11/16/2022 – Religion and the Human Condition

When you think about religion do you ever wonder just what is it that religion is trying to solve? What is the human condition and why is it a problem? We’re going back to the basics today people. This is TenOnReligion.

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So, what is it that religion is trying to solve? If religion is the answer, what is the question? One common way to approach this issue is to look at it through the idea of a human predicament. But what is the human predicament? Different religions and cultures have different ways of describing it. The main question here: is the human condition a good category to help understand religious traditions better? Think about that as you watch this video and let me know what you think. We’re going to take a brief look at six different traditions and see how they understand the human problem. The model looks like this. A. What’s wrong? B. What should it be? And C. How to get from A to B? This short video is going to be a bit general and oversimplistic, but hopefully it will help present a basic overview of the human predicaments in these six traditions. We’re going to look at Chinese, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim perspectives on the human condition. One other note, geographically, religions are often referred to by their origin location such that Chinese traditions are referred to as East Asian; Hindu and Buddhist as South Asian; and Jewish, Christian and Muslim as West Asian.

First, Chinese perspectives, or East Asian traditions. The main word used in describing the human condition in Chinese traditions such as Daoism and Confucianism is disharmony. This is because the Chinese conception of the cosmos is a unified composition of interrelated harmonious processes. Everything works together. When human life fails to pattern itself after the great patterns of the cosmos, the result is disharmony. This can be seen in broken political and social relations, human relations, and other things like psychological or physical sickness. In human beings, consciousness and memory sometimes lead to extreme reactions. Caution turns into fear. Reasonable preparation can easily turn into greed. So how to get from disharmony back to harmony again, or how to get from A to B? Chinese religious responses focus on restoring harmony which includes the cultivation of character to return to the original harmony of creation.

Second, Hindu perspectives, a South Asian tradition. What is labeled with the word “Hinduism” is actually a huge group of subtraditions practiced for millennia on the Indian subcontinent. Now I’m not gonna lie. Hinduism is too varied to make general statements about the human predicament with a lot of confidence, meaning one has to get pretty vague to cover a large enough portion of the Hindu traditions to count as a general statement. However, many of the Hindu traditions do have something like the following going on. The human problem is thinking something changing is real when only the permanent is real. Ultimate reality is described by the word Brahman. Things are permanently Brahman and our ignorance causes the illusion that things are changing when actually they are not. When one does not properly see reality, one is confined to the cycle of samsara, or reincarnation. How to get from A to B? One must discern appropriately and transform oneself as one slowly learns from that discernment. Then one can escape samsara to attain moksha, or liberation from the cycle, but this can take many lifetimes.

Third, Buddhist perspectives, another South Asian tradition. This one might be the most straightforward of the six because it comes directly from the Buddha’s first sermon, which later became known as the Four Noble Truths. One: all of human life is suffering including birth, aging, sickness, death and all other forms of unpleasantries. Two: the origin and cause of suffering is the thirsting or craving bound up with greed and which produces re-existence. Three: there is a possible way to end the suffering. And Four: the method is through the Eightfold path (right view, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration). You can remember this with the four words suffering, cause, end, path or the acronym S-C-E-P, which means nothing at all. The human process which leads to suffering begins with one’s ignorance as one does not even know what the problem is. Buddhism came out of the Indian Hindu context and the big difference is this: Hinduism believes in the idea that all reality is ultimately Brahman while Buddhism reject Brahman’s existence. This includes even the human self which is often referred to as no-self. The problem is thinking something is real in the permanent sense when it is not. Thus, things do not exist when even we think they do. Another way of putting it is that things are empty even when we think they’re not. There are too many schools of Buddhism to discuss here, but most of them focus on the idea of either nothingness or emptiness. One must escape the cycle of samsara and attain nirvana, an ancient word meaning to extinguish, or to blow out, as in blow out a candle. To get from A to B, one must discern appropriately and transform oneself as one slowly learns from that discernment.

Now we’re going to do a big shift and switch to traditions originating in West Asia and specifically look at what are referred to as the three Abrahamic traditions because they all see the biblical figure of Abraham as a common mythical ancestor.

Fourth, Jewish perspectives. God created humans with evil impulses and inclinations. Nevertheless, humans are obligated to be good and work strenuously against those evil inclinations. God will be just and reward those who good and struggle against evil. At the same time, God will be merciful to those who do evil but then repent. The Torah represents the blueprint for how to be good. To get from A to B, one must observe and participate in the various Jewish rituals and beliefs regarding how to live one’s life, including practices such as eating kosher food and not working on the Sabbath day. After the Shoah, however, this gets much more complicated for some Jews. In light of Nazi atrocities, particularly those against Jews, some Jews now believe that God seems neither just nor merciful, and perhaps God has abandoned the human scene altogether. Other Jews believe that redemption in history is still an ongoing process with ultimate redemption yet to come in the future.

Fifth, Christian. Humans have fallen short of God’s plan for them and thus fallen out of a full relationship with God. They are corrupted by sin, a word which has its origins in missing the mark, like an archer shooting at a target. Salvation, a word meaning being saved from something, is way to overcome human shortcomings by re-connecting with God and restoring the relationship. To get from A to B, this connection is made possible by Christ, a Greek word simply referring to the messiah concept from ancient Judaism. Christians, or Christ-followers, identify the Christ concept with the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The crucifixion of Jesus by the Roman government and the subsequent resurrection accounts in the gospel narratives became a focal point for early Christians. Today, there are many types of Christianities and some of them frame salvation as more of a process while others frame it as more of a momentary experience followed by a lifelong grappling of faith within the context of life’s ups and downs. One could also devise a line of thinking that Christianity was heavily influenced by Jewish apocalypticism and make a pretty strong case, but that takes us beyond the focus of this episode.

Sixth, Muslim perspectives. There is a divine law and human beings have freedom to disobey it. The world has temptations to disobey, but humans are not forced to disobey. The divine law was revealed by Allah to the Prophet Muhammad in the Qu’ran, so there is really no confusion about it. One should always obey the will of Allah. The central problem in the human predicament is shirk, or idolatry. There is a sharp break between God and creation (including humans) and one must never confuse the two. To get from A to B, one must accept and participate in the five pillars of the faith. These are the shahada or testimony, salah or daily prayer, zakat or almsgiving, sawm or fasting during the Islamic month of Ramadan, and participating in the hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca during the hajj season at least once.

To sum up we have something that looks like this. Chinese traditions – transition from disharmony to harmony by cultivating character. Hindu – escape samsara by transforming oneself through various methods to attain moksha. Buddhist - escape samsara by transforming oneself through various methods to attain nirvana. Jewish – do good and struggle against evil by observing and participating in the various Jewish rituals and beliefs regarding how to live one’s life. Christian – restore the relationship with God by attaining salvation through belief in Christ. Muslim – obey the will of Allah by participating in the five pillars of faith.

There are obviously many other traditions which might frame the human condition differently such as African traditions, South American traditions, Australian, Native American, other traditions from India like Jainism or Sikhism, and the list goes on. But let’s focus on the main question here: is the human condition a good category to help understand religious traditions better? Why or why not? Let me know in the comments what you think. Until next time, stay curious. If you enjoyed this, support the channel in the link below, please like and share this video and subscribe to this channel. This is TenOnReligion.