The gospel according to Christopher Marlowe:
“I count religion but a childish toy. And hold there is no sin but ignorance.”
And with a smug look and a kind remark Mr. Christopher has dismantled so much of the architecture that shapes the structure of faith communities everywhere. The wrecking ball of his wit has turned the church into a pile of bricks.
“Well done,” I say, “well done.”
But what of this matter that the child plays with?
It seems that most children are inquisitive and caught up in the wonder of everything around them. Certainly our simple explanations of life’s complexities may satisfy for a time. However, more often then not, we have made life seem more complex so that we might do what we WANT to do and not what we OUGHT to do. Children have a keener sense—arguably a more honest feel—for what ought to be done. So we are faced with the challenge of explaining why he only gets to spend time with his father on the weekends. Life is complex. Or there is the difficulty of explaining why one parent has just overdosed after another hit. Life is complex. Or there is the insistence that the child is loved with the proof of an expensive gift. Life is complex. Too often we find ourselves justifying the pursuits of our WANTS.
Children have a sense of what OUGHT to be. Albeit in their simplicity, there is this lingering sense of what is right and wrong and somehow we find ourselves on the wrong side and so we must justify why we are there and so we explain it away as life being complex.
“Well done,” I say, “well done.”
So what is it that the child plays with?
Do children really play with ignorance? Is it merely a toy that they manipulate into whatever fantasy their imagination takes them? Perhaps they find themselves in a world where their parents love each other and haven’t gotten divorced, whose faculties are fully functional, and who express love to him in relational ways rather than seeking to purchase it with the more expensive toy that he is playing with at the present time.
The ignorance of a child isn’t that they don’t know everything, but that they can’t comprehend the complexity of life that would force someone to act against those realities that the child know ought to be.
Now what is it that religion plays with?
It seems to me that there are at least two reasons why we don’t like religion: we think that in its complexity it lets some do what they WANT (and ought not) to do, or in its simplicity it commands us to do what we OUGHT (and don’t want) to do.
Perhaps for many of us there is just enough of both that gives us enough bricks to build a wall between us and religious institutions or at least toss a few bricks in their general direction. I grant this.
Ought we to reflect upon why the rubble is all around us before we start building walls? Should we not consider why we have this inclination to build walls to block any other authority on our lives? Would it not be time well spent if we took the time to think of why we have this propensity to build our own autonomy?
Perhaps we ought to ask ourselves if the world would be a better place if we simply began doing what we OUGHT to do and letting go of the complications of doing what we WANT to do.
What if we took the bricks and built bridges or houses or sculptures?
What if we built something of beauty?
Then “well done,” I would say, “well done.”
