Religion isn't for you

What if the power of religion lies not in what is authentic or personal about it, but precisely in its capacity to make us feel strange and alienated from ourselves? The wastefulness of worship makes us modern religious folk deeply uncomfortable because it seems out of place in the recent revival of interest in religion which seems motivated by the search for meaning, belonging, and identity.

I'm thinking here of figures like Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Pageau, who diagnose our contemporary meaning crisis as downstream of modernity's hollowing out of every transcendent value and the myths upon which they relied. I'm also reminded of the testimony of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an outspoken atheist who recently converted to Christianity because she came to believe that only Christianity could serve as the necessarily civilizational bulwark against the anomie of the modern world and the encroaching barbarism of radical Islam.

Stories such as these abound – from the highly public conversion of Russell Brand to insurgent online movements of belligerent young men converting to Eastern Orthodoxy. Modern life feels disorienting, meaningless, and lonely. In response, people in the West seem to be reconsidering religion, wondering again about the role which it might have in living a good life. Many are asking themselves if they were perhaps too hasty in throwing out humanity's most ancient superstition. Was there perhaps a baby in that bathwater?

From corporations to cults, many organizations peddle the trinkets of identity and belonging today, and religion seems to have returned decisively as an option within this general marketplace of desire. But what if religion offers something else? What if churches don't have to put themselves into direct competition with these corporate marketing teams by going toe to toe on who can offer a better experience of belonging? What if Christianity isn't about supplying you with a stable and coherent identity you can finally rely on?

Chandler Kendall's piece "Timenergy, Religion, and Alienation" contends precisely this, namely, that the power religion holds relies in its power to alienate us into a community which includes us but does not exist for us. Building on Dave McKerracher's theory of "timenergy" and our lack of it ("large, repeatable, energy infused blocks of time), as well as Todd McGowan's concept of "universal nonbelonging," Chandler makes an argument for the importance of religion (not "spirituality!") for living more human lives within the widespread anxiety and feverish consumption engendered by our capitalist society.

As we have found ourselves fractured along a seemingly infinite number of lifestyles and demographics, it becomes increasingly difficult to connect with other people. We find that they do not share our interests, or have not watched the same shows, or have radically different political views, and the conversation quickly grows quiet or wanders to the topic of the weather. Eventually, we drift apart and stop making the effort, instead congregating with those who share our particular fantasy of reality, enjoying together within the comfortable confines of our familiar universe of images, desires, and language.

This lack of connection with others makes us feel a sense of meaninglessness because we intuit that we are not really sharing a world with them. We inhabit adjacent and tangentially related universes which struggle to make sense to the other. As we experience this alienation from others, we try to remediate it through the retreat into various niches and interests, but this only ends up alienating us further from more and more people, and we also quickly discover that every community falls into the same kinds of problems which plague any group of humans. This kicks off a search for a new set of doctrines, a missing piece, a better community which will provide the fulfilment which we seek.

However, in a religious community and worshipful practice which centers our relation to our shared lack and nonbelonging, we might be able to come into an encounter with a whole which challenges us, forcing us to form bonds of solidarity with people who are truly other than us. Rather than promising a sense of identity, meaning, or belonging, the pain and contradiction of a loving religious community traverses the various lifestyles, economic classes, and hobby interests which would have divided us up into our narcissistic universes. An alienated religion which de-centers belonging forces us into a shared reality which we must negotiate together with others, allowing us to enter into a brutal unity which does not promise more than it can deliver.

Such a religion of brutal unity opts out of the game being played by various corporations and influencers who imply or openly claim to have the secret solution for your sickness of body, mind, or heart. A difficult paradox operates at the heart of the Christian religion – Jesus gives abundant life, but this life cannot be measured along any of the metrics which the world normally uses to evaluate, such as happiness, wealth, or power. The call to discipleship demands that we enter into the narrow gate, we follow in the footsteps of a God who was beaten and killed, and that we risk finding ourselves with no pillow upon which to lay our heads.

But how is this contradiction transfigured when we consider the possibility of a community of people who are dying to themselves together? What would happen if all the people without pillows for their heads got together to seek their rest in the crucified God? And what sort of rest might this be which does not weary? This is not fandom, or a political party, or an interest group. To me, it looks more like a continual engagement with our lack. Such a community would forge a space where we share each other's burdens and pour ourselves out in a beautiful act of worship.

Ultimately, no idea can prove the existence of God or vindicate Jesus' divine claim – "they will know you by your fruit," Jesus says. The only way to testify to God's work in this world is to make it manifest through our lives in relationship with others. Humans are not changed by their beliefs. They can only be changed through an encounter with a reality which has the power to break through their defenses and change them by its own power. We must be gathered into a reality, and then it may become visible through us, using our lives to pull others into itself.

Seek not belonging, but abjection. Become empty, that you might become full.