Religious Texts: Not A Collection of Facts, But About Ethics

The good thing about reading fiction is that it reveals the various ways of interpreting a certain human condition such as love or compassion or suffering, or the meaning of life. Everyone can relate to a story one or another, talk about it in a way that the other can comprehend even though he may a different way of looking at it. The variety of interpretation of a certain human condition reveals that life is layered with meanings, all of them valid and existentially true.

Unlike scientific treatises, fiction invites the readers to engage in a world different from theirs. Fiction transcends the limited world view of a single individual and opens him up to other world views, and to deepen his appreciation of life, as well as his.

Story telling has a power just as effective as the written form of fiction; but, unlike the written word, the storyteller and the listener are physically present, making engagement much easier and smoother, and exciting.

The whole point of mentioning fiction and its efficacy is to stress the fact that all religious texts are a work of fiction, which convey existential truths that serve as ways of moral living. Fiction and storytelling keeps the meaning fluid. It uses words, but it does not allow the words to be taken literally. A dialogue: a sharing of various interpretations ensure that life is not to be lived by following a word.

Religious texts then are meant to keep the spirit alive. The spirit lives not in the word. A word kills the spirit. Rather the spirit finds its life and rebirth in the variety of, and every, interpretation that is to be spoken and to be heard.

This is why I am against religious fundamentalism. It kills the variety of meanings. It kills the spirit ‘behind’ the word. When the spirit is imprisoned in a word, the word is taken literally. And, when the word is taken literally, other interpretations are prohibited. The solidified word, now, becomes a political weapon. It wields more power and explosion than any nuclear weapon known to man. Placed in the wrong hands, the solidified word will trigger another holocaust.

That was how the Crusade got its misguided direction. That was why the Islamists will continually be a threat to World Peace. That is why the Christian fundamentalist will make sure that peace will be won on their unconditional terms. You need not go that far to recognize that the beginnings of fundamentalism are borne right in our place of worship, possessing and brainwashing our young.

So, for the sake of humanity, for the sake of your children, for the sake of God, allow religious texts to be what it was meant to be – a work of fiction.