the Bible in front of all the other kids. I agreed.
This probably won’t surprise you, but I’m not very spiritual—no
supernatural beliefs for me, thank you. I get a sick pleasure from chaos and
uncertainty. This, unfortunately, has condemned me to a life of struggle with
the Uncomfortable Truth. But it’s something I’ve come to accept about
myself.
Now that I’m older, though, I get the whole dress-up-for-Jesus thing.
Despite what I thought at the time, it wasn’t about my parents (or God)
torturing me. It was about respect. And not to God, but to the community, to
the religion. Dressing up on Sunday is about virtue-signaling to the other
churchgoers, “This Jesus stuff is serious business.” It’s part of the us-versus-
them dynamic. It signals that you’re an “us” and that you should be treated as
such.
And then there are the robes . . . Ever notice that the most important moments
in life are always accompanied by somebody in a robe? Weddings,
graduations, funerals, court hearings, judicial committee hearings, open heart
surgeries, baptisms, and yes, even church sermons.
I first noticed the robe thing when I graduated from college. I was
hungover and on about three hours’ sleep when I stumbled to my seat for
commencement. I looked around and thought, holy shit, I haven’t seen this
many people wearing robes in one place since I went to church. Then I looked
down and, to my horror, realized that I was one of them.
The robe, a visual cue signaling status and importance, is part of the ritual
thing. And we need rituals because rituals make our values tangible. You
can’t think your way toward valuing something. You have to live it. You have
to experience it. And one way of making it easier for others to live and
experience a value is to make up cute outfits for them to wear and important-
sounding words for them to say—in short, to give them rituals. Rituals are
visual and experiential representations of what we deem important. That’s
why every good religion has them.
Remember, emotions are actions; the two are one and the same.
Therefore, to modify (or reinforce) the Feeling Brain’s value hierarchy, you
need some easily repeatable yet totally unique and identifiable action for
people to perform. That’s where the rituals come in.
Rituals are designed to be repeated over a long period of time, which only
lends them an even greater sense of importance—after all, it’s not often you
get to do the exact same thing that people five hundred years ago did. That’s
some heavy shit. Rituals are also symbolic. As values, they must also embody
some story or narrative. Churches have guys in robes dipping bread in wine