Editorial Religion, true & false
Steinfels, Margaret O'Brien
Religion, true & false A lot of questionable and even silly things have been written about re- ligion and the nature of belief following the suicides of thirty-nine mem-bers of the Heaven's Gate...
...Since it was incontrovertible, it had to be controverted...
...Perhaps the most penetrating analysis of the tragedy and its coverage was offered by the New Republic's literary editor, Leon Wieseltier...
...Nor did their video-taped professions of good will hide the grisly reality of their deaths, or their detachment from the rest of reality...
...Put together a rejection of the "things of this world" with the trappings of monas-ticism and (especially) the practice of celibacy, and evidently a good many people assume you get something like "religion" or even Christianity...
...Yet Wieseltier rightly insisted on distinguishing between real food for the soul and poisonous substitutes...
...Indeed, several cult members deserted their children to join the group...
...There are ways to judge how closely religious belief and practice correspond to reality-if not to ultimate reality...
...So, too, Christianity has taught that the heavens speak to us of life, life in this world and beyond, and even life everlasting...
...Indeed, watching the Hale-Bopp comet blaze its fiery path across what usually seems an unchanging firmament, the layperson is forcibly reminded of what the scientist is daily made aware of: that this creation is not a fixed and determined machine, devoid of chance or significant incident, but an ongoing miracle of which we are a part...
...This contempt for bodily existence and the trappings of a corrupt and irredeemable world was manifest in the group's social isolation and ersatz asceticism...
...Still, a creed that has given shape and meaning to the lives of millions over millennia can claim more than a superficial understanding of human nature, and should not be lumped together with every passing fancy that happens to "look like" a religion...
...For the inanity of Marshall Herff Applewhite's teaching did not vitiate the truth of what had transpired: people had sacrificed everything, and then themselves, for a spiritual objective...
...Religion, true & false A lot of questionable and even silly things have been written about re- ligion and the nature of belief following the suicides of thirty-nine mem-bers of the Heaven's Gate cult last month in Rancho Santa Fe, California...
...Ideally, countervailing sources of authority and an openness to the world and to other faiths constantly test the truth of any religious tradition...
...God, it teaches, does not despise human form or the material world, but created both and came to redeem them...
...Even a religion with a pope does not invest all authority in a single guru or leader...
...The serenity of these men and women did not disguise the magnitude of their misery...
...Yes, Christianity has periodically succumbed to delusion and violence...
...Nevertheless, it is true that, like the cultists, Christianity has long looked to the heavens as a herald of God's action...
...Indeed, comets like Hale-Bopp, science now tells us, may have played a pivotal role in seeding the earth with the carbon-rich chemical compounds from which all life comes...
...Most evident to the outside world was the cult's suppression of sexual difference in appearance and clothing...
...It certainly did not...
...Christianity juxtaposes spiritual reality to the transitory nature of this world, but is careful not to consign the spirit to a supernatural realm and the created world, especially the body, to another...
...Surely that is the real message trailing in the comet's wake...
...Thus the public commentary on the cult's bizarre suicides-each cult member carried identification and luggage for the next world-ranged from scientists' bemoaning those "living a life innocent of empirical rigor" to village skeptics' praising the cult for keeping the killing to themselves or eagerly noting that to outsiders all religions appear equally "bizarre...
...Six of the men, including Applewhite, had themselves surgically castrated...
...Celibacy was also required-children only complicate one's ties to a world whose end is imminent...
...What all these commentators were trying to elide was the reality of the hunger of the soul," he wrote (April 21...
...Universality and longevity are two measures, although not infallible or sufficient ones...
...Mere passivity is not a reliable measure of spiritual health, just as a studied innocence or helplessness is more an invitation to manipulation than a sign of hard-won simplicity...
...Variously known as UFO nuts, New Age dreamers, or millennial fanatics, the cultists killed themselves in anticipation of the arrival of a spaceship, supposedly following behind the Hale-Bopp comet, that would "beam them up" to the next level of existence, the "Level above Human...
...In this instance, both were symptoms of the sort of neediness and confusion that can spell disaster...
...But despite such failures, there remains a profound difference between a suicide cult and any authoritative religious tradition...
...In killing themselves (by suffocation, facilitated by phenobarbital and vodka), the followers of Marshall Herff Applewhite, a former church and college choir master, hoped to shed their "earthly containers" or "vehicles...
...It sounds crazy, and it was...
Vol. 124 • April 1997 • No. 8
