Part II: The Theatre of the Absurd
If miracles are removed, religion doesn’t disappear. Instead, it splits into two enduring strands, each with its own appeal – and its own limits.
The Mass Religion of Provision
For most of history, God has been called upon as provider. Farmers prayed for rain. Soldiers prayed for victory. Parents prayed for their children’s health. In this mode, religion is practical – a survival mechanism in a precarious world.
Even today, millions still engage with faith in this way. Pilgrims leave offerings at shrines, congregants pray for jobs, and families fast for the recovery of a loved one. The focus is immediate and concrete: “help me make it through.” For the majority, God’s relevance begins and ends here. If provision fails, belief itself often collapses.
The Minority Religion of Mystery
Alongside this, however, has always existed a smaller current – the contemplatives, mystics, and ascetics. Their God is not a rescuer but an abyss. Theirs is not a God who provides, but a God who strips away, who confronts them with silence instead of answers.
Figures like Rumi, Mira Bai, or the sages of the Upanishads speak not of a transactional deity, but of being dissolved into mystery. Yet their insights rarely comfort the masses. They feel more like punishments than rewards – demanding detachment, humility, even annihilation of the ego. This path is never popular, precisely because it offers no shortcuts, only deeper exposure to the void.
The Preachers as Gatekeepers
Between these two poles sits another figure: the preacher who monetises access. From ancient temple priests to modern televangelists, they promise to know the formulas that secure divine favour. Their business is not mystery, but spectacle.
They thrive because they give people what both extremes lack: immediate assurance. Unlike the mystic’s abyss, the preacher offers clarity. Unlike the precarious farmer’s gamble, the preacher offers guaranteed returns – for a price. In this way, religion becomes theatre, with miracles as the main act, and the preacher the impresario who keeps the audience paying attention.
The Detached Witness
And yet, there is another way of engaging with religion: not as participant, not as seeker, but as witness. To sit in the audience and watch the theatre unfold – the desperation of the crowd, the commerce of the preachers, the riddles of the mystics – with existential detachment.
This position is not apathy. It does not sneer or gloat. Instead, it holds two things in tension: clarity without despair, and peace without delusion. It acknowledges the absurdity, but does not collapse into cynicism. It sees through the spectacle, yet continues to live with love and dignity.
From Doctrine to Lore
When lived out, such detachment does not produce scripture, dogma, or prophecy. Instead, it generates something subtler: lore.
Lore does not belong to institutions. It circulates among people, reshaped in the retelling, half-remembered and half-invented. Unlike doctrine, which must be preserved intact, lore survives precisely because it can be bent. In this way, a life lived with clarity and peace can become a kind of story that outlasts sermons and treatises – not as rigid doctrine, but as enduring rumour.