A Modern People

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” – C.S. Lewis

I live among a modern people. 

You would be astonished at them, I often think. Their ability to obtain information exceeds that of every age before them - their hunger cannot be satisfied though all can be purchased. They desire more to the point of drawing blood. They are men of science, women of logic, and they have grown too wise for the archaic religious practices of their fathers. They have no altars. No shrines. They have their idols, of course, but they are ignorant to worship. 

I am not religious, they say to me.

Yet, I respond, you claim devotion to a Deity. You attempt to practice worship. You recite liturgy. You take sacred elements. I am not religious. Yet, you claim that you pray each morning. You read your sacred book. You spread the news of your God. You are too old for fairytales. You are too old for the truth. I am part of no religion, you scorn. I have faith. That is all.

So, you are not religious. You are more of a player on a stage than a man of faith, I agree. You put on the mask each morning and recite your lines; you have memorized the steps that will awe the crowds watching you dance. And all the while, you dance out of every trap they set for you. You have no creed that you would hold to at gunpoint - you have no affinity other than to some general floating image of faith. You believe what they believe. You believe nothing. You are free.

(You are falling.)

Is not religion the sacred devotion? Is it not the practice of your fathers? Is He not the God of the desert dwellers? But their rituals are too dusty, too worn down, for you. They that have seen God do not understand the world as you do.  

Latin religion, religio - I let the sacred tie me down. I offer my body up to the restraints of God. Abraham ties me to the alter, a fanatic worshipper listening to a Voice I cannot hear, and the ropes are religion. Jacob has dreams. David dances. 

You are not religious, so you are going to have to cut the Pentateuch free from your Bible. It's alright - I know you didn't read it anyways. You are not religious, so you're going to need to white-out the words of Christ at His last dinner as well. That covenant, I'm afraid, is going to tie you down in a way you would not enjoy. You will be tied to your brothers - you will be tied to the body of Christ. And that is something you can't accept. 

If you were next to Him on the street, you wouldn't want to be known by the dirt on His feet. 

You claim that you know the way to eternal life, but your brothers, on the road to hell, give feet to faith in a more convincing way than you ever have. They have five prayers, each completed tenderly. They cover their heads in reverence. They eat no unclean thing. They have woken me up before the sunrise with their singing from the loudspeakers.

They are religious. You are right - you are not. If this is religion, you are a sorry example. 

You have no country, no flag. You have nothing that marks you. You belong to nobody and nobody belongs to you. If they call you a Christian, you say that you despise the word. (The name of Christ tastes bloody in your mouth.) If they call you a Believer, you fear what they think you believe in. Please, you beg, don't call me anything. Call me Nothing. Call me a Shadow of something real. 

It would be a dangerous jump to be called a man of faith - you would risk disappointing a standard, and you would risk disobeying a commandment. Never mind that you preach a Spirit coming to help you, a bloody sacrifice washing you clean. The jeering crowds wouldn't see that part - the invisible reality. And if you cannot show them that you are innocent, you would rather not be. Your mask is melting to your face. It's starting to burn.

You are not religious because men kill zealots. You are not religious because men stone prophets. 

You are not religious because it shuts down the conversation you were never planning on completing anyways - the conversion you would never pursue. (They might turn on you; the non-believers have teeth, you see.) You are not religious because it makes the others uncomfortable, a slight shiver of heat that foretells the inferno they are sprinting towards. You are not religious because men of science might laugh at you, those men of invisible proofs and theories no man can resolve. Yes, they are truly something to be envied. Modern priests given the secrets of the Universe, a book everyone now possesses in a language that no one can read.

Modern priests, afraid of a little word. Afraid of other men dancing around in masks. And so you fall away from the nurturing flow of tradition and wisdom, lost in your own relativity, tricked by the same deception you so wished to undo.

You are throwing your fists at a ghost, and you are afraid of something that is not real. You are neither zealot nor prophet - you are some secret third thing. 

(Ashamed.)