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BELIEF
IS A BURDEN
Believers are often caricaturized, and rightly so, as judgmental
and quite self-righteous. Some believers often act that way. The truth is
that faith calls anyone who believes to a higher task, a higher calling,
if you will. That truth in and of itself should preclude any smugness of
heart and self-satisfaction that one is right and has all the answers
while those who disagree or do not believe are wrong.
Patrick J. Deneen commenting on the writings of Christopher Lasch,
wrote, that for Lasch, the standard liberal caricature of religion
“misses the religious challenge to complacency, the heart and soul of
faith. Instead of discouraging moral inquiry, religious prompting can just
as easily stimulate it by calling attention to the disjunction between
verbal profession and practice, by insisting that a perfunctory observance
of prescribed rituals is not enough to ensure salvation, and by
encouraging believers at every step to question their own motivations.
Far from putting doubts to rest, religion has the effect of intensifying
them. It judges those who profess faith more harshly than it judges
unbelievers. It holds them up to a standard of conduct so demanding that
many of them inevitably fall short…. For those who take religion
seriously, belief is a burden, not a self-righteous claim to some
privileged moral status. Self-righteousness, indeed, may be more prevalent
among skeptics than believers. The spiritual discipline against
self-righteousness is the very essence of religion.” (First Things, December
2004)
“Belief is a burden”? It is easier not to believe than believe,
than to be a true believer, one who takes one’s faith seriously?
Thinking again about what Lasch thinks, I think so. I also know so. Any
believer knows so. It is indeed burdensome to believe in a God who demands
so much of us, who will not tolerate hatred and injustice, whose first
thoughts and whose first concerns are about those to whom both believers
and unbelievers all too often give little thought or heed – the last and
least of this world. And then when they almost self-righteously do give
such heed, they blame the poor for their plight.
Of course, Jesus never denied that faith in him was not a burden.
He only said that the burden would be light. He also said it was a yoke.
Sounds like a burden to me. Sounds like no matter how light the load,
there is still a load. If Lasch is correct, the heaviest load is the
spiritual discipline it takes from becoming self-righteous.
Self-righteousness comes all too easily for those who believe what they
believe to be Gospel truth and then act on it and, even worse, condemn
those who disagree. Pride makes the burden get heavier and the yoke get
tighter. Humility is the antidote.
We want to believe that what we believe is true. Yet, even if it
is, we know not everyone will agree with us. Even more, as we have
discovered over and over again, it is difficult enough, a burden at times,
simply to live out the very basic tenet of faith in God: to love God above
all else and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. It takes humility
to admit our failure to so love. That is why spiritual self-discipline,
always a burden, but a burden made lighter by the grace of God, is needed
to live such a life of love.
WJP
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