Religion

I had the pleasure of being a part of an informational session/conversation on Thursday about Islam. In addition to deepening my understanding of the faith I was reminded me of the things I should have learned in World Religions class if I had been more awake or done more of the readings. Not only that, I also gained an interesting insight about my own faith and chosen religion. The presenter started by asking the question of what a religion was. The purpose of this was to highlight the understanding of the Islamic faith, specifically that Islam is not just about what you believe but is also a product of how you live that faith/belief.

This to me is a great way of looking at Christianity and what we should be emphasizing as well. I do not know enough about other faith traditions, in particular to comment on how well they put their understanding of living out faith into practice, but my experience of Christianity is that end up concerning ourselves too often with orthodoxy (correct thinking) instead of orthopraxy (correct practice). Denominations and individuals fall into the trap of arguing about how the Bible is meant to be understood, read, or what exactly it means. We split hairs, parse out meaning and ultimately do little more than dig ourselves deeper into theological trenches. My worry is simply shifting the conversation to orthopraxy does not fix it. I fear that all that will do is turn the philosphical, analytic cannons of our faith on a new target. Instead of arguing about issues of theology we will end up arguing if using a reusable bag at the grocery store is really a way to live out our faith.

Ulimately it seems to me that problem is not the Doxy or the Praxy, but the Ortho that goes before it. If we stop worrying about getting it exactly right we will have a lot more room for belief and from belief will come action. Religion gets reduced and codify, so we can say if someone is Christian, or Muslim, or Hindu, and know what it means. Instead we should worry more about how people of all faiths live them out in the world. None of this is to say I don't have a sense of both a correct orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Afterall, I need something I think is right in order for me to act, but it is not productive to simply worry about getting everything right, because I will never achieve that. At some point we need to go out and try this whole faith thing out, see what it is like to live our faith in the real world and let our faith define who we are, not just in terms of believe but in terms of action, then we really will be religious.