Rudder or Anchor?
When one of my daughters was six years old, she was encouraged by the school administration to color a black and white drawing on an oversized sheet of paper they had distributed. It was a pastoral scene: a coniferous tree, sprouting spring flowers in the foreground, and in the distance a lean-to hut, the type used by farmhands. The object of the fun project was to take it home and color it, using any medium they wished. The best (prettiest?) pictures would be submitted to a contest hosted by a local supermarket and judged by an independent panel of elected officials. Is there anyone more qualified? Naturally, the school wished for its young students to be finalists and have their pictures displayed with the school’s name prominently revealed on the large front windows of the chain store. My daughter’s entry was not among those posted.
What surprised me was not so much that my child could color evenly within the lines – an achievement I have yet to master – but that none of the items had the traditional colors. The bark on the tree wasn’t brown, and its leaves weren’t green or the sky blue. The whole picture looked harmonious – the colors were well chosen, based on her vision of which colors worked well together – but it did not reflect reality. That child stopped being observant when she entered college. To this day, she sees the world in hues that I – with my limited and stifled imagination – can’t see. Often, she (reluctantly) helps me pick out my attire when I go shopping. Surprisingly, they are conservative choices for my philistine taste. I feel as if continue to see the world through a narrow peephole, while she sees more of the universe.
The same can be said of critical thinking. It is vaunted in my inherited religious faith, but it is prescribed and proscribed.
Many years after my euphoric father-daughter moment, I read an interview with Allan Dershowitz, the youngest law professor to ever receive tenure at Harvard Law School. He was asked if his early Talmudic studies (Dershowitz attended a traditional yeshiva in his formative years) helped his brilliant and famous career in law. His answer shocked me: no, it was a hindrance, he replied. How can a teenager answer a question posed by a world-renowned Talmudist, he remembered, was the rule imposed at the school. The audacity to offer a solution only reinforced such mishandled ignorance.
After my anger at his response had worn off, I realized he was right. We (nearly all Talmudist) are trained to assume that the odds of answering a question by those preceding us in serious study of the subject are nil. It would be easier to capture a mythical unicorn. All we could achieve is to comprehend better the gist of the question posed in the hallowed work penned by the saintly author. We would then see why our logic is faulty, if not humorous.
Religion imposes certain boundaries on the limits of our artistic imagination. They are blinders to seeing the world in a fresh perspective and a straightjacket for new experiences or to think imaginatively.
Religion enforces those restrictions in several ways: The first – and perhaps most important – is through peer pressure. There are reputations, mainly of those older than us, which need to be preserved. While growing up, my father forbade me to wear even dark brown shoes or a colored shirt (black shoes and a non-striped white shirt were required, with a somber, solemn suit) to the synagogue. There was a consensus amongst those who went to that particular synagogue (it was a Hasidic shtiebel) what is appropriate attire. Within those constraints, of course, there were still choices, as are the extravagant women’s hats in Protestant churches or the designer men’s ties in Orthodox day schools. But there were limits even in those areas that provided a (false) sense of sartorial freedom – as I learned early in my yeshiva career.
There is much to be said about religion squashing the spark needed to ignite creativity. This spate of criticism has not quelled the quixotic charge of religious apologist from pointing out exceptions to this rule (such as J. S. Bach) and that God is considered first as a Creator. But such allowances aside, the meta-statistics confirm the obvious fact: you cannot be religious and creative at the same time. The same impetus that moved my child to see the world in different hues than chemistry rendered them (photosynthesis is the primary reason that leaves are green, and the ocean is reflected in the sky) might be the same impulse that propelled her to see the universe as not having a demanding or a personal God, a decade before I did.
Creativity depends on change and uncertainty. These are the very qualities that those interested in preserving a consensus and common goals seek to stifle. Those with artistic ambitions are least likely to act cooperatively and march lock step in unison, the very nature of religious movements. Religion makes stern efforts to be over-protective and attempts to place an insular bubble over the faithful. Those wishing to have a fresh perspective have a difficulty seeing beyond the shield imposed by God’s self-elected censors. They have little choice: either you are artistic or you are loyal to your faith.
For those wishing to navigate a middle course, however, it may be strategic to think of one’s faith as being a rudder rather than an anchor. You can draw the tree any color you wish, just stay within the given lines.