settling in the void between truth and illusion
on religion, closure, and lying to yourself
I don’t think too often about faith— at least the kind held in clasped palms, shrill prayer bells and imperfectly translated texts that give it yet another new face. Yesterday I did. My colleague was telling me about a cross-cultural wedding he would attend and it piqued my curiosity on his in-laws’ traditions. We ended up having a lovely conversation about religion: a topic I usually shy away from, especially at work. I love learning about what others believe in, but I’m afraid of it turning into me feeling defensive about what-I-think-are-basic human rights. Our chat, though, let me hear about nuances in belief across Christian denominations and babble about Dostoevsky for a while—yay! I got thinking about faith’s different forms: in God of course, but secular faith too, in ourselves and in the people we love. Faith, and its relationship with truth, lies, and the in-between.
The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky is about a family whose weird father gets murdered— as a backdrop for discourse on God and atheism and morality. I’m summarizing a subplot that illustrates one of my favorite perspectives on faith.
Alyosha, the youngest brother, is kind, selfless, well-loved, and very religious. He looks up to Father Zosima, a well-respected elder at the monastery, and a pivotal event in Alyosha’s arc is when Zosima dies. It’s believed that the smell of a corpse represents his purity, and it’s expected that a religious figure like Zosima’s body is pure and holy. So when he dies, and his inevitable decomposition carries a very strong stench, it wreaks havoc. If he was so holy, then why would his corpse rot? Those who disliked Father Zosima at the monastery are pleased at this (“guess he wasn’t all that special, huh”), while Alyosha is angry— both at the disdain others carry for his mentor, as well as the internal crisis of his faith. Was his respect in Zosima based on fraud? If his faith was real, then why couldn’t it protect someone like Father Zosima from such a shameful, earthly fate?
There’s definitely themes in the novel that feel like a blanket caution against atheism, which both make sense from a book written by a pious Russian man living in the 19th century and made me scrunch my nose when I read the book years ago, at the lowest point in my life (if God was real, this would not be happening to me). But I love this arc. Because of course a corpse will rot and smell. No amount of connection with God can fight biology. Alyosha, however, comes out more powerful when he pushes past this “contradiction” against his faith and chooses to stay firm in his piety— because in the end, even if it’s not “real”, it fuels his purpose.
Alyosha is also lauded for his rationality and open-mindedness. It feels like faith is almost more compelling when it is an intentional choice. You’re not delusional; you know the arguments against it, you acknowledge them, and still, you choose to believe, because it holds value for you. It’s akin to how placebo treatments can work even if you know they’re placebo1. Instead of Alyosha’s faith losing meaning because it couldn’t stand up against the undeniable laws of nature, its meaning persisted through his continued motivation to do good deeds and be kind.
One of the most interesting parts of that conversation I had with my colleague was when he talked about small ideological differences across various sects of Christianity, based on diverse interpretations of the same text. It’s fascinating how scripture has been influenced by the languages and ideologies of those who’ve transcribed it, and how reaching the original, definitive word of God can be a tall order. I think there’s value in picking a belief system and committing yourself to it, even while accepting the contradictions that others might point out. (At the risk of sounding inconsistent with what I said above about intentionally choosing faith, this practically is often adhering to whatever beliefs you were surrounded with as a child.) After all, if you have yourself convinced, and you’re not using your beliefs to try and control others’ actions, then… whatever2. Whatever helps you untangle the uncertainty that constantly surrounds us. Whatever motivates you to be a Good Person (she’s an amorphous figure that philosophers throughout time have tried to capture a glimpse of, like eager paparazzi— because what does it mean to be a Good Person? but I digress).
Whatever helps you sleep at night, I summarized to my colleague.
He asked me, so what helps you sleep at night? The question was in the context of my spiritual beliefs— I’m culturally Hindu and I have a few random related takes that I’ll outline at the end— but when I’m tossing and turning, hours after I’ve slid into the covers, it’s because I’m thinking of people. Not God or anything deeply spiritual, but the regular people that have carved themselves into my identity. So with that, I circle back to a much more secular flavor of faith. Like Alyosha, we must sometimes intentionally choose to believe.
Over the last few years, I’ve gone through a few situations that have ended in me thinking: I don’t understand what happened or why, but shit, I’ve made things worse by trying to figure it out. I think we’ve all had these kinds of things happen, where there’s intense emotions and a subsequent lack of closure, a haunted space for your thoughts to echo themselves. The real life plot holes ache, like a cut at the knuckle that stretches every time you move your finger. (One could probably close-read Dostoevsky’s entire oeuvre in the time it takes me to get the fuck over literally anything that’s happened to me.)
When it’s happened to others, I’ve encouraged them to proactively fill in the gaps— tell themselves things. Things that are unprovable, so it doesn’t hurt to believe them.
She does care but doesn’t know how to express it.
He’s just gonna go and treat future people in his life the same way he treated you. Don’t worry.
Girl, he’s just being distant because he’s terrified of getting too attached to you. (This one’s 100% ironic.)
The way it happened was how it was always meant to happen.
These non-truths should be easier to digest than the absence of resolution, right? At least it’s some semblance of comfort. But when I try, it weighs heavy on my tongue, burns on its way down, and effervesces angrily in my gut.
I tend to obsess over “getting closure” by chasing the truth. I could tell myself a hundred things, answer my own questions— why would she do this? did he really mean it when he said that?— just to finish writing the story and then burn the pages, but I find that so hard. Because what if I accept something that’s really false, and then if I find out the truth, it unravels my entire healing? Also, I’m guilty of selectively looking for truths that validate my past trust. My trust being broken feels like Alyosha realizing that Father Zosima’s body was decaying grotesquely: does that mean that the past was an illusion? A mistake, a delusion? Say it ain’t so.
Other people can smoothen the cracks with lies, but I’m different, I would think. I will suffer until I find the truth and then maybe I’ll suffer after too, because the truth might hurt.
What I realized, though, is that in midst of all my thinking was the one big lie I was unintentionally telling myself. The lie that there is a truth. That If I dig and unpack and clarify enough, then eventually… even if we’ve already emotionally parted ways, we can fall into a peaceful slumber admiring some Universally Agreed Upon Truth About Us, like we do the silvery moon from different corners of the city.
But truth is elusive. Truth is fluid and slippery as it evolves, much like God’s word over geography and time— and the more answers you get, the more questions that arise. Even if we act in good faith toward each other, we still hold dissonant narratives, and the real “what happened here and what did it mean?” is something only God knows (if He exists). So if your ability to be okay with things hinges on knowing the full truth, you’re pretty much guaranteed to be disappointed.
I thought I could circumvent the concept of closure being something you give yourself, because I do believe in the value of trying to help each other feel better (we as a society are too far down in the trenches of “no one owes you anything”). However, at some point, it really does not matter anymore what they felt or said or did when the only thing that’s left for you to fiddle with is your own feelings. And if there’s a way that you can reframe the situation for yourself that settles your heart, that’s the best thing you can do. Recently I had a train of thought of: either X or Y are true, but X would make me feel a lot better, and since I’m probably never going to actually know which was true, what’s the harm in believing X and moving on? Choose to believe something, not because it’s definitely true, but it’s what will propel you forward.
So my subtitle is a bit clickbait-y (thank you for clicking). I’m not actually proposing that you lie to yourself. I’ve criticized people for it, and what I’ve meant is that they’re disregarding things that— if they really looked inward— they’d know deep down were indubitably true. I still think that’s terrible. Don’t suffocate the small voice in you that whispers the truth, the one that you don’t want to listen to because it’ll force you to make tough decisions. What I’m making a case for instead is offering yourself an anchor (even while knowing it’s imperfect) when you’re being continuously swept around by too much uncertainty and unease. It isn’t from fear of confronting the truth, like I think “lying to yourself” is, but acceptance in situations where the truth is blurry.
Giving yourself closure is its own act of faith. Faith that you’ll be okay, even without knowing everything there is to know. Faith that the people who acted in confusing ways weren’t intentional, only imperfect. Faith that any of real malice they inflicted is probably not a reflection of who you are. And unfortunately, sometimes that is a blind leap of faith.
my own spiritual takes
By “culturally Hindu”, I mean that I was raised Hindu (but my family isn’t deeply religious). I celebrate religious holidays more as a way to connect with my culture than because I believe in the stories behind them.
I do believe in reincarnation (I have a weird tidbit about myself getting injured in a past life?) as well as a general “what goes around comes around” flavor of karma. The latter helps me feel good about both my own good deeds that don’t seem to have immediate reward as well as relieves the feelings of injustice when people do bad things and don’t suffer much consequence. Because I think that if they were malicious, their evil catch up to them, and if they were simply ignorant, something will make them feel the same feeling they’ve inflicted in the past.
I think I’m pretty non-vindictive by default (every time I’ve acted petty, I got sad about it), but telling myself that “the universe will take care of it” does quench some small thirst for revenge lol
Also, I don’t think on a daily basis that there is any grand creating/supervising being out there, but sometimes I throw in God or The Universe (to avoid saying God) into conversation just as a specific figure to point a finger at. Because I’ll occasionally have something happen in my life that makes me go “wow, this was a really well-written arc / amazing characterization” and I feel like a fictional character who surely has an author.
afterthoughts
Given how many times I’ve rewritten my emotional philosophy post-college, I’m totally expecting to come back to this in some time and call myself out for speaking some bullshit. But if my brain never grew, I wouldn’t have new content, so it’s a win c:
My favorite Karamazov brother was Dmitri but I think I’ve changed my mind after writing this? Is this my fully-developed pre-frontal cortex?
!!!! Most of my writing is primarily fueled by my own experiences, but this one has some more external influence (me talking about a very famous book with complex themes that have been analyzed by people far more qualified than me). Feel free to engage if you feel like anything’s misrepresented— I would love to adapt my views!
my aim here is an optimistic take on personal faith; nothing about this essay is intended to delve into organized religion (which also has a lot of value but can sometimes be spooky) !!!! that is a huge can of worms and I will leave further discourse on that to people more well-informed than my current self <3