I’ve always thought the most attractive thing about religion, or about the religious impulse, is that it is inherently absurd. We ponder something that is intangible and invisible; we try to frame with words and symbol that which resists shape; we seek comfort in something that we cannot explain with any apparent coherence. When we try to make it simple, we make it complicated. When we quest for it; it is elusive. When we stop searching, we find it. No wonder there is in every religion a sentiment such as that expressed by Lao-Tzu, the Chinese philosopher, when speaking of his beliefs: “Of course people laugh at the Tao. It would not be the Tao if people did not laugh at it.”
This is what attracted me to the quotation used as Lenten Wave #22. To put it simply, surfing is stupid. When I speak of it, people grant me an expression that is usually reserved for the village idiot in an Irish novel. It is, as the quote says, an “inexplicable and useless urge”. However, once it is engaged with, if not mastery, then at least some sense of confidence, it becomes a way of life.
Unfortunately, it seems for most people participation in the life of a congregation is an urge that is also inexplicable and useless. As we live in an age where atheism is once again militant and, in its own way, evangelical, I find myself expected to defend and apologize for my faith more and more often. Since faith is inherently absurd, I never supply quite the response that satisfies my interrogator. Actually, since the main purpose of 21st century non-theism is to ridicule the believer, perhaps my response does satisfy.
However inexplicable or apparently useless is our faith to others, because we are engaged and confident in it, it becomes for us our way of life; a way that grants us purpose and contentment. I strive to find patience in my work with others, quietness in the midst of worldly noise, reconciliation with things beyond my control, and the opportunities to do some small act of charity, not because of the expectation of some temporal or eternal reward, but because those things inform and enrich my way of life. In the same way that a wave taken at just the right moment and at the right angle can produce a satisfactory, even thrilling, ride, despite the fact that there is no prize offered for it and that, on most days, there is no one to witness it, so our way of life as Christians is borne in the style taught by our Lord in the sixth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel.