Thanks. I don't know if you know, but I was raised a Conservative Jew until my parents divorced. My mother, who had converted, returned to the Catholic Church, and I was baptized when I was 12. My personal beliefs veered towards pantheism and, eventually, atheism, until college. I spent time as an adult both as a semi- observant Jew and as a Roman Catholic. I have not been a member of any religious group for many years, although I believe in God.
I agree that there is more moral energy in religion than in rationalistic ethical systems. It is a fact that most Holocaust rescuers were pious Christians of various denominations. Considering the risk, one can easily see how being animated by a larger drama of good and evil, sin and redemption, grace and sacrifice might help to bolster one's resolve. If we think that it is merely a matter of hygenic social relations, as it were, why get involved, at risk to one's family? If the evil echoes through eternity, and the dead will, as it were, reproach the indifference of the living, then that is another matter entirely........ |
