What is religion good for?

a lesson from the fig tree

About four hundred years before Christ, a Greek philosopher, Diogenes of Sinope, did an outrageous thing in Athens. In broad daylight, he carried a lamp and walked about in the marketplace. “What the heck are you doing, you crazy old man” the Athenians asked. He replied, “I’m looking for one honest man.”

Jesus also walked about the Holy Land looking for something. In his inimitable manner, he symbolized this search by rummaging through the leaves of a ficus tree, looking for figs. Unsurprisingly, since it was April and figs were way out of season, the good Lord didn’t find any. Very surprisingly, he denounced the tree, and by the evening it had shriveled.

It was all an object lesson, a parable, of course. He wasn’t really looking for figs. He was looking for true religion, real faith. He then went to the Temple, and didn’t find any. He’s still looking: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18.8).

What was he looking for? What test did he apply, what criteria did he use to find true religion?

I’m teaching an AP course on the history of religion. So as you’d expect, we’re doing a deep dive into the history and beliefs of major religions, like Christianity, of course, and Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucius, Shinto and the various faith and practices of Native Americans (especially the Navajo, with whom I’ve spent some significant time). 

Typically, when a “history of religions” course is taught in a Christian context, the criterion with which a religion is evaluated is the creed and doctrine of the Christian faith. But we are doing something different, something strange. We’ll also be asking “Well, how did it all turn out?”

In other words, we are looking at the historic consequences of how each religion was actually lived out in its various times and locations. We are examining how people acted out their faith, how they actually treated their neighbors and the natural world around them. 

It occurred to me that we, too, are looking for “true religion.” We are looking for the historic, cultural effects especially of our own Christian faith: “By their fruits ye shall know them” (Matthew 7.16). We ask, “What are those fruits? What is religion good for?”

My students, who are all smart as a whip, are now embarking on a long Bible study over the year, looking for signs and indications about the benefits that religion really ought to produce in society. Here are a few verses already picked out by my bright young things:

“Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5.24).

“Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow” (Isaiah 1.16-17). 

“The great, the mighty and the terrible God is not partial and takes no bribe. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the immigrant therefore; for you yourselves sojourned in the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10.17-19).

“Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world” (James 1.27).

And of course, this from Jesus himself: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25.40).

“If a religion doesn’t produce these effects,” they said, “then it isn’t doing any good.” They reminded me that “doing good” was what Jesus was all about, from beginning to end. In His first sermon, a twelve-year-old lass told me, “He read from Isaiah that ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor’” (Luke 4.18). 

Religion had fallen on hard times in Jesus’ day. The religious leaders were busy raising a lot of money, building great edifices and administrations, and loading people down with unbearable burdens of pious requirements that were backed up by the threat of eternal hellfire. There were a lot of public displays of false piety and crowded hoopla, covering up the real business of making money and political deals.

Right after the fig tree incident, Jesus strode into the Temple, and found people doing anything and everything except the right thing – they were exchanging currency, selling livestock, and manipulating the Romans and the Zealot militias. We all know what happened next. Obviously, he didn’t find what he was looking for. 

He wasn’t looking for religion with political power. He wasn’t looking for massive crowds. He was looking for righteousness, justice, peace, and reason. He was looking for faith and prayer. He was looking for love – love of God, and love of one’s fellow man.

“Those are the two greatest commandments!” the class said. 

And they were spot on. I won’t speak for other religions, but I know this about my own Christian faith: if a Christian community doesn’t produce love, it isn’t Christianity. It might produce excitement and entertainment, even wealth and political power – “But if I have not love,” St Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, “I am nothing.” 

That twelve-year-old girl, the brightest of the lot, wrote this in her essay: “God wants people to treat people like he treats people, with love.”

Call her idealistic. Call her Pollyanna. But call her right. Because that’s exactly what religion is good for. Or should be good for.