Living Religions of the West

Living Religions of the West

Religion -- Question

Describe how an ethics may define and respond to "nature," and show how this is accomplished in the Jewish rituals of Bar and Bat Mitzvah and in the New Testament story of the rich young man told to follow self-renunciation.

Religion is often construed, especially by modern critics, as something that acts in an unnatural fashion upon the human character, especially in terms of how religious laws govern human impulses. In other words, religion is thought of an imposition, for better or for worse, upon the natural and unfettered structures of human physical and moral development. Indeed, some aspects of ethical religious traditions are monastic and see 'nature' and natural or at least bodily human impulses as inherently contrary to the moral life, and thus demand renunciation from the world and natural bodily impulses and appetites. However, religious law can also be seen as a creative and comforting response to natural, developmental challenges and crisis, particularly those faced by adolescents coming to terms with their place in society.

A familiar way to construe Jewish responses to the confusing and chaotic structure of life is to refer to the 613 commandments as a kind of comforting ethical response and structure. Viewed as such, the coming to terms with puberty and the responsibility of making Bar Mitzvah for a Jewish boy helps him to better understand his changing body and his increased responsibility to the religious community. Through the function of this ritual, the boy becomes aware of the fact that now he assumes the weight as well as the freedom of adulthood. Thus, the Bar Mitzvah can also be seen as an ethical, pedagogical response to a dangerous time of life, that of male adolescence, where an individual's sense of self is rather blurry and indeterminate. Because of his temporarily confused developing physical state, the body's body image is in a state of flux. Because of the societal and emotional questions of early adolescence asked by the boy's self and his community -- child or man -- the boy's self, identity, and body presents a potential site of danger. The ritual act of confirming the boy's ethical obligations to the community presents both the community and the boy with structure and a comfort that he is a part of the community, albeit in a new fashion. With the social changes regarding women in America, the Bat Mitzvah now does the same with girls, acting, through its addition to the Jewish ritual structure, as another kind of comfort, that women as well as men have social obligations to the Jewish community that are significant enough and worthy enough to be codified in ritual, ethical practice.

The young man whom confronts Jesus in the New Testament is slightly older, the tenor of this later Christian tale suggests, than a thirteen-year-old boy with a cracking voice and an uncertain social eye upon his place within the community. This story of the wealthy young man in the Christian testament stresses the gradients of ethical obligation, obligations that cannot be shirked, versus higher levels of ethical obedience, that are assumed voluntarily. Ironically, the idea of unavoidable obligations and higher obligations were later to become an even more crucial part of the Muslim tradition. Yet this sense of levels of obligation is explicitly suggested by Jesus' response, when he tells the young man first to be a good person but when pressed, states that to live a truly ethical life the young man would have to shirk all of his ties to society, as such ties have some inevitable corrupting influence, give all the young man's wealth to the poor, and to devote his focus to the religious life entirely. 'Perfect' ethics may thus take a potential acolyte outside of the social order, as well as integrate an individual into the social order. The crisis of adolescent identity that community ritual attempts to fix has the potential to take the individual out of society as well as bring him back permanently into the societal fold, although the solution of charity Jesus offers has an element of communal spirit as well as societal and worldly renunciation. Jesus offers a potentially resolving solution in two mutually exclusive forms, one a primarily communal solution and the other an individualistic solution to the crisis of the young man. One of these solutions, namely the latter, seems profoundly unnatural, while the former solution seems to be quite intuitive, even instinctive and natural. Yet both ideas are founded on preexisting religious traditions, the first that of the traditional Jewish life the young man has been born to, the second that of Jesus' radical reinterpretation of that life.