RSVP
My wife, Amparo, and I recently bought a car, not a new one but a late model. It seemed to make the most economic sense. What didn’t make sense as we were looking at cars, is the baffling number of choices confronting the buyer.
“There are over 6,000 car models (generations) sold worldwide, according to Carbrands.org, “with more than 100 car brands producing vehicles. In the U.S. market, there were 257 existing care models in 2009, and this is expected to increase to around 285 by 2023.”
These are the latest figures I could find. There are undoubtedly more models now. The brand of vehicle we bought offers four crossovers and SUVs, three pickup models, two sport-car models and three “commercial models.” Within the model we bought, there are five price levels, from the S to the Platinum, depending mostly on the “trim.”
Huge Variety of Products
Although that number of choices doesn’t make sense to me, it obviously does to the majority of car buyers, or the car makers wouldn’t offer them. And such numbers of choices are offered for a huge variety of products, from toothpaste to cereal to washers and dryers. People want choice, it seems.
And as I’ve written before in these blogs, the perceived lack of choice – or lack of “freedom” – is often cited as an obstacle to religious belief because once you belong to a religion, you have to follow its “dictates.”
But Is That Actually the Case?
I’m not free to be me if I’m religious, it is reasoned. Religion is one more thing that ties me to my parents and their generation. I have to break with it, along with reading the newspaper or watching the news, joining clubs and drinking Martinis, to be really free. But is this really the case?
Regarding God, we seem to want it both ways. We’re skeptical because of God’s “absence.” If God exists, why doesn’t he make himself visible? But we also want our freedom, and if God were visible, we wouldn’t be free. A visible God, like an ever-present, overbearing parent, would be so intrusive, so dominant, we couldn’t resist him.
God doesn’t oblige us to join any religion, including the Christian one. God invites us. We can respond or not. If we respond affirmatively, we still must think critically about what makes sense and relevant for us. And we may not have to do an exhaustive review of every possible choice. God may have something to do with the obvious choice before us. We may simply be ignoring it.
Cultural, Maybe Even Tribal
That is even true of people like me, who adopted the religion of our parents. I acknowledge that religions, especially ones like Judaism and Catholicism, are cultural, maybe even tribal. But eventually you have to decide for yourself.
Oddly enough, making that choice brings freedom. You’re free from the pressures of society’s beliefs and values, free to bask in the goodness and kindness of God. You choose to be “religious” and the norms and creeds that come with it, which are designed to help establish and deepen our relationship with God.
As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, being “religious” is not principally about joining an organization, much less about being tribal. It’s about accepting an invitation and all that implies.
