Letter #206: The Kingdom of Meaning

Who said anything about comfort?

Dad,

Recently I was asked in an interview to address what I call the “bitter clingers” question. Aren’t we religious believers just “clinging” to our Bibles and our guns for childish comfort, as President Obama memorably put it? Don’t we run and hide behind faith as a shield against the harsh realities of an uncaring universe?

My response: it’s a funny question, since those who ask it are usually also the people who portray religion as a drab prison of unreasoning judgment. Some comfort that is! If I really wanted release from the hard questions, I’d become a materialist and practice “cosmic insignificance therapy”—the method of reassuring yourself that since you’re just a little bag of fluids farting your way through a blip of existence before expiring unnoticed in the yawning chasm of space, nothing you do or don’t do really matters at all. If this were so, we could take an existential load off and eke out whatever meaningless pleasure tickles our little fluid-bag hearts.

Instead—since all that is patent nonsense—we have to contend with the much weightier problems of cosmic significance that Hamlet fretted about. “For in that sleep of death what dreams may come…must give us pause.” Mo’ eternity, mo’ problems: “I didn’t go to religion to make me happy,” said C.S. Lewis. “I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”

Last week was the week of Ash Wednesday, and fittingly we ended up, with Hamlet, dwelling on the lowliness of man without a divine source of being. Personally, though, I find it very inconvenient to interrupt the vigorous prime of my life on the verge of spring and be told that all flesh is dust and vanity! Who wants to hear that?

No seriously, who does want to hear that? If not for safety and easy answers, why do people turn to faith—why are they doing so now, in growing numbers, as it seems like they might be?

If not for comfort, then perhaps for meaning. That’s one thing cosmic insignificance therapy can’t supply. It’s right there in the name: insignificance. We know these bodies of dust are more than only dust—that they come laden with meaning in every cell and synapse, with all the fearsome consequence that implies. We look to religion—or we should—not for escapism but for realism about these ultimate truths that diehard materialists simply refuse to engage with or even acknowledge.

But then, behold a miracle: seek ye first the kingdom of meaning, and the comfort you abandoned in the search will be added unto you again in new form—as the peace which passes understanding. And where the lovers of flesh go dancing and shouting to drown out the silence of the void, those who kneel in the dust may find a joy that overcomes the world.

Love,
Spencer