The Antichristian Phenomenon

I had a lecture the other week when one of my teachers came to talk about his fieldwork he conducted on West Java, studying the (religious) meaning of fasting. Java’s biggest religion is Islam, so thus, one would conclude that the ritual of fasting bears great importance in the daily lives of the Java people. Once my teacher started to investigate what fasting truly is however, it turned out that fasting wasn’t just a religious rite practiced during certain holidays such as Ramadan, but students said to him that they would fast a couple of days before an important exam, or that if they were going to an interview for a job they really wanted, they would fast before as well. Obviously, fasting isn’t just a religious expression, although religious leaders put great emphasis that fasting should only be performed. Then what is fasting? Fasting is in its simplest form an expression to control the body, that is, what goes and and what comes out. In anthropology we may call these things substances. Food may be considered a specific form of substance, and by fasting, a person can control what form of food they eat and don’t. It thus requires some kind of self-control of the body. But why the importance to control the physical body? I didn’t think much more about it then, until I read some posts here on the Anti-Christian Phenomenon Website, and I realized that this is a very common reoccuring theme in most world religions. Judaism may advocate for ascetism, and so do more extreme variants of Hinduism. In Christianity the step is taken even further and there is a whole system built around the idea of sin, which basically is a guideline of what is accepted behavior in how to control the mind and body. One explanation can be that if one is able to control one’s body, then one is also able to control the mind, and the logical conclusion would be that one will naturally lead a more healthy and happy life when being able to muster this kind of self-control.

The idea is far from new, and we may even find notions of this in other philosophical systems that may seem completely unrelated to religion at all. Friedrich Nietzsche spoke about his concept of the übermensch, the super human, and that we can only become truly free and be able to take control of our own lives once we discard such notions as religion. In the humanist movement a less metaphorical term is used, and it is simply just called empowerment. Once again, by discarding such things as religion can we become truly free and take control of our own lives. In the Enlightenment movement one could only become truly free by accepting rationality and common sense. Through logic and reason alone are we capable of realizing our own individual freedom. In Taoism, we can only become truly free by understanding our own importance in a holistic system, and realizing that it is not about I, the subject, but about we, as a single entity. The system in Taosim in how we can achieve true balance with the world is also very intricate, and advocate strong ideas of how to act and behave in different situations.

Maybe it is easier to understand why some people may turn to religion in the light of being an excuse to find self-empowerment which they alone failed in achieving without an intricate system such as religion with clear rules to follow in how such empowerment can be reached. I will not try to go into and debate as to why self-empowerment may be so intrinsically important to human beings, and why we ultimately still like to believe in the idea of our own prsonal freedom and power to achieve things we want to achieve, nor is it in the scope or interest of this website, but if religion offers a possibility to reach such self-empowerment, then it has surely succeeded. With that said, obviously religion is not for everybody, as shown with my examples of philosophical movements and ideas that are unrelated to religion and at times even strongly opposed such a notion, so maybe ultimately the reason why some people may seem to change religious affiliations as if they were changing clothes may lie in that the system they just joined simply wasn’t the way for them to achieve this empowerment within, may it be for philosophical or other reasons. For example, I really don’t find the notion attractive of living an ascetic life or fast once a year for a month, but if making a claim that my non-religious stance has helped to make me feel that I am in control of my own life, I will answer honestly that yes, I do believe so. I am not going to deny that religion ultimately is a powerful tool when it comes to finding self-empowerment, if it wasn’t, I am sure a lot less would be religious than what we are currently seeing today, the problem is of course all the other ideas that religion imposes that I cannot as easily accept as something intrinsically good, and if religion truly is representing a system for self-empowerment, maybe it would be time to develop something new that does not include ideas of human rights 2000 years ago.