Dreaming the Future Closer

So, this is something that has been brewing in the back of my mind.  It’s hardly a novel insight, but perhaps there may be some novelty in how I bring the insight to fruition.  The premise is simple enough: there is no one reason for someone to engage with a religion.  Quite the opposite, there are a great many different reasons, though one or more may play a greater role than others.

This suggests that we might be able to sketch, in outline, a sort of typology of the different sorts of religious devotee, based around their central concerns.  As a typology, this should come with all the appropriate qualifications, namely that they are not about labeling a person into perpetuity, but about addressing the given space they occupy presently.  So, while I will talk about kinds of people, what I am really talking about are kinds of motivations, which a given person may change.

This is a quick post, so it’s not meant to be anywhere near exhaustive, just suggestive.  Right now, there are three major types of engagement that leap to mind.

Problem solver: These sorts come to a religion seeking from it solutions to their problems.  I think this group catches most flack for having an insincere faith, though sometimes unjustly.  Just as the problems a person may face can vary, so will the exact reasons for a problem solver’s approach to religion. 

Perhaps they seek a material benefits.  They may have a sick mother they hope to make better through prayer, a crime they hope to elude punishment by promises of reform to a higher power, or just be pleading for a break that would change their life.  These folks are often the most maligned, though, in truth, there are few religions that do not hold out some hope of just these miracles.  There are also few within a religion who do not hold out hope to, at least, see evidence of just these sorts of explicit benefits. 

Perhaps they seek out moral justification.  More than a few people embrace religion for the clear road map it provides them in terms of moral behavior.  They turn to spiritual authorities for moral certitude.  We tend to demean these people less within our own religion, though we often mock them when we encounter them in another religion, ascribing to them (and sometimes their religion in general) a sort of zealotry.

Perhaps they seek out intellectual satisfaction.  Religions often have elaborately complex metaphysical and ontological systems, which appeal to those whose restless minds need to find some fundamental order in the world.  There is a tendency to lump these folks with the moral folks, but they may appear separately.

Traditionalist: They come to a religion either because it provides them with a feeling of community.  While it may revolve around the same axes as problem solving (material, moral, intellectual), it may just as well be about a more basic commonality of shared stories and history.  The oft-discussed ‘ethnically Jewish’ individual well exemplifies that latter type. 

They may not have an investment in the religion as a problem solving mechanism in any way, they may find the community it supports comfortable in a very deep sense.  The sorts of jokes and stories and behaviors are comforting almost in and of themselves, for the way they embody a being with others.

Grappler with god(s): These folks have had an experience that suggests to them a spiritual dimension of experience that is not satisfied by ‘mundane’ or ‘profane’ life.  The experience need not be mystical in the most high-falutin’ sense of the term, with being ravished by G-D or what have you.  It could just as well be a nagging sense that the world as lived isn’t quite all there is.

These folks come to the religion in order to find a way to access that ‘more.’  They often seek some way to sustain a fleeting experience of divine intimacy.  They may feel that their experience indicates that they must do something, that they owe a debt to the divine that they hope religion will help them fulfill.

Now, while I think the latter motivation is the most uniquely religious, I have some concern that an over-emphasis of it makes it too easy to think of those without it as falsely religious.  It seems a bit like the old discussion of learning styles–those who end up teaching tend to have a very particular learnign style that is statistically abnormal.  If they don’t realize this, they don’t actually do a good job of teaching, because they channel their realizations to others in ways that make it difficult for them to absorb.

Those with the latter motivation have a nasty tendency to think of themselves as properly religious whereas others are not, merely going through the motions.  This strong distinction is inimical to a religious community, through which the latter type may, in fact, fulfill their sense of calling.  They are, ironically, inimical to the community.

Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor may have had a point in this regard, but only to the extent that the sincerely ‘holy’ mistake their experience of religion as the only proper way of experiencing religion.  When they are doing their part to nurture the community, to ground themselves out within it, they may become the soul of their worlds.