Religion

Tonight, I go for my first Access to Judaism class.

This might be a revelation to some of you reading this who know me and think I'm an agnostic or a freethinker, or even an atheist. I'm none of those things: I'm an open-minded sceptic in need of a moral code. Lots of people look to externally-imposed structures - some of which are religions - for their moral code. Some people, maybe the sort of people who think externally-imposed structures remove the need to think, work out a moral code which is entirely specific to them. Usually it's some variation on "be excellent to each other", which is all very nice.

But I have two problems with doing that, problems which I think are interlinked. The first is that, right now, I can't really see many people being excellent to each other. We're either angry at the government for telling us we have to make do with less, angry at others who have more than we do by fair or unfair means, or just plain angry, taking it out on strangers who've done nothing. The second is that it's really difficult to make up your own moral code and stay true to it, especially in the climate of anger I've just mentioned - hence the link between the two. However, while coming up with my own code is very difficult for me, picking a religion seems like an overly easy way out. It isn't, though. I've done it before, and it isn't.

The first time around, I looked to Christianity. My father had died, I was hankering after some structure as I am now, and the religious community at my CofE school - strongly Anglo-Catholic leanings, though - welcomed me with open arms. Although the school had a Christian ethos, there weren't many of us there who were serious about it, and with a chaplain of a fustily academic bent shepherding us along we were a small but thoughtful group. I enjoyed it. We went on retreats. My quaint, parochial spirituality made me comfortable.

So when I got to university, I was full of whatever the religious version is of piss and vinegar. I couldn't wait to get involved. I started debates about God with atheist scientists who thought I was a tosser for doing so. But that wasn't the biggest mistake I made, because many of those people are now my friends. The biggest mistake I made was talking about God with other Christians. My version of Christianity was very 'lovely cheese, lovely wine, look at that picture of Cardinal Newman', but the Christians I encountered at the start of my university career were much more muscular. The speaker at the first talk I attended spoke about homosexuality in no uncertain terms. Elsewhere, at prayer group, a session leader was deeply rude to a Catholic friend I'd brought along for the ride, loudly stating that she couldn't accept the way he was praying. Although I found plenty of fellow travellers who were softer and shared my approach later on, these first Christians I came across scarred me in a way my observance never recovered from. Eventually, it got to the point where I decided I just wasn't interested.

In the end, I suppose there were two major issues I had with Christianity, or indeed missionary religion in general. The first is that I believe spiritual development should mainly be directed inward, that it should be a process of continuous self-examination and learning: I don't want to feel like a sales rep growing a business, like a door-to-door smile factory offering instant answers. To some extent, I feel that this is what missionary religion asks you to be.

The second problem I had was that I believe the prioritisation of the pursuit of the next life to be horribly, terribly wrong. An awful lot of bad things have been done in pursuit of that bus ticket to heaven, or in avoidance of that other bus ticket to hell. The promise of the next life seems to me, even at the optimistic end of the scale, to be a missionary's sales tactic, a pension brochure. Invest now, and when you die you'll get a good annuity rate and a decent income, and you'll get to go to heaven too. I'm sorry, but in my head, it doesn't work like that. It can't. There's too much going on here, now.

So that, then, was why I couldn't carry on - and why I left myself in the morally rudderless state I now find myself, a state where I'm fuzzy about my obligations and often rude to people I care about. That clearly needs to change. But why Judaism? Why go from Christianity to scepticism to Judaism? Isn't that a plainly stupid and frankly contradictory journey?

Well, I'm not going to beast anyone for answering 'yes'. But it is my journey, and this is why I'm taking it.

The first thing you should know is that my children will be Jewish. It is not fair to deny your children the chance to participate in their ancestral culture, so they will be raised Jewish, too. If they want to be observant, they can. If they don't, they don't have to be. But I want to be an active participant in that, not a pleased bystander - their Jewish education has to come from both of us.

Second, Judaism is precisely the opposite of a missionary religion. While the perception that Jews are somehow wary of converts is false, you do get symbolically denied three times by the Beth Din - the conversion panel, if you will - before you're actually accepted. And you don't just go to a couple of weeks of conversion classes and then boom, you're Jewish. You learn a lot over a long period, and you're expected to make a full contribution to the community, too.

Third, Judaism is a religion of thought. Serious thought. There's the Torah, then there's commentary on the Torah, then there's commentary on the commentary, and there's any number of different opinions about any one point of religious practice. There's no easily accessible saviour and no be-all and end-all. There's no big shiny heaven waiting at the end, either: Judaism doesn't go into a lot of detail about the afterlife.

But finally, and most importantly, Judaism is the context I live in now. It's not just my children who will be Jewish - half my family already are. The person I love most in the whole world is. So if I find it hard to make up my own rules and want to use another set of rules to guide me on a new journey, I'm not just plucking that journey out of thin air: it's already there. So I might as well use it.

The very last thing is, that, as an open-minded sceptic - some of you will have been wondering where the scepticism went - I'm not quite sold on it yet. For the moment, I just want to learn.

Tonight, I go for my first Access to Judaism class. I'm sure it'll be a blast. (Well, it's more likely to be an hour of honest conversation - but that's a blast in my book).




(DISCLAIMER: To any Christians who read this, the views expressed above are a reflection on how I believe Christianity now applies to the way I think, rather than a reflection on your personal faith. Your personal faith is your thing and your thing alone, and I've got nothing but good will for you all. Unless you're Michael Phelps. And he's not Christian anyway.)