How I believe

The number one bete noire of all religious converts is the question: So, what made you convert?

Usually people who ask this question expect something of a Damascene narrative. I’ve never been able to answer that question even to my own satisfaction. My life, is the usual answer I give these days. Naturally, this is often followed by blank stares, prompting me to explain.

I like to think of myself as having a profoundly Catholic soul; as in the all-embracing, wide-ranging comprehensive, inclusive, tolerant, open-minded, ecumenical, and so on, definition of the word. Naturally I have my shortcomings, some of which might be in slight contradiction of the above definition.

I have the fortune of having been born under the African sun. Africa’s struggles run through my veins. This has predisposed me to religious consciousness and the fusion of one’s identity with the collective. This is actually what ancient philosophers used to call sacred. I’m also intensely attracted to the concision and precision of Western thought, and admire largely its introspective culture. But I feel its excellence has come too often at the expense of individuals losing organic relation with their communities.

I make every effort possible to ground myself in my own tradition while being open to valuable influences of other cultures. I believe it possible, by retrieving the spiritual heritage of our traditions, to come up with assimilated creative solutions of our common humanity. I like to watch and listen to people with the absorption of a psychologist, the opportunism of a story collector, and the affection of a humanist. I abhor fundamentalism in anything, especially religion. I respect affable manners, simple living, and the culture of the mind.

I detest in governments the prediliction for using economic and cultural hegemony for imperial ends, and the manner in which some hijack human ideals (human rights, liberation, democracy, relief of suffering and so on) for non-ideal ends, like insatiable profit making.

I love the impact of a progressive economy, mobility and technology on identity and social interaction when it promotes human freedom. But I despise the manner by which contemporary culture sometimes abuses spiritual language for the promotion of consumerism.

I believe there is a crisis of transmission in the cultures of our age as a whole, demonstrated by numerous current meanings and misunderstandings, which give opportunists, like fundamentalists, opportunity to play on people’s confusion. I often notice people trying to escape the effort of growing their conscience by transforming their preferences or repugnance into moral outrage, and call it religion. That’s not how I define religion.

Religion to me is the collective ability of faith grouping reaching out to the incomprehensible Mystery that is the indestructible base of our being: God. Hence it requires the use of rituals, symbols to tame the incomprehensibility of the Mystery. I am extremely attracted to faiths that believe the ultimate essence of this Mystery is love.

I do not believe that faith will inevitably be pushed to the margins by our secular world. I strongly believe religion is capable of refreshing what is valuable in all cultures. At its best, religion is the creative force of culture; at its worst, it can destroy the very ideals it espouses. I believe what religion needs in our era, especially Christianity, is to find proper, relevant language to transmute afresh the message of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. There is not a single line I mumble in the Apostle’s Creed. I believe all of it wholeheartedly.

Perhaps that’s the best I can say in 650 words about what I mean by my Catholic soul. It’ll take the rest of my life to grasp the full comprehension into the depth of it all. Perhaps even that will not be enough, and I will fully grasp the mystery which I am when, Christ-like, I see myself through the Godhead.