Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Religion, faith and talking to grown ups

Our youngest son was Christened recently. It was in a sweet village chapel in Suffolk where my immediate family, and those of the godparents, made up three-quarters of the attendees that Sunday. Yet the event got me thinking about faith and religion – and I ended up with a positive view, though initially more of religion than faith.

Faith is a very personal thing but my mind is just too rational – at least these days – to find room for ancient parables that read like an early form of social instruction. Rather, my positive view is of formalised religion and, indeed, its healthy influence with respect to socialisation.

Certainly, religion is probably the most successful socialising force ever invented. And this may have been my problem with it when younger. As I’ve written before, rebelliousness is often a mask for fear of failure – with the “failure” in many instances being social. There are expectations we are supposed to meet – social and material – and it is these that form the benchmarks for our lives. So if we rail against those expectations, it may be that the rebellion hides a deeply-hidden (even denied) fear of falling short.

With respect to my early academic and career mishaps, this is patently true. My rebellion masked a deeply-held belief regarding my inadequacies. Yet this is also true socially – inwardly, I felt alienated from the community around me. So I may have, again, been rejecting society before it could reject me.

And I think religion played a significant part in this, although it wasn’t until I had to engage the vicar in correspondence regarding my faith – as part of the process for persuading him that we could invade his small but reflective Sunday worship to get the youngest sorted – that I realised the role religion played.

My family were agnostics – at least they would have been if they’d examined their relationship with God, which they didn’t (agnostic agnostics perhaps). Indeed, right through my life I’ve seen religion as something other people “get” or “have” or “did”. Meanwhile, I’d never been consulted – at least not until the moment the vicar asked me for my view on faith.

On reflection I regret this inherited agnosticism – not the spiritual or faith element but the resultant absence from any form of involvement in the most obvious totem of community life. Many of my school friends attended church – mostly reluctantly. Yet I now see what it brought them: community involvement, integration, acceptance, behavioural norms and grown-up codes of conduct.

I could also add discipline here, although that makes me sound reactionary, and I’m not. But it did encourage an adult discourse, imparting skills on “how” to communicate with adults, which would surely have a beneficial influence on whether we wanted such a communication.

Meanwhile, I never learned these simple skills, which meant the village adults viewed me as sullen, stroppy, and poorly socialised. They treated me with suspicion. So I acted suspiciously. It was self-fulfilling.

It was clearly a major hole in my community life and one that was deeply felt, although one I can only now articulate. My church-going mates knew people (grown ups) and were liked by them. I was an outsider in my own village. Religion created a powerful sense of cohesion that was apparent for both those on the inside, and those on the outside. It gave those kids boundaries that I didn’t have. And, yes, that included the values of the bible as much as it meant community activity.

Instead, I went the other way – cheeking the grown-ups, leading the other kids towards petty vandalism and shoplifting (true I’m afraid – I was the 10-year old leader of the shoplifting gang). And this led me down a path of being disliked and distrusted by those adults in the village that were part of the community. Of course, this had implications for who I could hang around with. Eventually I was banned from some houses, compounding the alienation. It also had implications at school – not least because many of the teachers lived locally and were plugged into the village scene. Their attitude towards my behaviour, and my work, became noticeably harder as I moved up the years.

Unfortunately, I think society has moved more in my direction. I suspect there are a lot more Robert Kelseys in my “village” (actually a suburb of Chelmsford in Essex) than there were in my day. And society is a lot poorer for it (this isn’t a right-wing rant, by the way, more a sadness at our lost cohesion).

I told the vicar all this in our Christening preamble and he was impressed, but thought I’d missed the point. What about faith, he asked? As far as he was concerned, I was talking about religion as seen through the eyes of an amateur (and atheistic) sociologist. Where’s the spirituality?

I was lost for a reply on this one. But then I remembered going to his service a year-or-so ago. He is married to my wife’s cousin and we were staying with them for the weekend – so it was only good manners to attend his Sunday sermon. I thought it would only be an hour and we’d just have to cope with the boring rituals and distracted kids.

But I found myself deeply moved by his service. I sat there in this ancient environment (surrounded by some pretty ancient people) and absorbed his words regarding love and reflection. Work was pretty taxing at this point, I remember, and he reminded me that I had to appreciate those closest, not view them as a barrier. His message was simple, it made biblical references, and it was sandwiched between a hymn and a prayer – but it also hit the nail on the head when it came to my current stresses. I realise this isn't exactly faith - but it is surely spiritual, which maybe as close as I can get.

Sure, as a kid such words would have had less impact. We need to grow up before we can appreciate any form of reflection. But it would have been nice to have known they existed. Just maybe I’d have wasted less energy trying to reject the world around me before – in my mind – they could reject me.

1 comment:

  1. Thoughfully and fairly put, Bob.
    Well done with the book. Ian (aka 'the vicar')

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