Sententia // Perspective

One of the most important — and difficult — things to do when you’re trying to understand other world religions is to check your bias at the door. Even very influential scholars have historically had difficulty treating all religions fairly and equitably because they perceived non-Christian religions as “lesser”, “inferior”, or “primitive”.

In the past few decades, I think scholars (and people in general) have become better at recognizing bias and trying to work around, or through, it.

But maybe its not immediately apparent to you why you should care. Maybe you were raised, as I was, to believe that there is one true path, and all others are false.

Is there really anything wrong with perceiving your religion as “true” and other ones as “false”?  Why not treat other people’s religions as just stories?  How do we deal with these problems, anyway?

Insider Perspectives

On some level, most of us probably realize the value in trying to see things from other peoples’ standpoint. Even if only to “get” where they’re coming from, understanding another’s worldview seems to make sense.

The thing is, unless you were to convert to every religion, you wouldn’t really be able to understand that religion from an insider perspective. There is something about believing something to be true that changes the way you see it, and the way you see the world. Think of it as a pair of glasses; you can try all you want to see things through another’s eyes, but unless you put on their glasses, too, all you’ll see is a blur.

The Danger of Labels

The thing is, if you automatically label something as “false”, you’re likely not going to give it a fair shake. It’s easier to find fault with things that are “wrong” or “false.” But if you find fault with a religion, then you’re not really understanding it or studing it; you’re criticizing it.

And especially if (for example) you want to understand your neighbour’s religion so that you can have more meaningful interaction with them, you’re not going to get too far if your starting point is that they believe something that is a farce.

On a more general, global scale, if you believe that people are doing things out of ignorant, primitive religious beliefs, in many ways, you’re really treating them as “less-thans.” This is what happened, for example, in the Canadian residential school system. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the residential schools, Wikipedia has this to offer:

Students were required to stay in residences on school premises, which were often walled or fortified in some manner, and were often forcibly removed from their homes, parents, and communities. Most students had no contact with their families for up to 10 months at a time due to the distance between their home communities and schools. Often, they did not have contact with their families for years at a time. The locations of the schools were planned deliberately to ensure a “proper distance” from the reserves. They were prohibited from speaking Aboriginal languages, even amongst themselves and outside the classroom, so that English or French would be successfully learned and their own languages forgotten. Students were subject to often unreasonably severe corporal punishment for speaking Aboriginal languages or practising non-Christian faiths.

In the residential schools, the Aboriginal religions were thought of as inferior to Christian ones, and so the Native American “students” were essentially forced to give them up.

The Aboriginals, and their way of life (including their language and religion), were treated as inferior to the better ways of the European immigrants. And that’s just not right. How much better would it have been if the attitude of “trying to understand your ways is the least we can do” had been taken instead?

The Matter of Truth

At the same time, not everything in every religion can be simultaneously true. These oppositions range from the very subtle to the very clear, but it seems apparent that one can’t simply throw up their hands and say “well, every religion is completely true, right and an accurate representation of how the world works.”

To take one very clear example, mainstream Christianity rejects belief in reincarnation outright. Reincarnation is a central tenet of religions like Buddhism and Hinduism. Obviously, both Christianity and Hinduism (or Christianity and Buddhism) cannot both be right in their beliefs regarding the accuracy of belief in reincarnation… right?

So then, it would seem, we’re caught in the middle. On the one hand, we want to try to understand religion from the perspective of the adherent, so that our bias isn’t preventing us from giving it a fair assessment. But on the other hand, the religion in question may have beliefs that seem so contrary to us, that we say they can’t possibly be true or right.

We could say, “Well, any belief is a valid belief” but that’s kind of a cop-out, because in saying that, we’re really just saying, “You can believe what you want — it’s your right — but what you believe is still wrong.”

Change the Rules of the Game

After dealing with this problem for decades, scholars (for the most part) have found a way to look at world religions, so as not to denegrate them by calling any of them untrue. It’s not hard, and though it does take some time and practice to get used to, it’s something that anyone can achieve. How have they done it?

They’ve re-defined truth.

“Hold on!” I hear you saying. “That’s cheating!”

Well, okay, maybe it is. But if the rules of the game put you at a standstill, it’s more beneficial to change the rules than to simply stop playing. I tend to think of it as simply reframing the question — dealing with the problem from a different angle. As they say, if you can’t come in the front door, try the back way in.

And what is the “back way” into the problem of treating all religions equitably, and acknowledging the validity that their adherents believe the religion has? You simply say that “all religions are equally true and valid.” Now, yes, I did just show that this approach is problematic, but it’s only problematic so long as you think that true means true in an absolute sense.

What if, instead, you define truth relatively? What if you were to say, “something is true, so long as it is true to someone.” It’s a bit of a mind-trip, the first time you try it, I’ll admit. But what if you could define that truth has nothing to do with rightness or wrongness, and that the opposite of true isn’t necessarily false?

That is the approach that I, personally, have found most beneficial. To say, unequivocably and without hesitation, that when it comes to studying and understanding religious traditions, “the religion is true, insofar as it is true to someone.”

The next time you’re reading or talking with someone about a religion that isn’t your own, try it on for size. As soon as you catch yourself thinking “well, that’s just false,” remind yourself that to them, it is true. All religions are true, so long as they are true to someone.

Taking Back Myth

So let’s take that re-definition of truth as the working definition for the rest of this blurb. What, then, do we do with myths and mythologies? Clearly, we can’t talk about “Greek mythology”, meaning that the Greeks believed all sorts of false stories, and still be thinking that ancient Greek religion is true (because the ancient Greeks certainly believed it to be true!). Well, if you’re going to be thinking like a scholar in terms of what constitutes truth, then you might as well think like a scholar when it comes to myth.

In academic circles, a myth is broadly defined as “any true story”. In other words, a myth is any story which is believed to be true by someone. It’s literally a sacred story — a story which is “believed to be true by people who attach religious or spiritual significance to it.” (Myth @ Wikipedia). It’s not false, it doesn’t imply contempt or disdain, and the term has nothing to do with historicity of an event. Wikipedia says it well,

A myth, in popular use, is something that is widely believed but false. This usage, which is often pejorative, arose from labeling the religious stories and beliefs of other cultures as being incorrect, but it has spread to cover non-religious beliefs as well. Because of this usage, many people take offense when the religious narratives they believe to be true are called myths … This usage is frequently confused with fiction, legend, fairy tale, folklore, fable, and urban legend, each of which has a distinct meaning in academia.

So, in the future, I may write about the myths of Christianity, or Judaism, or Islam, or Buddhism, or Hinduism, or whatever. And when you read it, don’t think that I’m talking about false, fictional stories. I’m talking about true ones.