For better or for worse, outsiders note religious people for being close-minded. How did this become the case?
Religion has a goal in mind: to have a Divine Being or Pantheon become embraced in all details of someone’s life. Sometimes another goal is to ensure national fervor, especially in older religions—because these antique religions come from an era in which each nation had its own gods.
Look at that goal again: “embraced in all details of someone’s life”. ALL details…meaning that this all-inclusive goal has many obstacles. G-d is supposed to be in everything, and when things are appreciated for their own sake and not for G-d’s, this could be an obstruction.
St. Augustine advises that if one should love something, take the love away from the object and instead give it to its maker. This is a difficult task, and while I can say that I feel that way about love quite often (despite the fact that I am Jewish), there an alternate route taken in lieu of Augustine’s…not a helpful one.
Augustine advises that the love for something should be transmuted to its maker. Some found this difficult, and then found a dangerous solution: abstain from everything not related to religion.
Enjoyment is an uneasy process in religion, because it could lead to things being appreciated for their own sake—diminishing G-d in part, or even in whole. “Thou shalt not have any other gods before me”, a dictum in the Ten Commandments, has often been interpreted in the sense that nothing should have priority in one’s life over G-d. So everything but G-d can disappear from a religious life—and this is increasingly happening in many religious circles.
But is this what religion wants or needs? Not in the least! The goal I mentioned above is to have G-d suffuse in everything, not have G-d confiscate or condemn everything. Having nothing but G-d and religion, emphasized by insular lives, is capable of being harmful, and this image still hurts the image of religious people today.
Some asceticism is healthy, though. It builds discipline and can be a profoundly human and spiritual experience. But balance is essential to not only the being of humans, but G-d’s being! G-d created light, and then immediately made the distinction from darkness, and this first act in Genesis ensured an ideal that different aspects—even the distinctly profane—can become wholesome in the Divine as well as in the Divine experience.
The Founder of Judaism’s Hasidic movement, the Ba’al Shem Tov (Master of the Good Name), believed that beauty of any sort is glimpsing the Divine. Running away from the beauty in the world would be like running away from G-d Himself. The truly religious people learn to embrace the world and love all things.
Seeing a part of the world will give you a human experience, for humans are limited in thought and in scope. But attempting to see the whole and experience the whole—this can make a human transcend his humanity, as we were wont to do.