an update on motives
Freddie (like many people, it seems) is critical of the reasons Ayaan Hirsi Ali has cited for her conversion to Christianity. I’m not. My view is that everyone has to start somewhere — she’s very forthright about being a newcomer to all this — and what matters is not where you start but where you end up. One person may seek a bulwark against relativism; another may long for architectural or linguistic or musical beauty; another may crave community. Christian life is a house with many entrances. I became a Christian because I fell head-over-heels for a Christian girl who wouldn’t date me otherwise, so how could I judge anyone else’s reasons for converting? As Rebecca West said, “There’s no such thing as an unmixed motive”; and God, as I understand things, is not the judge but the transformer of motives.
This reminded the excellent Yair Rosenberg of something — something I knew nothing about. Yair wrote to me to share a passage from Pesachim 50b of the Babylonian Talmud:
On the topic of reward for a mitzva fulfilled without intent, Rava raised a contradiction: It is written: “For Your mercy is great unto the heavens, and Your truth reaches the skies” (Psalms 57:11); and it is written elsewhere: “For Your mercy is great above the heavens, and Your truth reaches the skies” (Psalms 108:5). How so? How can these verses be reconciled? The Gemara explains: Here, where the verse says that God’s mercy is above the heavens, it is referring to a case where one performs a mitzva for its own sake; and here, where the verse says that God’s mercy reaches the heavens, it is referring to a case where one performs a mitzva not for its own sake. Even a mitzva performed with ulterior motives garners reward, as Rav Yehuda said that Rav said: A person should always engage in Torah study and performance of mitzvot, even if he does so not for their own sake, as through the performance of mitzvot not for their own sake, one gains understanding and comes to perform them for their own sake.
Those old rabbis, they knew a thing or two about human nature.
Paul Kingsnorth: “So: out with St George, I say, and in with one of the nation’s original native patrons (in early medieval England there were several at once), the saint whose feast is celebrated today: Edmund the Martyr. Edmund’s story is simple and stark. Wistful too, I think. He didn’t slay a dragon: instead, he slew himself. There is a message for us there, if we can hear it.”
Great to see this tribute to Philip Johnson’s Chapel of St. Basil, a wonderful building. Note that this central quadrangle is a kind of commentary on the Lawn of the University of Virginia, with the domed chapel an answer to Jefferson’s Rotunda.
second thoughts, worse thoughts?
A week ago I explained that I had written and then decided not to publish a post on Israel and Gaza. At least one of my readers thought this was a good decision, and approved my restraint enough to buy me a dragon to reward me for my silence. Well, I may have to give that person a refund, because I’ve decided to post some thoughts after all. We’re a week further into this miserable situation, and there are some things that I think need to be said that I haven’t seen said. (Who knows, though? So much has been written that someone unknown to me may have made my argument better than I have.) In deference to my readers who really don’t want me to write about all this, I’ve not written a post here but have posted it otherwhere. Don’t click the disclosure triangle below if you prefer not to know more.
Look if you dare!
candles
Why do religions comfort? They comfort because the stories they tell involve divine beings who know everything and who can, often, save us all from the horror of death. We live in a world of intractable and painful moral questions that we feel that we can never resolve; religion says that there are divine beings who know the right answers, and that’s comforting. We miss our loved ones who have died terribly; many religions say that we will one day be reunited with them, and that’s comforting.
I might want to take one step back and ask: Do religions comfort? My experience as a Christian has been more about challenge than comfort, about figuring out how to respond to what I feel to be an unshakable claim on my life. It’s worth remembering that there is no clear picture of an afterlife in the Hebrew Bible, and that’s one reason (among several) while many Jews have always thought that while it might seem cool to be the Chosen People, in reality it might have been better for them if God had chosen someone else. And even for Christians, whose faith is centered on the Resurrection of Jesus, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
I would also note that while most people think that Buddhism is a religion, it typically doesn’t do or have any of the things that Freddie says religion does and has. I can’t now remember who said it, but one scholar of religion claimed that the only thing all religions have in common is that they use candles. That seems right to me.
So “religion” is an intractably fuzzy concept, the many religions of the world do many different things and do them in many different ways, and even within a given religion people may believe and may commit themselves for an astonishing variety of reasons. The whole enterprise, if indeed we can call religion an enterprise, is so fraught with complications that I don’t think there’s anything that can be legitimately said in general about it. It’s like life itself in that respect.
Relatedly: Freddie (like many people, it seems) is critical of the reasons Ayaan Hirsi Ali has cited for her conversion to Christianity. I’m not. My view is that everyone has to start somewhere — she’s very forthright about being a newcomer to all this — and what matters is not where you start but where you end up. One person may seek a bulwark against relativism; another may long for architectural or linguistic or musical beauty; another may crave community. Christian life is a house with many entrances. I became a Christian because I fell head-over-heels for a Christian girl who wouldn’t date me otherwise, so how could I judge anyone else’s reasons for converting? As Rebecca West said, “There’s no such thing as an unmixed motive”; and God, as I understand things, is not the judge but the transformer of motives. It’s a how-it-started, how-it’s-going thing, but often in a good way. Or so my experience suggests.
I’ve almost completely given up on podcasts, but have become a heavy user of the BBC Sounds app. The 4-part BBC radio series on Seamus Heaney is worth a hundred podcasts. Ditto the new series on the Beatles narrated by Martin Freeman.
Starting the day listening to my friend Sara Hendren (@ablerism) interviewed by Krista Tippett. So great. I never say “Everyone should read/watch/experience X,” but really, everyone should listen to this interview (or read the transcript if that works better for you).
I’m rarely envious, but okay, I’m envious.