In an era so suffuse with logic and science that everything must make perfect sense in order to be believed, some leave no room for any divinity at all. This is hardly surprising, as authors like Karen Armstrong believe that mythologies and gods first came about on account of what was not known within the world, as opposed to what was established.
Religious obfuscation is a primary factor that has caused others not only to stop believing but also have caused them to try to convince me that I should give up religion entirely (!).
In other words, what I sometimes get is “your attempts to explain away all of the various contradictions within your religion prove nothing except for the hollow substance of your own beliefs. It is so illogical that it cannot be real and makes your own understanding numb”
But is it really that hollow? I certainly do not feel like I am the only person alive who would prefer to read the Bible rather than a lab report. Lab reports do have their purpose, and a very useful one at that, because each individual lab report has a clear purpose to present one idea, in its most down-to-earth form.
A holy text, on the other hand, is supposed to convey everything. The notion of having the infinite contained a single book is very counter-intuitive—especially to those who have read very clear writing of any genre.
It is a type of lab report which not only contains everything but that you can read a different way every single time you pick it up. Lucretius’ “On the Nature of the World” conveys a view of everything in a non-religious sense, telling about all things in a concise manner. Because of that, there is little to no meaning aside from the one written in the words.
The Bible tells of all under the sun and beyond, but it precisely because it is not clear in its language, with ambiguities as well as hidden meanings that often disappear in translation. It invokes the collective unconscious of humanity by being a dreamlike book. The idea that unclear dream-writing is capable of more than realism is something that exists in Andre Breton’s “The Surrealist Manifesto”, but long before that as well.
A holy book can also never be holy without interpretation. A literal application of the idea that “if an eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away” (Matthew 18:9) is not only be painful but meaningless. Luckily, I have still yet to meet a Christian that has willfully subjected this treatment upon himself. Feel free to ask as many Christians as to what this law may mean—you will almost certainly get multiple answers.
The Preamble to the Constitution does not have that same liberty—it is precise to the degree that all American citizens will likely read it similarly. There is a notion of interpretation within the ideas in the Preamble, which itself is too hefty to write here without sidetracking the reader, but it lacks depth because it is supposed to be applied in a narrow context. With Biblical laws, anything can be applied in a much broader context. When talking to peers in my Jewish school days, it was impossible to tell who would bring up what and when, because religion is by nature so vast in the realms it governs.
A believer who holds onto his or her holy text becomes an author in that work. In a sense, the Bible is a book that cannot ever truly end, as long as there are believers. The obscure, surrealist language of the holy text ensures that the person’s subconscious—complete with their dreams, hopes, and desires—is merged with the greater divinity.
Insofar as we as humans cannot make sense of ourselves, the holy texts of religions all around the world will perplex many outsiders. It is not “religious obfuscation” for the sake of distorting a falsehood into truth, it is splicing the ineffable parts of the human experience onto the texts so that we can understand ourselves better. The text does not exist for us to understand it as much as it exists as a lens through which we can see ourselves more deeply.