Everyone Worships. Part Two.

Everyone worships. This worship of ourselves takes on many forms. 

Everyone worships. Often we end up worshipping ourselves. This worship of ourselves takes on many forms. We refer to these forms as culture. And for every person there is a cultural expression that serves to exalt that part of us that we enshrine. Think about the cultural expression of sports, for example. Sports serves to highlight that part of our competitive nature as we live vicariously through representative athletes in our favorite sport. Through the exploits of these athletes, their winning and losing, we project ourselves. Nostalgically we relive our own past athletic exploits or we fantasize about abilities we never possessed. In both cases the professional athlete becomes our religious representative and we pay homage to the athlete in our culture by filling stadiums, purchasing merchandise, and perhaps most importantly, we “buy in” to the athlete’s or teams’ performances with the price of our emotions. We are engaged in winning and losing on a visceral level. The same may be said for the movie star, musician, authors, or politicians. We elevate others in society, chiefly because we our religiously bent to worship ourselves. 

We elevate others in society, chiefly because we our religiously bent to worship ourselves. 

So then these “icons” become religious points of identification, or idols, that accentuate the most celebrated characteristics of ourselves. We dress like them, we seek to think like them, to walk and talk like them. We are steeped in worship. And as James K.A. Smith points out, “The forms themselves are pedagogies of desire that teach us to construe and relate to the world in loaded ways.” Our misguided worship of ourselves, in turn, impacts how we treat one another. Again, Smith observes, “Subtly, then, we’ve construed our relationships largely in terms of competition-against one another and against the icons of the ideal that been painted for us. In the process, we have also objectified others: we have turned them into artifacts for observation and evaluation, things to be looked at-and by playing this game, we’ve also turned ourselves into similar sorts of objects and evaluated ourselves on the basis of our success at being objects worth looking at.” 

Smith argues that this kind of worship takes place most often in our culture at the altars of consumerism. Indeed, consumerism may be the universal or “Catholic” religion of the 21^st Century. According to Smith, the practice of consumption’s “redemption lives off of two ephemeral elements: the thrill of the unsustainable experience or event and the sheen of the novel and new. Both of these are subject to a law of diminishing returns, and neither can last. They both slip away, requiring new experiences and new acquisitions. And the by-product of such persistent acquisition is a side we don’t see or talk about much: the necessary disposal of the old and the boring. So while the liturgy of the market invests products with an almost transcendent sheen and glow, enchanting them with a kind of magic and pseudograce, the strange fact is that the same liturgies encourage us to quickly dispense with these products in a heartbeat.” 

This consumer culture has taught us that the objects of our pious devotions, will not forever be worthy of our worship.

This then is a contributing factor to how quickly we become disillusioned with others and with ourselves. This consumer culture has taught us that the objects of our pious devotions, will not forever be worthy of our worship.

Everyone Worships; Continuing thoughts of Worship: Inspired by James K.A. Smith. Part One

In our individual and collective imagined worlds there is this thing called religion. Religion is our imagined perception of who or what governs our worlds. 

Everyone views the world from a particular perspective. Philosopher Charles Taylor calls this worldview a “social imaginary”. This phrase is illustrative of how our worldview orders what we imagine the world to be; for good or for bad. In our individual and collective imagined worlds there is this thing called religion. Religion is our imagined perception of who or what governs our worlds. Religion is shaped by our experiences as well as influences from our biological and extended families. Culture and education play a role in its development as well. And all of us worship at the altars of our religion. 

Liturgies are forms and rituals that order public worship. Most often these acts of public worship manifest themselves in the form of our personal habits.

This is true for the deist, agnostic, and atheist alike. Religion may or may not have a divine being as its object. These religions have their own sets of liturgies. Liturgies are forms and rituals that order public worship. Most often these acts of public worship manifest themselves in the form of our personal habits. Author David Brooks points out in his work The Social Animal: “The person with good character has taught herself, or been taught by those around her, to see situations in the right way. When she sees something the right way, she’s rigged the game. She’s triggered a whole network of unconscious judgments and responses in her mind, biasing her to act in a certain manner.”

It is a relatively novel moment historically, that makes it possible to “imagine a universe where there is no God.” 

 So then whether we act in a socially acceptable “good” or “bad” way is framed by our own set of “social imaginaries,” and the extent to which we have been conformed to those imposed images. For example, as Charles Taylor points out, it is a relatively novel moment historically, that makes it possible to “imagine a universe where there is no God.” Historically speaking, it wasn’t that long ago that it would have been impossible for atheism or agnosticism to enter the mind of an individual, as that thought would simply have not entered an individual’s mind, specifically because it wasn’t part of the cultural frame. But because the perspectives by which we may frame the world have been broadened, it is now an acceptable perspective. 

Yet even this perspective has its religious overtones. Atheism and agnosticism have their own cultural liturgies. James K.A. Smith writes, “When you put on these liturgical lenses, you’ll see the stadium in a whole new way, as a temple of nationalism and militarism. When you look at the university with liturgical eyes, you’ll start to realize that the “ideas” and “messages” of the university are often less significant than the rituals of frat parties and campus athletics. When we stop worrying about smartphones just in terms of content (what we’re looking at) and start to consider rituals that tether us to them throughout the day, we’ll notice that the very form of the practice comes loaded with an egocentric vision that makes me the center of the universe.” You see, everyone worships. Mostly we worship ourselves.