A while back my youngest daughter commented, “When somebody tells me they went to church it feels like they just said they were coming home from synchronized swimming practice.” In other words, they’ve been up to something odd, out-of-date and puzzling. (I note this with apology to any synchronized swimmers out there. I always wanted to be one. For real.)

Molly is an attorney in San Francisco, one of the more secular cities in the country. She is the product of, count them, twenty years of Catholic education, and describes herself as “religiously fluid.”The God thing did not stick. She is not alone.

I am blessed to have five children who I carefully raised to think independently, and we have the religious diversity to prove it. Which, for me at least, makes holidays like Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving—and funerals—more and more complex. I spent more than twenty years in a Catholic high school classroom talking religion with adolescents, so this should not be a shock, and it isn’t. Exactly. But it does pose a dilemma. Particularly at a moment when our world is so angrily divided over religion among a host of other issues.

Talking about religion and spirituality is not easy, particularly within the dynamics of family or other groups that are committed to and care about one another. I learned in the classroom that one reason we get tangled up in conversation is that we are in fact trying to talk about several issues at the same time without realizing it. So as one small step toward taming the whirlwind, I would suggest we simplify our conversations a bit by teasing out and separating three themes:

1) Institutionalized religion

2) The existence and nature of God

3) Understanding the messages of the great spiritual teachers in today’s world.

Simply agreeing to stick to one topic at a time, and being willing to acknowledge the merits of the other side of the debate, mqy clear the underbrush enough to see our way clear to an actual conversation.

A few thoughts on each:

1) Given enough time, most human institutions manage to mess up, sometimes in horrible and spectacular ways. The other guys’ deficits are always more obvious to us, than our own, but no one can deny that people have committed large-scale murder and plunder under the guise of religion. Some of the perpetrators even believed they were doing the right thing. at the time. No longstanding religious tradition is exempt, nor is any well established governmental body or educational system or… While I may criticize my own children, my hackles go up The grand view of Christendom I inherited as a youngster in the 1950’s is tattered and frayed, and my heart aches for the damage done. But I attribute the losses to the nature of human beings acting in groups over time.

2) Is there a God, and if so, what is God like? A Force? A person who created me and knows my heart? Fierce or gentle? Triune and/or One? Active in history or a disinterested bystander? All good, or also a source of evil?

This is a huge topic. Personally, I think the science/religion debate is essentially a non-issue. We delude ourselves into thinking we operate as rational beings that base our decisions on cold, hard facts. The vast majority of what we believe we take on somebody else’s say-so, or what feels like it makes sense, or what our own puny experience verifies. Paying attention to our experiences, sharing our stories and bearing witness is sometimes the most fruitful path.

3) Speaking from my own Christian tradition, regardless of what I think about the divinity of Jesus, the bulk of historians agree he existed and taught. Credible historians claim that the Gospels capture his message fairly accurately. We have the difficult task of discovering what his words and example mean in a time very different from his own. There is plenty of room for conflict and misunderstanding here, but at least let’s help ourselves out by separating this conversation from #1 and discerning what is honestly debatable from the rhetoric.

Which brings us back to family and others we care about who see life differently. The religious pluralism that surrounds us unprecedented. Our need for purpose and meaning is intense. Let us strive to find ways to seek together, acknowledging our differences but searching for common ground and ways to help one another over the obstacles in our path.

Image by o.did, Flickr