Murray Haar On Religion: Respectful Stubbornness

Friday, July 19, 2019

Respectful Stubbornness

We live in a world where there are different ways of being religious. People can decide to practice their religion or have no religion as they each see fit.

But we know, it does not mean everybody therefore gets along. Religion has to do with truth. It explains why we bother to get out of bed in the morning. Our religions tell us how we got here, the meaning of our lives and deaths, the truth about God and how God has or has not been revealed to us. Religion is not just something made up long ago; some would say it is the truth as revealed by God to each respective tradition. So, while it sounds harmonic to say we are all part of the human family and we should agree to disagree, it’s not that easy.


I propose we admit that multiple religions mean multiple conflicting revelations. The world’s major religions have been around a long time and their believers trumpet the revelation they possess and that possesses them. So, what are we to do?   I suggest respectful stubbornness.


We each confess our religious beliefs, articulate them as clearly as possible, learn from each other where we can but feel free to dispute where we disagree. This includes those who are atheist or agnostic. The freedom to respectfully disagree comes from our necessary and inherent religious humility, the sense that we can be self-serving and could be wrong. Absolutizing our religious beliefs is an act of idolatry. We are, after all, human beings and human beings make mistakes, believe all sorts of crazy things and are sometimes just plain wrong.

I am a Jew. I cannot understand myself apart from the Jewish people and the Jewish tradition. But I have studied and am willing to listen to other religious truths because I know my religious beliefs are tentative and only a glimpse of what could be the ultimate truth. I hope you will admit the same is true for your beliefs.

We have so much to learn from each other if we can put aside our instinct to guard and protect the purity of our beliefs. So, I say, maintain your beliefs stubbornly but be open to learn where you could be wrong. Respectful stubbornness can work. By the way, this is true for politics as much as religion.

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Notes from The Door

Whenever you care for the neighbor in pain, at that very moment, God is real. At that very moment, the Messiah has returned. In every situation where there is pain and injustice do what you can do to stop the pain. Murray Haar
Religion was not created by God but by people. What God thinks of our religions only God can say. If your religion teaches you to love God and to stand with your neighbor in pain, it is a good religion. If it teaches you to hate and to be indifferent, it is a bad religion. Murray Haar
Get Busy livin or get busy dyin (Shawshank Redemption)
The Holocaust teaches us that it is possible to be alive but no longer human. Murray Haar
I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know. Socrates
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead, Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good. W. H. Auden
For the most part, Christian pastors and priests are not taught to think but to transmit. They go to a vocational school called a seminary where they are taught how to transmit and proclaim the gospel but not how to teach their people to think critically about what they believe. They do not know how to teach their parishioners that Christianity could be wrong. Pastors and Priests are not prophets; they are religious functionaries who care about people and love Jesus. They themselves are usually nice people, will visit you in the hospital and give you bread and wine but they are not, for the most part, great thinkers. So, to expect them to reform the Church is just not realistic. Occasionally though, pastors show up who can think and believe at the same time and it is in them that there is hope for a reformation. I have met them. They are real and I have hope in them. Murray Haar
We do not believe in the Bible. We believe in God. The Bible is a vector toward God and the neighbor. When the Bible points us toward God and the neighbor, it is true. Whenever it does not, it is not true. We have to learn not only to read the Bible but to argue with it. Then the text will become real. Murray Haar
“In religion, the question is more important than the answer to the question.” A Midrash
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Dylan Thomas
“He who saves a single life, saves the world entire.” The Talmud
“We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, or the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time or conditions of our death. But within all this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we shall live: courageously or in cowardice, honorably or dishonorably, with purpose or adrift. We decide what is important and what is trivial in life. We decide that what makes us significant is either what we do or what we refuse to do. But no matter how indifferent the universe may be to our choices and decisions, these choices and decisions are ours to make. We decide. We choose. And as we decide and choose, so are our lives formed.” Joseph Epstein

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Friday, July 19, 2019

Respectful Stubbornness

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