for it teaches us that faith could never be truly cultivated in the absence of doubt because faith does not reaffirm what we already know but emphasizes that which we don't.