Getting started  (Page 4/4)

In fact, this hand posture only dates back to the late Middle Ages. Christian paintings from the Roman period invariably show people praying with their arms stretched upwards towards the heavens.

The current Christian custom comes from a medieval ceremony in which a king would grant a nobleman a piece of land in return for taxes and military service. The nobleman would kneel with his hands together in front of him, and the king would then put his hands around those of the nobleman while reciting the formula for granting land. In time, putting the palms of one’s hands together like this itself became a symbol of subservience, and it became quite natural to adopt this posture while in church. Instead of the king, it was now God who put his hands around yours. And thus it has remained ever since

"But wait", you say "In the last century some people, like the charismatic churches, have started praying and worshipping with their hands in the air. Does that mean that they are closer to the original Christians?" In that one respect, yes, but then one can point to other aspects in which other churches are closer. None of us, whatever our religion, believes and worships like a person from hundreds or thousands of years ago, for the simple reason that we are not those people. All religions have a history of change and adaptation. The rest of this book will teach us more about this process. When you reach the section on your own religious point of view, be sure to keep an open mind!

Now that we have completed this introduction, I really should tell you where I got that magnificent piece of text that we used for our imaginary religion. It is a drastically shortened version of the creation epic Ainulindalë in JRR Tolkien’s fantasy epic The Silmarillion (1992). And this proves yet something else. Even when highly imaginative authors like Tolkien set out to invent their own religions, they invariably end up with something that resembles one of the major streams of religious thought in existence.

This gives us confidence that the classifications of religion we use are more than just arbitrary systems. If even the most imaginative people are unable to escape from these patterns, then the patterns must actually, even accurately, describe religious reality. They must tell us something about what happens in the minds of religious people. This is similar to what is called an archetype in Jungian psychology.

When we study religion, we are dealing with the deepest impulses of the human spirit. It is true that we cannot point to technological results of our studies, as, for instance, physicists and biologists can do. Nevertheless, finding out how people have answered the age-old questions "why are we here?", "where did we come from?", "what does it all mean?" has a value of its own. In studying religion, we study ourselves.

References Cited:

Tolkien, J R R 1992. The Silmarrillion. London: Grafton.