I remember being 14 years old and deciding I was an atheist. A big part of that time of my life was being a contrarian. I still have to fight the impulse to disagree with something just because a bunch of people that I don’t like happen to think a certain way about it. But, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve moved away from the absolutist attitude I used to have against religion as a whole.
If I had to choose a label now I’d call myself an agnostic because I don’t think anyone can be sure of what happens after you die one way or the other. But, over the past few years I have definitely developed a greater appreciation for the value of religion and what it can do for people.
Part of me thinks my inner contrarian is just bucking back against how popular it seems to be to not believe in God. But beyond my annoyance with the types of people who argue against the existence of a higher power, there seems to be an inherent benefit to recognizing the metaphorical significance of religious stories.
There is a very particular attitude towards religion and being religious that I think is actually more practical and reasonable than any contrarian type who just wants to call people stupid for believing in a flying spaghetti monster. Most people at this stage in history, particularly in America, can agree that the problematic aspects of religion stem from the institutions rather than the stories.
The various organizations have always been what has caused problems and inspired prejudices. The stories themselves are not guilty of anything, but the people who misinterpret them for malicious purposes are. So, if misinterpretations have tainted the use of valuable metaphors for life, than what does it look like when someone is religious in a healthy way?
My favorite example of a properly religious person is Theo Von, a comedian from Louisiana. Von is the epitome of a southern wordsmith. The way he playfully uses language to make jokes and observations is incredibly entertaining and distinctly southern.
One of the notable aspects of his comedy and his personality is that he often refers to, the lord and the devil. I believe it is in these references that we can observe someone who understands the practical metaphorical significance of these ideas.
When Von refers to the lord he isn’t necessarily referring to Jesus or God, but the idea of inherent good. To find the lord or do something that is the lord’s will isn’t necessarily to do something that a literal person said, but to do something that is decidedly good and in the name of love.
The same can be said when he talks about the devil finding his way into someone’s life or people participating in the dark arts. He doesn’t mean someone is literally performing black magic or that an actual being is willing people to do evil things, but instead referring to things that are done in the spirit of evil, or devoid of love.
What is the most interesting aspect of this to me is that when you think of these things in those metaphorical terms, they actually do become literally true. The lord is the metaphorical culmination of all things good and loving, and the devil is the antithesis of that.
So, based on our limited ability to perceive beyond a certain quantifiable limit, the most practical way of describing the ideas of ultimate good and evil is to distill them into singular personas. It is in this way that I think the metaphors become literally true, and they speak more to human intuition and instinct than it does to a written doctrine.
I think we all can benefit from thinking of things in these terms. It seems simplistic in a way, but there is a poetic resonance in its simplicity that some people are too dismissive to appreciate.
