RELIGIOUS 'BOVARYIZATIONS' VIS-À-VIS THE TRUTH

1. One thing that virtually everyone knows is that religion is about God and that God is about truth and that truth is about getting to Heaven and that Heaven is about joy. They know it not in so many words but - the metaphysical excepted - in general terms, through the distorting lenses of their various religious sympathies.

2. Now what happens when religion is made available to the physical, who are economic, is that man gets hyped as God and knowledge as truth, as witness the example of Christian humanism.

3. Now what happens when religion is made available to the chemical, who are political, is that woman gets hyped as God and strength as truth, as witness the example of Christian nonconformism.

4. Now what happens when religion is made available to the metachemical, who are scientific, is that the Devil gets hyped as God and beauty as Truth, as witness the example of Christian and, indeed, non-Christian fundamentalism.

5. Thus the more religion departs from transcendentalism, the less true it becomes, and something economic, political or scientific posing as religion is the 'bovaryized' result.

6. Inevitably the physical, the chemical, and the metachemical do a disservice to the concept of God as truth when they assume religious identities - identities which, in their various ways, fall as short of metaphysics as ... vegetation, water, and fire of air.

7. That poet - Keats, I believe it was - who claimed that beauty was truth, truth beauty, or something to that effect, patently demonstrated a metachemical 'bovaryization' of religion, the sort of 'bovaryization' in which, as already remarked, the Devil is hyped as God and beauty as truth - a not uncharacteristic vanity of genuine poets!