The Various Lenses of Religion

The Friday class discussion of St. Augustine's On Christian Teaching raised a number of interesting points on how people can view a religion. In class, we defined these view points as lenses, a perspective through which someone sees the world. We see a uniquely Christian lens provided in the case of St. Augustine. In his book, he provides a way to read and approach anything in the bible and justify it in a Christian way. It is this accomplishment that has made me ponder the lenses of all religions and how these biases can be used to make a religious argument always valid.

In the case of St. Augustine, his Christian lens serves to provide justification around anything that is perhaps morally questionable or highly ambiguous in the bible. If one were to read the bible just as Augustine prescribes, they would be hard-pressed to find things that do not support Christianity. Augustine's justification of polygamy is an excellent example of his strategic application of the Christian lens. Although polygamy was considered morally wrong during Augustine's life, he argued that its prevalence in the bible is the result of cultural differences and would not be considered morally wrong because it was not unloving or unjust. He has swiftly navigated around this fundamental moral conflict in the text and justified its placement there. These types of applications and navigations are seen throughout the text.

With the evidence of the effectiveness of Augustine's lens in mind, it is easy to see how other religions use lenses of their own to justify parts of their text and history. This issue was raised in class by the islamic poem we read which justifies Muhammad's conquering of Mecca. Here we see poet justifying this action by claiming that if looked at the proper way, anyone can see that he conquered because he was commanded by God and not for power. He also claims that people who look upon these actions negatively are behind a "yellow lens" that is not allowing them to see the real truth. The fallacy here is that he arguing that one lens is somehow more correct than another. It is this type of argument that people use to justify actions of their own religious groups. We must be cautious of these types of arguments because it is hard for people to see things another way if they cannot remove their own lens.