Is religion so pliable that it can be contorted against
itself “with a straight face?” That is to say, does the human mind lack the
machinery necessary to recognize contradiction in religious matters? I submit that the answer is yes. This is not
necessarily to be “anti-religion;” rather, the implication is that acting from
a religious motive ought not to be done without critical self-examination and
care. The case of a Christian minister fighting in the Ukrainian army provides
a useful case study of the vulnerability.
In 2014, Sergei Reuta “set aside his work as a Pentecostal pastor
to put on camouflage and pick up a Kalashnikov rifle.”[1]
He treated his decision as a seamless move. “I understand that as a Christian I
should defend the land where God put me,” he said in an interview.[2]
Actually, his justification sounds more Jewish than Christian. To my knowledge,
nowhere in the Gospels does Jesus preach defending land; rather, “Give unto
Caesar what is Caesar’s” seems a closer fit to what Jesus might say. Reuta’s
distance from Jesus does not stop here. The Ukrainian pastor went on to say, “And
I understand there was no escape from armed conflict.”[3]
This understanding ignores Jesus’s teaching to do good to those who prosecute
you, and, moreover, to turn the other cheek. Holding a rifle, Reuta was not
about to do that.
Strangely, the contradiction seems to have eluded the
Christian minister. First, he assumes a rationale that is not in the Gospels,
and then he contradicts relevant teachings that are in the Scripture. He seems oblivious to this—even stating that
the army “is morally strong because of” him and other ministers fighting alongside the other troops.[4]
That is to say, not only does he fail to recognize even the possibility that he
has been acting contrary to how lambs are to be among wolves—even being a wolf
himself—he also claims to be a positive moral role-model. He is two degrees of
separation away from being the sort of disciple that Jesus describes as
carrying on his work.
I suspect that the underlying culprit here is a
short-circuiting in the brain’s thought process, perhaps backed up by pride. In
reasoning through his rationale, he missed key checks that might have debunked
his conclusion. For example, he omitted relevant preachments from Jesus, likely
going instead to the Old Testament. Additionally, I suspect that he assumed
that he could not be wrong regarding his conclusion. To the extent that people
assume that their religious claims have a sort of de facto validity, our construal of religion itself is blameworthy
too. This sort of “anything goes” pertains to political assertions, as
evidenced by some of the more implausible conspiracy theories. The human brain
appears to have difficulty assessing whether its own theory has crossed the
line in terms of being reasonable. The same lapse in the thought process takes
place in the religious domain, where the presence of an otherwise-obvious
contradiction renders the thought process there particularly flawed.
Unfortunately, the assumption of not being capable of being wrong in even a
contradictory religious assertion enables the defense mechanism of denial to
circumvent any internal check from kicking in.
If my analysis is correct, more attention should be paid to
both internal and external checks. Internally, the cognitive lapse and airs of
pride would need not only to be kept in mind, but linked with motivation to
critique the person’s own conclusion. External critique should come from both
coreligionists and people from other religions and non-religionists (as neutral
and even oppositional stances can be quite helpful in punching through
contradictions standing as though on stilts during a flood). This extra effort
is justified on account of the brain’s “looseness” when it comes to religious
matters. In fact, even after the proposed assertion seems to survive the
fortified efforts to shoot holes in it, making the claim should not be done
with the tone of certainty, for it is still possible that the claim survives on
the strength of an organizational or societal blind-spot. If this methodology were
to become the norm, then religion itself would be recalibrated more in sync
with the limitations of the human brain and our presumption of pride.
1.
Andrew E. Kramer, “A Pastor’s Turn Fighting for Ukraine,” The New York Times, December 14, 2014.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
