The conversation we had in class the other day about the use of language in religion completely culminated my current struggles in my own spiritual journey. I’ve always accepted the fact that language as well as all types of art are a way to respond to experiences as well as a means of communicating your own experiences to others, but until recently I haven’t been able to verbalize my frustration with their limitations.
It is an undeniable part of humans that we all search for meaning and that we attempt to live lives that correspond with the truth we have come to understand in the world, but this idea of personal truth or reality sparks much controversy. On one hand, you can’t let others just tell you what to believe, you have to understand it for yourself, but on the other hand there must be some sort of unity and community in order for progress to occur. In my opinion, this is one of the biggest struggles that all religions face in appealing to non-believers and believers alike.
The idea of language merely being a metaphor for truth made a lot of sense for me, and really clicked with my understanding of religion. The symbol of religion will never be able to fully encompass the holy, omnipotent, all knowing God which it claims to represent, yet it is necessary in order to mediate the struggle of the human pursuit of truth. We must never claim that any of us know absolute truth in our own language or anything else which is beyond the moment of experience, yet we must use language to communicate with one another to share and grow in faith.
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