Earthquake theology 4

Karl Marx famously wrote that religion is 'the opium of the people'. If you knew only one thing about Marx, this might not be it, though it also might be; but I reckon that if you knew only three or four things about him (and I'm not going to bother with the difficult issue of what would count as one 'thing') the 'opium of the people' thing is very likely to be one of them. Much less known is the surrounding passage in which this famous word-string is embedded, and in which Marx says of religion that it is the 'sigh of the oppressed creature' and the 'heart of a heartless world'. Here is that passage (from Marx's Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right):

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Now, no authentically religious person will regard this as a satisfactory account of their faith. It is reductive, carrying it on its face that it denies the actual truth value of religion, while granting to it another kind of, practical, affective, consoling, value. But what should be interesting for those of us who see some force in what Marx says here is the trope...

demand for their real happiness... give up a condition that requires illusions

I don't in any way belittle the relevance and necessity - the continuing relevance and necessity - of these themes. We live in a world whose realities are morally intolerable; in which there is an enormous volume of avoidable, remediable, suffering. It isn't just the events of the past week, however, which tell us that a world of unmixed happiness is impossible (if it is even conceptually intelligible), and that while human beings continue to resemble the beings we know, they will always, even in the best imaginable circumstances, have to bear the burdens of mortality, grief and many other sufferings. The ways in which they may best cope with this intellectually and emotionally, and what truths and illusions can help them do so, is not such a simple matter to declare upon. In the face of the deaths and griefs of others, flip certitudes are even less attractive than usual.

[To be continued...]