Religion and Selflessness
In “Homo Religiosus,” Armstrong presents the idea that people need to believe in God to make sense of their own lives, to order their lives, and to give their lives meaning. She argues that this is a very ancient idea and that people should be used to this need by now because it is not going away and is unlikely to ever go away. Nelson suggests, however, that our consciousness is not necessarily linked to our desire or ability to “do better.” Nelson points out how reality TV watchers find the horrific and the brutal to be “great to watch”—and she cites a number of examples to prove it: from To Catch a Predator to Shattered and Unbreakable. These programs show that people are no different from the days of the Gladiators: they still want to watch others suffer and be tormented—it stimulates them and entertains them to see another human being going through some insane torment. For that reason, it would be inappropriate to suggest that everyone is constructing a meaningful life for himself, or that just because we can imagine the idea of God or believe that God exists does not actually mean that we care to make that idea or reality a part of our daily lives. Just as much as we are made comfortable by the fact of salvation does not mean we are likely to feel bad about watching person get waterboarded on television. Thurman objects that religion without selflessness is really not much of a religion at all. That seems to underscore Nelson’s point, which is that human beings can call themselves religious all they want, but if they are still indulging their depravity, their religion is not going to do them much good.
As Robert Thurmann notes, “One of the most significant changes you will notice upon discovering you selflessness is that your sense of being separate from everyone else has now eroded. Your new awareness enables you to perceive...
You can see yourself as they see you, and experience empathically how they perceive themselves as locked within themselves.” Selflessness allows one to see others and to put their needs first. This was essentially the example that Christ showed: by putting the needs of others before His own, He showed we all might live. Christ argued, moreover, that the two greatest commandments were to 1) love God, and 2) love your neighbor. One cannot do either without selflessness.
Thus, the future direction of religion in our era is likely to consist of a tug of war between a kind of Happy-Meal type of religion in which one gets a serving of drive-thru, feel-good religion over coffee on Sunday mornings while catching up on the latest sports talk; and a more serious type of religion on the other hand in which one undergoes a kind of penitential commitment, a journey towards selflessness by way of self-denial and self-renunciation. This tug of war is likely to continue for as long as the current trajectory of today’s consumerist culture continues—for it is that culture, Nelson suggests, that keeps everyone glued to their screens, anticipating the next outrageous, insane human act for their consumption. Without any kind of mediating body, the tug of war over the future of religion in our era is also likely to end with either a bang or a whimper, as one side either becomes completely outraged at the other, or the one side simply resigns or despairs and gives up the struggle altogether.
Ritual violence has become so much a fixture of our popular culture because popular culture has for decades appealed to the lowest common denominator in the masses—the basest instincts and the most depraved aspects of humanity. There is a side of humanity (humanity’s fallen nature, as the Old World religion defined it) that delights in the torture or misery of other…
