35. The Value of Religion (2)

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In Chapter 18, I explored the Verse of Light (Q24:35) and what it signified for our understanding of faith and religion. I suggested that faith burns brightest when it has a glass (religion) protecting it from the sudden drafts of news, fashions, and passions. That glass, however, can be darkened by those same external currents, and also by impurities produced in burning, from the oil that feeds the flame.

Now, through the discussion of facts and values in the previous Chapter 34, we can gain a clearer sense of how religion and faith are related. Just as our values cannot be explained or confined by the facts of evolution, so also does faith precede and exceed the concrete boundaries of religion. The flame seems to live within the limits of the glass, just as each value appears to be bound by human or biological history, but actually both faith and value have some sort of greater pre-existence and a broader influence as well. Faith explains why religion was brought down to earth, as it were, and facts are continuously sent down, like rain, as particular instantiations of a timeless value, truth, the source of which is GOD Himself.

Faith is the Light of GOD in this world, and religion is the medium that not only protects that light but also transmits it – almost perfectly if it is clear, and less so as it becomes compromised by its material conditions. We could say, then, that faith expresses the ideal, while religion, as its vehicle, seeks to reify that ideal in the realm of the possible. The brightest values, likewise, however pure in reality, can appear darkened by the passage of time, doubtful or dying behind the shattering of religion’s glass, or even extinguished by the winds of a world obsessed with facts. Only those who look within, in the light of their own strong flame, can see that actually nothing has been lost.

The flame of faith fascinates us with its unworldly dancing, its space-piercing glow, and its upward striving, but for us it lives, nonetheless, in a worldly setting – supported by the lamp’s body, fed by the oil of the inspired intellect, and seemingly surrounded by the glass of religion. That glass is both protective and constraining; it is a recognition that faith and the world are in a state of tension, of mutual wariness. The dark gales of the world can extinguish faith, and a rampaging faith could convert the world to ashes. A balance or compromise must be fashioned; like glass, that compromise is delicate, fragile, and easily tarnished.

It should be remembered also that religion is designed to deal with men and women in two conditions: as they are and as they should be. It walks a tenuous line between the timeless values that faith aims to recreate in human hearts and the space- and time-bound concerns and experiences of each new generation. There are elements of any religion, therefore, that must never change, and other elements that must be flexible and open to renewal. Only GOD can make the fine and final decision on where that line is to be drawn. To understand it, we need some sense of how His Messenger (may GOD bless him and give him peace) dealt with the practical issue of maintaining a balance between faith’s demands and the worldly reality of people’s varying temperaments and capacities.

We learn from these two traditions that religion (i.e., Islam in this case) has a range and flexibility suitable to its role as an interface or medium between the demands of faith and the realities of the world and human nature. On the one hand, it allows us to take aim and draw near to heavenly realities beyond our ken – the realm of faith. On the other hand, it understands and sympathizes with the failings and weaknesses of someone who is always asking, ‘Am I obliged to do more than that?’ The answer should be reassuring in its concreteness – ‘Do just this much’ – and intriguing in what is always implied – ‘Do more if you can’. The dual role of religion is to set comfortable or cognizable limits, like those of the body, and to invite to what is limitless, where the spirit can soar and explore.

A religion that is intact, vibrant, and relevant is able to keep these two elements mutually suspended and supportive, like day and night or heaven and earth. When we tend to either extreme, which occurs too often nowadays with literalistic orthodoxy on the one hand and unconventional ‘New Age’-type spirituality on the other, the golden mean of the intact middle ground falls apart. The result is a rigid traditionalist remnant on one side and an undisciplined, meandering fringe on the other. And then the question – ‘Is religion relevant?’ – does itself become relevant.

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