Should We Categorize People?
Why does Heal the West advocate for path-agnostic spiritual growth instead of only Christianity?
Should we categorize people—that is, should we lump them into in-groups and out-groups? And if so, how and when? This is a question that I struggle with, especially as a Christian writing about path-agnostic spiritual growth. I wanted to explain why I don't advocate for people to become Christians, even though that sometimes seems like it should flow naturally from my faith; and instead just advocate for people to go deeper in their relationship with God (or Spirit, Source, Infinite Intelligence, the Universe, their higher self, etc) however they define that. Ultimately, I think one reason I choose to do this comes down to in what circumstances I think we should categorize people.
To be clear, sometimes I think categorizations can be (temporarily) helpful. I recently attended the Braver Angels national convention. Braver Angels is a national nonprofit dedicated to helping left-leaning folks and right-leaning folks to have better conversations and so heal our partisan divide. At the conference, almost everyone wore a lanyard: blue if they were leftwing or left-leaning, red if they were right-wing or right-leaning. Some attendees didn't like the distinction, but on balance I think it was powerful. The truth is that our country sometimes feels like it is being riven apart at the red-blue seams. With that context in mind, I think the lanyards made sense. A blue lanyard making the conscious choice to sit down and have lunch with a red lanyard deals a body blow to the forces of political division. It represents two people seeing the chasm that separates us and making the deliberate decision to bridge it. That's a lot more powerful than two unmarked people simply choosing to have lunch together. So I think sometimes categorizing ourselves can be good, especially if the goal is to recognize and consciously overcome those categories.
But I don't think that categorizing people in the context of spiritual development would be as useful. In Heal the West, I don't try to draw dividing lines between Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, etc. The few times I do draw these lines, I quickly think better of it.
Why do I choose not to categorize people according to their different faith traditions in Heal the West? There are at least two reasons.
First, I try to live with a certain epistemic humility (not always successfully). I personally believe that Christianity offers benefits that other spiritual traditions don't. In particular, given that I've suffered from depression and abuse in my past and as such have often struggled with feelings of worthlessness, the benefits of a God who loves me so much that He sent His only son to die for me are not trivial. Over the past few years, I've found that idea to be tremendously healing.
But I'm not comfortable making the leap from "I personally believe that Christianity offers benefits beyond those of other spiritual traditions" to "Christianity is better than other religions and that's a fact" for one simple reason: I don't know other spiritual traditions very well. Perhaps Hinduism and Buddhism offer profound benefits with which I am not familiar. Their adherents certainly seem to think so. In fact, one thing that spiritual teachers like Prem Rawat, Sadhguru, and Eckhart Tolle who are outside of the Christian tradition do exceptionally well in my opinion is to explain the nuts and bolts of meditation and of how to quiet the mind in order to hear our still small voice.
I certainly understand my Christian friends who don't agree with me on this point. At a certain point, the viewpoint that I'm espousing can feel less like humility and more like willfully ignoring certain Biblical passages (e.g. John 14:6). But I think there's a way to read these passages that's consistent with the idea that not only Christians can know God. In C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle, there's a clear divide between Aslan and another god named Tash. But there's a twist: a man named Emeth who spent all his time thinking he was worshiping Tash was actually worshiping Aslan without knowing it. Here's how Emeth describes his conversation with Aslan where this is made clear:
"But the Glorious One [Aslan] bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, Son, thou art welcome. But I said, Alas, Lord, I am no son of Thine but the servant of Tash. He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me. Then by reason of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one? The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him, for I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath's sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. Dost thou understand, Child? I said, Lord, thou knowest how much I understand. But I said also (for the truth constrained me), Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days. Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek."
One way that I think about this passage and the issues that it raises is this. Jesus desires deeply to know us and to be known by us. He wants a deep and personal relationship with us. Can we have that relationship with him if we know him by a different name? If we spend all our days truly trying to know someone, but we know them by a different name, can we still be said to know them? That's an open question, and I understand folks who say the answer is "no". But I think the answer can be "yes."
The second reason that I don't categorize folks according to their spiritual traditions in Heal the West is that I think Heal the West is about reducing the barriers between us and God. I have friends who have been deeply wounded by the Church. If I were to convince them that the only way to know God is for them to put themselves once more under the power of the institution that hurt them, I don't think the end result would be that they would become Christian. I think it's far more likely that they would simply write off God completely. I'm not sure that that would be very helpful to anybody.
In this, I'm heavily influenced by my friend Jamie Winship. For those who don't know, Jamie is a Christian missionary who spent decades working with militant Muslim extremists. He helped thousands or even tens of thousands of them to find Jesus and peace and to put down their weapons. But one fascinating component of how Jamie works is that he doesn't try to argue the people he's working with into Christianity. Instead, he introduces them to Jesus, and their lives begin to transform. But they stay Muslim.
Why do they stay Muslim, even as God is so clearly transforming their hearts? I can think of many possible reasons. But one possibility is that God, in His infinite wisdom, believes that pushing them out of their religion would create a barrier in their relationship with Him rather than a deepening. This may be true even if we accept for the sake of argument that Christianity is the one true religion.
But what about cases in which someone's spiritual tradition is leading them to do something genuinely bad? In advocating for path-agnostic spiritual growth, am I simply advocating for moral relativism by another name? I certainly hope not. As in so much of this article, my inspiration for this comes from Jamie. In one of his speeches, he tells the story of a Muslim named Mohammed who his mentor Dave introduced to Jesus. Very quickly, Mohammed's life started to change. He was a very wealthy man, and a couple of weeks after Dave started working with him, he felt convicted. He felt like he was a good son, but not a great son; and he decided to use much more of his money to bless his relatively poor family. Shortly after that, he stopped having an affair and confessed the whole thing to his wife. After that, he completely changed how he ran his company and began treating his low-level workers with a lot more dignity.Â
Who was transforming Mohammed's heart from the inside out? Who was turning him into a better son, a better husband, a better boss? It wasn't Dave. It was who Dave introduced Mohammed to. It was God (however you define that). My point is absolutely not to demonize Muslims or Islam. But I think there are people (generally with the best of intentions, sometimes with a spiritual justification) who do things that I think are hurting themselves and those around them. They have affairs, or viciously beat their children, or believe in a God who hates them. Even in these edge cases, it's my hypothesis that helping the person to better know God will do more to improve their lives and the lives of their loved ones than any moralizing lecture that I could give.Â
Sometimes, categorizing people can be good. But I think more often it can simply reify differences. Some of those differences may reflect God. But more often, I think they reflect our own very human tendency towards tribalism.
I'll end with a quote from a suitably path-agnostic purveyor of deep spiritual wisdom: Albus Dumbledore. In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Dumbledore has just learned that Voldemort has returned to his body and will soon wage war on the wizarding world. He speaks to the assembled students, including students from two foreign schools, and implores them to remember that the powers that divide us are feeble in comparison to the powers that unite us. He says that "Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open." To differences of habit and language, I would humbly suggest that we consider adding differences of politics and of religion.
So here's our action item for the week, as a community of practice. Look at an area where you're categorizing people in your own life. And then ask yourself whether or not that categorization is helpful to everyone involved. If it's not, then consider letting it go.
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