I went back to church yesterday for the first time in a long time. The service was the 1830 Sunday one. It was my local catholic church, St Mary’s. There was the current serving priest, a middle aged man and also a young soon-to-be priest (he is being made a full priest in June). I remember the homily vaguely (that’s the speech of the service given by the priest or clergy member). The priest was talking about a tree by an oasis in a desert and a shrub in salted land away from water. It was a metaphor for a Believer and an unBeliever. The delivery was definitely first class however as I stood in the church I listened and wondered exactly what a Believer was? People in the past did not understand Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and hence required explanations for how life came into being and the purpose of life etc. Mose’s original ten commandments were made for a very practical reason of stopping people from murder, stealing, rape, coveting (being jealous). Rules like these make total sense and keep societies from descending into chaos and infighting. However a lot of the bible has now become obsolete. With modern contraception and medical research around the spread of STD’s there is no practical reason to stop people from having sex outside of marriage (‘thou shalt not commit adultery’). Similarly homosexuality is openly condemned in the bible which is obviously an outdated concept (Leviticus 18:22 “Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable”). 

But coming back to my original question. What is a believer in God? How can something exist that we’ve never encountered or have not proved via the scientific method? One thought I’ve had is that people have created the idea of God to explain what they don’t understand. I’ve heard of but not studied Chaos Theory. I guess for as long as human beings have been alive there has been so much apparent randomness in life that a higher controlling power had a huge appeal. Again a practical reason for belief. Karl Marx said ‘religion is the opiate of the masses.’ That may have been true 150 years ago but nowadays there is a disdain for the Catholic Church (and other churches). People openly brag about their lack of church attendance. There is a snobbery about those who confess to believe in a God. In shows like ‘The Big Bang Theory’ the characters mock organised religion and many of the biblical stories. Leonard and Penny get married outside a church. Again in Richard Dawkins ‘The God Delusion’ the writer mocks the established religion in the USA and the advantages they have. For example during the Vietnam war it was very easy to escape the draft if one were the son of Mormons or other Christian religious movements. However if one were to just state one was a pacifist, as an atheist for example, the authorities would be significantly more inclined to take punitive action. In ‘The Brutalist’ (2025) Guy Pearce is a white Anglo Saxon protestant who is eventually exposed as a rapist (of the immigrant protagonist).

However all this is by the bye. Organized religion today is still thriving as ever. In the mass I attended yesterday there were all manner of people (though fewer people my age). All different ethnicities. While atheists and agnostics debate via social media and printed format like newspapers, organized religion feels more real. In this world of endless scientific research and online communication there is something powerful about meeting in person. A gathering of people. Some people would say it is a bastion of conservatism. Both priests yesterday were male. However if you believe in the power of story and real life interaction there is something in religious services that is difficult to define with words, something abstract. In the Catholic Church service we all go up to get the host (representative of the bread of the Last Supper) one by one. I’ve always liked this part. All are equal and humbled in bowing to the priest and eating the white paper-like host. The poor, the elderly, the foreign, the lonely. The Catholic Church has an uncanny ability to survive, its weaknesses being its strengths. The homily (priest’s speech) despite being of content that I cannot relate to undoubtedly left me in a more positive mood afterwards.

Maybe that is what a “believer” really is in the twenty-first century—not necessarily someone who checks their scientific literacy at the door, but someone who chooses to show up for the story. I still don’t have an answer to my original question. What is a believer? Perhaps it doesn’t matter. The priest’s tree and his shrub by the salty ground — I couldn’t tell you now which one I was supposed to be. But I stood in the queue with everyone else and ate the host, and nobody asked.