The Well-Traveled Road to Boredom

Researchers have discovered that endorphins, a brain chemical that operates on the same opiate receptors as alcohol – with the effect of suppressing pain – can also be released after deep expressions of religious faith. Perhaps most widely associated with strenuous exercise, endorphins are thus part of the brain’s response to spirituality – not just moments of religious ecstasy, but a steady, calming diet of faith.
Justin A. Frank, M.D., Bush on the Couch, p57

Quite a while back we were at dinner with a neighbor couple who we did not know well, but wanted to know better. It was a pleasant evening and we shared many interests. But at a point late in the meal, he laid it on me: “Mark, are you a spiritual man?” Poof! The bubble evaporated. He tried to recruit me for his religious study group. He was quite excited that they were about to open up Paul’s epistle to the Romans – he’d been suffering through some of his other letters in anticipation.

Buzzkill. How to ruin an otherwise fun evening. At least he wasn’t selling life insurance.

I grew up in a religious family – not slightly so, not one inclined to bow to the formalities while ignoring the substance. My parents were deeply religious, and I attended Catholic schools for twelve years. I don’t have many fond memories – mostly, sitting through the same ceremony again and again and again and again was frightfully boring. When I hit my teen years and could drive myself, I started “attending” 7PM Sunday mass – at the church of the great pinball at a local bowling alley. I was always afraid that Mom would ask me specifics of the service – what was the gospel and stuff like that. But she didn’t. She knew.

I never understood the appeal of religion. To this day, it gives me the creeps. I was hobbled by my youthful indoctrination, and carried with me the mandate to believe due to fear of damnation for many years. At last, one night around the time of my first midlife crisis, I decided it was all bunk, that I would not be damned, that financial ruin would not happen, that my kids would not suffer greatly if we all just sort of pretended that it wasn’t there. Freedom.

But I see so much religion going on around me. I see a cynical man like George W. Bush, and assume that he, like me, doesn’t’ really take it seriously – that he’s just diddling his base. Mr. Bush’s psychiatrist, Dr. Frank, thinks Bush is sincere. That worries me. I like the idea that most of our presidents have been agnostic or atheist or indifferent and practical. Having a genuinely religious man in the White House could be dangerous.

Look around. It is. This Bush guy, with his certainty and inability to self-reflect, is really harming people.

But I see the good too. I know people whose lives have been turned around by religious faith – it seems to minimize self-destructive impulses. I’m happy for them, even more so if they keep it to themselves. I see the hundreds of cars at the fundamentalist churches as we make our now-and-then trip to our Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. I know that religion is making people happy. And now I know why. It is giving them an endorphin buzz.

But it’s creepy. I am not of a mind that can endure for long secret friends and miracles. Repetitive ritual is extremely boring. The yielding of one’s identity to a “higher power” robs one of one of the things that can produce satisfaction – individuality. It’s no accident that I am one of those who hits the keyboard every morning and churns out this stuff – that I eschew political party ID and seek out the nonconformist route. It is my own key to happiness – to be who I am.

For most people, it seems, there is happiness in plunging one’s self into a group. We’re tribal – I get that, but I rebel at the notion that a man in a pulpit or podium has any special wiring or communication channels to some higher imaginary being. It’s all here, right in front of us, and everything we can know is there – clues are everywhere. Life is exploration, and satisfaction is now and then finding that some small puzzle piece fits.

We’ll never have all the pieces or be able to stand back far enough to see the whole puzzle. But that is satisfying too. How boring it would be to have all the answers, to have everything spelled out in detail. How boring is religion.