The People Journal

Atheism for Lent – I still don’t know why I do what I do

Posted by: Jim Mondry

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011 at 9:57 pm

Every time you do a religious action, is it truely intentional? For myself, I know at times I’m participating in a religious ceremonial, and there is a clear sense of what I’m participating in, but there are often times where I simply just follow along without any sense of feeling or desire for the action. I want to expand a little more regarding what I said in my last post about the social impact on religious practices.

Now, I’m only as knowledgeable about Action Theory as the wikipedia entry and what Westphal explains, but from my understanding, there is a distinction between Motion and Action. A motion is simply a movement (i.e. if I fell down) but has no associated intention or motive. An action is distinguished in that it has intention. The same motion, though with a different intention, is a different action. A simplified example of the difference would be someone sitting on the grass at parliment hill. If it was a sunny sunday afternoon and the person was reading, we can probably gather that the intention is just to enjoy some green-space. In contrast, if someone was sitting on parliment hill with a placard, it would appear that the action is a protest. Its the same motion in both cases, but completely different actions.

Now, to draw in some religious examples, image a Sunday service. From week to week (when I’m at church anyway), you will likely see me singing at some point in the service. Same action, week after week. But, my intention is often drastically different depending on the week – sometimes I will be singing with a intention of “worship”*, other times I will simply be singing because it is the expected thing to do.

Communion is the thing I most often catch myself with drastically differing intentions. Some weeks, I’m honestly feeling some sense of guilt and so I go up to the table in a penitent sort of way (God I’m sorry for my behaviour). Many weeks though, I’m feeling a strong sense that I don’t want to go up, but I’m afraid of the social impact of not going up – will people ask why? will I have an answer? My social guilt is leading me to participate in a religious ceremonial stripping it of all meaning. The ceremonial of communion is so full of meaning, beyond that of remembrance of Jesus death, it is unfortunate that I simply am only ever associating guilt with action – but I think this really gets to the deeper truth of my understanding of “my faith” – it really is a guilt oriented piety. I either do things so as not to feel guilty from God, or from those around me.

What all this really tells me is that I’m more often worried about the ‘god’ of other people, than anything more pious.

One final thought on intention though, embedded in one of the footnotes in the book, there was a really fascinating comment about intention in a religious social context:

If the setting were a ceremonial one in which a pastor were leading his congregation in the recitation of the Apostles’ Creed, one would be less likely to accept those words as a direct expression of their beliefs… than one would in another context. That is becuase an alternative explanation is available. The conventions governing the service dictate that those words are to be said at that time and in that place.” – Wayne Proudfoot, Religious Experience, 1985

Essentially, action in this case could be understood as social conformity rather than piety. How often do you find yourself following along with the service, simply out of conformity? Can we break away from this? I wonder what a church service would look like where people were allowed to participate with what ever was providing meaning, but were allowed to not participate if the action was lacking meaning that week?

*My understanding behind the intention of worship has become more and more vague over the last few years. Suffice to say for this example, I’m attempting to connect with the words and music beyond their surface.