Religion and Spiritual Integrity
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it is humanly impossible to adjudicate among them and to discover which of them is really true. The problem is the confusion of the particular medium of God’s revelation with the universality of its message. It contradicts the nature of God, who is One for all, the Truth open to all. So what is true religion?
own nor revealed religion on its own. Revealed religion without natural religion is blind; natural religion without revealed religion is empty. Each needs the other. Every person, like Émile, grows up in a culture, with a set of True religion, according to Rousseau, is neither natural religion on its
sacred stories, images, symbols, rituals, and a community, that is natural to us. To each of us, the priest advises that we return to our own sacred tradition (or find out what it is), and discover true religion within it in a non- and tolerant way that is open to the same truth that appears in other, different exclusive
revealed traditions.Rousseau, but with a may be, when its concrete, historical symbols, rituals, and meanings are opened Taking a cue from history, theological humanism thinks something like crucial difference. True religion is any religion, whatever it
up and interpreted in light of the integrity of life and the responsible con-science. Many religions have this idea. The Buddhists have a nice term for the relatedness of things: dependent origination. We awaken to the true nature of things in its ultimacy and to genuine compassion for others when we under-
stand the co-dependence of all things, including the co-dependence of religions. Christianity, to use another example, found the ultimate relatedness of things in the very being of God, since God is a living Trinity. The love of God extends to the love of others, including the enemy. The insight is that a
“religion” is true when it is a means to a more ultimate end, namely, the inner-truth of life itself, otherwise it is an idol. From this perspective, religions are true religions when they refer their own particular meanings to the ulti-mate meaning of mutual interrelatedness, the deep structure of just order.
The spiritual struggle of life is thereby to inhabit one’s religious identity for a good that exceeds that identity, namely, the integrity of life.Rousseau’s form of religious humanism. Particular religions are not merely Yet just on this point theological humanism is markedly different than
the historic expressions of a universal natural religion, as he seems to suggest. We cannot peer through the religions in their wild diversity and expect to find the same “natural religion” at their core. The actual religions are pro-foundly diverse as well as different ways of seeing and interpreting reality
and the point and purpose of human existence. Theological humanism does not and cannot deny those profound differences. What it seeks, rather, is a shared way of inhabiting or living through radically different ways of being religious and being human.