Religion as Contract

I was sitting yesterday morning in a review session for one of my law school exams. We were analyzing a hypothetical problem (based on a real-life case) in which a Catholic priest delivers a fire-and-brimstone sermon at the funeral of a young homosexual man who died in a tragic accident. The priest seems to have restated the Catholic Church’s position on the sinfulness of homosexual acts, albeit in rather stark and indelicate terms. The parents then sue the priest for the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress.

I don’t want to discuss the legal issues, because I simply don’t know enough about the 1st Amendment (freedom of speech and free exercise of religion) at this point to give an adequate answer. I also don’t want to discuss the priest’s behavior. Rather, I want to discuss the reactions of some of my classmates for what it reveals about their attitude toward religion. Some of them, in order to find the priest liable, analyzed the case not from the perspective of tort law, but of contract law. Their basic argument was that the family had hired the Catholic Church to hold a funeral Mass for their son and that the priest, the Church’s agent, had breached the contract by delivering a sermon critical of their son’s conduct. My classmates, however, failed to make clear what the essential terms of such a contract are. The contract would look something like the following:

“We, the bereaved parents, pay the Church/priest valuable consideration of X in exchange for the service of saying nice things about our son in front of our friends and family at his funeral Mass. Furthermore, the views of the Church with regard to our son’s conduct are irrelevant and therefore not to be mentioned.”

I find such a contract, and the underlying view of religion, disturbing for two reasons. First, this contract reduces religion to a matter of mere personal choice. Joining the Church (or any other religion, for that matter) has no ontological effect on the individual which would make leaving problematic. Baptism, in this scheme, means just getting wet, and Confirmation is just getting some nasty oil rubbed on one’s forehead.

Second, according to this contract, the Church has absolutely no right to speak on important moral issues. If a member of the Church says he disagrees with certain teachings, no priest could present the Church’s teaching in a forceful manner for fear of a lawsuit. At the same time, the Church would be required to be at the beck and call of all her members. The Church bears all the obligations of the contract, and the individual member bears none.

I think the root problem of this “contractual” view of religion is that it doesn’t even rise to the level of a real contract. Any other contract this one-sided would be voided by a court for unconscionability. The individual demands complete autonomy and freedom, and the Church is told to recognize that. The Church cannot demand anything of the individual, but the individual can demand everything of the church.

Even a real contract, however, between man and Church/God would not be enough. The ancient Romans were said to regard religion as a matter of do ut des: I give so that you give. This at least is a contract; both sides are required to do something for the other party. Such an attitude, though, should strike any Catholic as somehow vulgar, at the very least. Who am I to demand anything from God, if He made me? Can I take Him to court if He doesn’t perform as I expect?

Such a contractual view of religion appears even in the Old Testament, in some misguided understandings of covenant, and still crops up today. It is for some reason extremely hard to avoid. I am referring to the so-called Deuteronomic theory of history, which views all evil as a direct punishment from God for failing to live up to the terms of the covenant. This theory was refuted first in the Book of Job, and later in the death of Jesus. Jesus taught that the sun rises for the just as well as the unjust man. Loving God in this life must be something more than a mere contractual duty, because God makes no guarantee that life will go as we wish, if we love Him.

Some may raise the objection that belief in the afterlife is merely a postponed performance. Yes, it is true that we believe that evil cannot conquer forever. However, the proper response is that we are to love God for His own sake, and not for our sake.

Anyway, I’ve gone on longer than I meant to. Just a few thoughts on contractual views of religion.

Joseph Roth, part 2

Yesterday I sketched some of the most important details of Joseph Roth’s life, as they affected his view of what I have not so charitably termed “losers.” Now I will examine one of his works, Job, to demonstrate how Roth wove those themes into his literary work.

In Job Roth chronicles the life of a typical Russian Jew named Mendel Singer, such as he grew up among in Brody. Mendel Singer’s world changed, and the world did not want to help him. Mendel begins as a Bible-teacher, an ordinary, God-fearing Jew. His wife Deborah, though, is a shrew. His oldest son, Schemarja, leaves Brody, sails to America and becomes Sam. His next son, Jonas, voluntarily joins the Russian army. His daughter, Mirjam, sleeps around with Cossacks. And his youngest son, Menuchim—his Benjamin—is born crippled and dumb, probably epileptic. The only hope to which Mendel and his wife can cling to is the prophecy made by a local rabbi that Menuchim would one day be healed. Years later, Menuchim is still not well, and Mendel, Deborah, and Mirjam leave him in Russia to join Sam in America. In America Mendel feels deprived of purpose and unsure of this new world. The rest of his family loves America, but Mendel does not. Why should he assimilate?

Then, Mendel’s already fragile world simply breaks apart. Upon the news of Sam’s death as an American soldier and Jonas’ disappearance as a Russian soldier in the First World War, Deborah herself dies of grief. Soon afterwards, Mirjam, who brought her old habits with her to America, goes insane after sleeping with Herr Glück—Mr. Happiness. At this point, Mendel cannot comprehend why God is punishing him, and tries to burn his prayer book until his neighbors stop him. He tells them he is trying to burn God. However, after months of living only in order to hate God, Mendel is brought something unexpected: his youngest son. At a Passover meal with his neighbors, at the point in the ceremony when the Jews await the coming of the Prophet, Menuchim knocks at the door. He has been healed of his epilepsy (at a Russian hospital),and is now a famous composer whose work Mendel already admires. This miracle—for that is what it is—ends the book. What was impossible has been accomplished; God loves Mendel.

Roth shows his affection for losers quite clearly at two other points in the novel. First, after coming to America, Mendel does not see the point of assimilating, and seems rather lazy compared to all his Jewish neighbors who go to night school to learn English. Mendel’s stubbornness in following strict moral laws makes his wife reproach him for “behaving like a Russian Jew.” Mendel’s only response: “I am a Russian Jew.” Mendel cannot change his identity, and does not see the desirability of even trying. He does not like America, and if that makes him a loser, so be it. Unfortunately, Mendel is rather inarticulate; he relies completely on his actions. Mendel simply cannot find words to express what he is thinking and feeling, even at key junctures in the story when the reader expects him to justify his actions. Mendel the loser cannot communicate. He has come to a country he does not understand. Yet, even in his Jewish enclave in New York City, he is surrounded by fellow Jews who do not understand him either. They have settled in America, and have ceased practicing their ancestral religion with any true fervor. They neglect mandatory prayers, and they work on the Sabbath. Their devotions are quickly becoming mere taboos, and their beliefs nothing more than old wives’ tales. There is a wall of silence separating Mendel from the entire world, even his fellow Jews, even his own family. No amount of rhetoric will break it down. Mendel can only call upon God. And when God refuses His help, what good is success for Mendel? How can he continue?

The second point is Roth’s short discourse on hope and miracles. Shortly before emigrating from Russia, Mendel reflects on the promise the rabbi made concerning Menuchim. What he needs is a miracle, but Mendel acknowledges that he has no right to demand one from God. And yet, Mendel’s only hope is for a miracle. It is here that Roth inserts the most important line in the book: “He who has no unhappiness does not believe in miracles.” In context Roth seems to cast doubt on this maxim, by speculating on why God has not performed any miracles since the time when Israel dwelt in Palestine. In reality, though, the novel’s ending demonstrates that this is the lesson Roth wished to impart to his readers. If we were all successful in God’s eyes, why should we need His grace?

In Mendel Singer we see the loser who refuses to change with the world, but who ultimately keeps on hoping.

Joseph Roth & Sympathy for Losers

“He who has no unhappiness does not believe in miracles.”

“God grant all us drinkers such an easy, beautiful death!”

This summer I read two books by Joseph Roth, Job and The Legend of the Holy Drinker. Because I enjoyed these books so much, I wanted to bring them to your attention. Today I am only offering some information about Joseph Roth. Tomorrow and the next day I will take a look at these two books in more detail. I apologize beforehand that some parts of this essay are not quite as fully thought out as they should be; I thought it better to post it now or else risk never finishing it. (Spoiler warning: I will be giving away the endings of both stories.)

Joseph Roth is not very well known in America, though he is well-regarded in the German-speaking world. If an American has heard of him, it is probably on account of The Radetzky March, his fictionalized telling of the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Nevertheless, Americans should study Roth more closely because he makes us ask ourselves a certain fundamental question we usually try to evade: In a society driven by success, what do we do with “the loser”? Roth’s writing poses this question so poignantly for at least two reasons. First, Roth himself was a loser. Geopolitics are certainly one part of the reason why Roth was a loser: He grew up in a turbulent world and into an age-old way of life that disappeared when he was barely reaching maturity. But, he was also a loser on a more personal level: He lied about himself compulsively, and died a homeless alcoholic. Secondly, Roth had the rare gift to be able to narrate a novel about a person’s entire fate with great sympathy in a deceptively simple style.
Roth was born in 1894 in Brody, East Galicia. Until the end of World War I, East Galicia belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but was then annexed by Russia; it is now located in western Ukraine. More importantly for Roth’s outlook on life, Brody was a sizeable Jewish shtetl. Roth was not raised speaking one of the local Slavic languages (Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian), but rather German and Yiddish; he later attended the only German-language high school in the nearby city of Lemberg, as he would have called it, or Lviv, as it is now known in Ukrainian. As a result, he was something of an outsider in his own native region, and always felt attracted by the wider German-speaking world outside the shtetl. This attraction drew him to Vienna for university studies. Shortly after this move World War I broke out and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the principle of unity in Roth’s life, was dismembered, with Brody and Lviv falling to the Bolsheviks.

With no home to return to after the war, Roth started work as a journalist, first in Vienna and later in Berlin. At the beginning of his career Roth was most concerned with social and political questions, displaying a generally socialist attitude. Nevertheless, his roots in the Jewish shtetl always shone through. Perhaps his most famous collection of articles from that period is entitled “The Wandering Jews” (Juden auf Wanderschaft).

The second stage of Roth’s career is marked not by an abandonment of social and political themes—they continued to play a role in his novels and short stories—but by a new emphasis on the fates of individuals. It is this stage that saw Roth produce the works for which he is still remembered, most especially The Radetzky March. It is also this same period—probably not coincidentally—that saw Roth’s personal life fall apart. His wife went insane, and he sought love from various paramours, with predictably poor results. He often lied to others about his childhood to cover up unpleasant details, such as his father’s insanity. But, he also told conflicting stories about his own religious views; some days he told people he was a proud Jew, other days he was a Catholic or an agnostic. He wanted to make a grand tale out of his own life. If personal problems were not enough for him, Roth had to flee Germany in 1933 when Hitler came to power. In the end, though, it was his drinking that caught up with him, and in 1939 he died, homeless and penniless, in a Parisian café.

This would be the life of just another unhappy artist—not at all worthy of the appellation “tragic”—if it were not for the fact that Roth was a man who had engaged with the world. Roth was a journalist who was deeply involved in the world around him. Yes, Roth was weak—he was an alcoholic, and he turned to other women when his wife became insane. He also had a narcissistic streak—thus, the many lies about his own life. But I cannot help but sense something greater than a plain old deluded alcoholic. He knew that life was a grand story, but as far as I can tell, he also knew that he could not deny his sins. And most importantly, he always kept his hope alive.

Joseph Roth loved a certain type of loser. It was not the loser who tried to blame all his own personal faults on other people. Even if Roth himself could legitimately blame circumstances beyond his control (World War I, the October Revolution, the Nazi rise to power) for his misfortunes, he always admitted that his drinking was a problem that he had to control. Roth loved the loser who could not understand the world and whom the world could not understand. He had nothing but sympathy for the man who truly struggled to discern his purpose in the world, but simply could not find it.

But for Roth, even a loser’s life was worth telling. Even a loser had to keep hoping.