I’ve been an atheist for well over half my life. I grew up very religious, immersed in a range of Christian teachings from my grandma’s Southern Black traditions to my mom & dad’s Seventh Day Adventist cult. One of my first “when I grow up”s was to become a preacher and I gave my first little sermonette at 7 or 8 in front of my parents’ congregation.
But I was too curious. I wanted to know why Buddhists went to Hell. The teaching that I grew up with said you had to be saved, you had to believe in Jesus, you had to know Him and accept Him into your heart to experience eternal salvation, and it made no concessions for other good people who didn’t know Him. It didn’t make sense to me that someone in a Christian country could commit crimes for 70 years, repent on their deathbed, really mean it, and get into Heaven, but someone from a Buddhist country could live a blameless life and end up in Hell just because they weren’t born in a place where Jesus was forced upon them.
That was my first step toward atheism and the road was paved with many more cobblestones of doubt and illogical fallacies. At one point in my life, I was definitely the kind of atheist who looked down on religion of all stripes. I was enlightened because I was smart enough to reject the nonsense. If you believed in an invisible skyman who looks like Zeus or reincarnation or 72 virgin maidens in paradise, that meant you were not smart enough to come to the same conclusions I did.
I grew out of that. I volunteered at a battered women’s shelter administered by a Catholic church for over a decade and one of the nuns became a good friend. I used to go to church once a month in Brooklyn when I lived downstairs from this little old lady who didn’t have anybody else to take her. The respect I have today for religion on a personal level is in no way an endorsement of organized religion as a whole, which I think is one of the most destructive forces in modern civilization. But! Religion at its purest form, to me, gives people an answer for four questions: where did we come from? where do we go when we die? what can we attribute good things to? how can we explain or cope with suffering?
Various societies and cultures have built their own belief systems to handle those questions, but at the core is a shared humanity where people should treat others the way they would want to be treated. If I’m hungry, I want to be fed, so you should feed the poor. If I’m homeless, I want shelter, so you shouldn’t leave people on the street. Taking care of each other is the path to happiness, whether you believe in everlasting life, reincarnation, or simply a short experience on Earth where you are at peace because you lived a life where you helped ease suffering.
That’s what Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama understand. All righteous paths lead to happiness, no matter your definition of it.
“He doesn’t mind too much because there is reincarnation.”
That is so beautifully phrased. There was no derision or arrogance. Desmond Tutu didn’t say “because he thinks he’ll be reincarnated.” He said it as a definitive: There is reincarnation.
Here’s an excerpt from The Book of Joy that the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu wrote together where the Dalai Lama is speaking to Tutu about their religions and what will happen when they die.
“So perhaps, according to your religious tradition, we may meet in heaven in the presence of God. You as a good Christian practitioner, you go first. You may help me and bring us together. But from the Buddhist viewpoint, once in a life, you develop some sort of special close connection, then that sort of impact will carry life after life. That’s Buddhist viewpoint. So maybe even then. But now, I’m looking forward to another occasion to see you again—somewhere that only God knows.”
Look at the space and the respect and the room for doubt. So much religious conflict would be solved if either side left room for doubt. If you leave space that you could be wrong, then you’ve left open the opportunity that someone else could be right. The worst part of religion is the urge to force everyone else to agree with you and it overshadows what should be the driving force: love, respect, and shared humanity.
I am very much an atheist. That is not likely to change any moreso than the Dalai Lama would become a Christian. But my goal as an atheist is to be the best person that I can be, to treat others the way I would like to be treated, and to respect people where they are without forcing my beliefs upon them. And there is room for doubt! I feel certain, but I do not know what happens when we die any more than a Christian knows or a Muslim knows. We all feel to varying levels of conviction, which we express as degrees of faith and certainty. What I do know is, in that space for doubt, whatever happens on the other side, I’m doing my best on this side, and it will be enough.
Leave a Reply