A Brief Rant On Religiosity And Ego
The trigger that fired this diatribe was Brit Hume’s assertion that Tiger Woods must, “Turn to the Christian faith,” rather than to his own Buddhist practice. I have little doubt that Hume is sincere in his own beliefs, and no doubt that Christianity has worked and can work wonders for those who are drawn to embrace it wholeheartedly. But I am thoroughly put off by those who profess to religious wisdom (of any brand) on the one hand, while at the same time remaining oblivious to how their beliefs have become hostage to their egos.
Ego is all about discriminating between self and the rest of creation, about forging a distinct individual identity. Ego is a separatist. It often does its work by convincing us that we are somehow better than others: we know better, we have the answers, my way or the highway, and my religion is better than yours because God said so and, by the way, my conception of God is true and yours is bogus. When ego seizes a person’s religion, there is grave danger to anyone in the vicinity.
A repressive regime executes protesters as, “enemies of God.” A jihadist beheads an “infidel.” A Christian sniper guns down a Muslim in the streets of Sarajevo; the examples are plentiful. When compared to atrocities such as those, Hume’s foolishness seems trivial, but it is cut from the same cloth; a fabric in which religious beliefs are woven into a pattern attractive to ego, and then acted on and passed along as if representing absolute truth.
Please God, deliver us from all who abduct Your name in the service of ego.
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Tags: Brit Hume, Buddhism, Christianity, ego, religion, Tiger Woods
Amen brother.
In an email, my friend Alan Zaklad reminded me, “Not to leave out the ultra-orthodox Jew who machine-gunned a bunch of Palestinians a few years ago while they were praying.” He also pointed to the book, God and the Brain, by Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist. Newberg examined the effects of religious/spiritual practices on the physiology of the brain. He learned that, for any kind of belief or practice in a generous, compassionate God, brain function improves; however, belief in a vengeful, punishing God damages the brain.
I haven’t read the book myself, but Newberg’s conclusions seem intuitively and experientially correct to me.