Deep Thoughts About Religion (and Chainsaws)

How to find a belief system that works for you

Welcome back to Geoff Rodkey’s Bad Advice! Today, we’re exploring a fundamental question of human existence, with profound implications for the way we find meaning and purpose in our lives. 

I know you’re busy people, so I’ll try to land this in 500 words or less.

Dialing in from the (let’s be honest, mostly godless) Upper West Side of Manhattan, a Confused Atheist wants to know:

“If religion is a belief system, how is someone “born” Jewish or Christian or Muslim? Shouldn’t religion (or disbelief) be something that a person decides once they’re old enough to consider the alternatives?”

With the caveat that I probably should’ve at least typed “what’s a belief system?” into ChatGPT before taking a swing, here goes:

For all its flaws, and the countless ways it’s been used to justify individual and collective wrongdoing across the centuries, religion has endured because it offers us answers to life’s deepest questions: how to live, how to die, and how to treat each other in between. Its various rituals—prayers, services, holidays, weddings, funerals—can provide even agnostic members with structure, community, and a sense of belonging to something greater than themselves.

also: some pretty cool religious art out there

These are not small things. Taken together, they add up to a sort of operating manual for life. And while following a manual doesn’t guarantee you’ll get where you want to go, it can point the way, or at least spare you a lot of unnecessary pain and confusion. 

To torture the metaphor a little: I recently bought a chainsaw, and reading the manual made me at least thirty percent less likely to accidentally dismember myself.

For most of human history, religion has been embedded in social structures, so much so that it probably wouldn’t even have occurred to the average person to ask a question like C.A.’s until the modern era, when science disenchanted the natural world, mass communication flooded us with information about alternative ways of living, and social/economic mobility loosened our ties to the communities we were born into.

Today, people like you and me (Western, educated, and mobile) are free to choose from an almost limitless variety of operating manuals, including no manual at all. 

For some people, this is a good thing. If you grew up under the yoke of a particularly oppressive operating manual, it can even be life-saving.

But on the whole, I think operating manuals are undervalued in today’s culture, or at least the segment of it represented by New York Times subscribers. 

Especially because you can’t really live without one. Anybody who thinks they’re going through life with no manual is probably kidding themselves; the only questions are where their rules for living came from, and how they internalized them.

The value of a manual is often most apparent in its absence: Generation Z is simultaneously the least religious and the most clinically depressed in history. (I heard that statistic from a guy on a podcast. No idea if it’s true. But it sure sounds right!)

Considering all this, to C.A.’s question of whether a person should decide their belief system for themselves “once they’re old enough to consider the alternatives,” I think: 

A) absolutely, yes, everyone should have that freedom! 

but also 

B) this is a terrible burden to place on a young person. 

When I was twenty years old, I could barely assemble a decent Halloween costume, let alone a coherent belief system. 

Asking a young adult to self-compile the operating manual for a life they’ve only just started living, out of an informational slurry of ancient religious texts, Instagram aphorisms, airport self-help books, and YouTube explainers, seems unfair to the point of cruelty.

Especially when society is simultaneously asking them to find a job and a domestic partner—both of which are such major life choices that it’s possible to mistake the pursuit of either one for a belief system in itself, leading to all sorts of existential confusion and long-term disappointment.

When you put all this on the shoulders of somebody whose prefrontal cortex is still developing, it’s no wonder Generation Z has the highest rates of anxiety disorder in history. (I’m just guessing. Still: sounds true!)

Which is why, if you’re a young person who either lacks or has opted out of their inherited belief system, I have three words of advice:

Join a cult. 

I know “cult” is a scary word, thanks to a handful of lurid documentaries, a few shattered lives, and the occasional mass suicide. But as somebody once said (please don’t ask me to look up who it was), a religion is just a cult that survived.

Which, if you think about it, means a cult is just a religion that’s still in its startup phase.

So for the ambitious among you, there will be TONS of growth opportunities within the organization, if you’re interested in that kind of thing. 

And by “that kind of thing,” I mean “controlling other people’s lives.” Possibly to the point where you can get them to murder Sharon Tate just for funsies.

Some folks might suggest getting your feet wet with a faith community that won’t demand a celebrity blood sacrifice, dictate your sex partners, or require access to your checking account. But the problem with institutions like Reform Judaism or the Unitarians is that they’re not prescriptive enough. Ask a Unitarian what the meaning of life is, and you’ll get an answer like, “Hoo-boy! That’s a tough one. What do YOU think?”

Let me ask you something: when I wanted to know if I could stand on the top rung of a stepladder and raise my chainsaw over my head to saw off a dead branch hanging above my driveway, do you think the operating manual told me to “just be really careful if you do?” No. It was unequivocal in its insistence that I NOT do that.

And yes, the dead branch is still there. But so am I.

As a young person, that’s the kind of sturdy-guardrails structure you want to look for in a faith community. 

One point of warning, though. When you’re choosing among cults, you want to be a hundred percent sure you’ve carefully researched one key element, because if you get it wrong, your life’s going to be an absolute nightmare:

The food.

My understanding is that in most of these organizations, group dining is mandatory. Whatever the basic meal plan is, you’ll probably be locked into it. Literally. 

So before you sign over your assets, make sure the cuisine’s a good fit. Are you vegetarian? If so, one of the Hindu-adjacent cults might be your best bet. More of a barbeque person? Look into a Pentecostal or Adventist splinter sect, especially the Texas-based ones. Generally speaking, the more charismatic the faith, the better the cookouts.

Good luck! And thanks for your interest in my bad advice. If you think it might be unhelpful to others, please share it! And keep the questions coming. I can’t do this without them.