Huston Smith’s The World’s Religions is maddening – not because it is uniformly bad but because it contains a tarnished brilliance that is a clue to an underlying schizophrenia ultimately revealed in its conclusion. At times you think it may be building into a tour de force, but then you are confronted by a disappointing blemish. It is written eloquently and awkwardly at the same time:
“Guidelines are weakening even here, but it is still pretty much the case that if a corporation executive were to forget his necktie, he would have trouble getting through the day.” (italics mine)
Who would expect, in a thoughtful book like this one, to find “pretty much” or “corporation executive” instead of “corporate executive?” Contrast these transgressions to this insight:
“Reality is steeped in ineluctable mystery; we are born in mystery, we live in mystery, and we die in mystery. Here again we must rescue our world from time’s debasement, for “mystery” has come to be associated with murder mysteries, which, because they are solvable are not mysteries at all. A mystery is that special kind of problem which for the human mind has no solution…” (italics mine)
An excellent way of expressing the religious mystery for sure. And yet the ear begs for the clumsy transposition of “which” and “for” to be undone. There are gems to be found in the dirt, but unfortunately there is dirt to be found on most of Huston’s gems. It’s clear he spent years researching the book, and it’s painful to be so critical. But passages like this one, found in the conclusion, sum up the central problem underlying his inconsistencies:
“Our realization that science cannot help us reopen the door to looking seriously again at what the wisdom traditions propose. Not all of their contents are enduringly wise. Modern science has superseded their cosmologies, and the social mores of their day, which they reflect – gender relations, class structures, and the like – must be reassessed in the light of changing times and the continuing struggle for justice. But if we pass a strainer through the world’s religions to lift out their conclusions about reality and how life should be lived, those conclusions begin to look like the winnowed wisdom of the human race.”
This is the viewpoint of a person who supports the continued erosion of the world’s religions — the viewpoint of someone who is opaque to his own disrespect of the traditions he seems to endorse. Is he blind to the living people he has studied, many of whom would take issue with his willingness to “pass a strainer” through their faiths and winnow out what he likes and does not like? How many of them (myself included) would say that the world’s religions don’t “look like” the wisdom of the human race?
They are.
Huston’s book would have been better if he had embraced the world’s religions to an extent sufficient to make him willing to fight harder for their preservation.
Robert Mitchell Jr. 
“Which for” is correct in Huston’s sentence. So is “for which.” But the first makes “problem” a subject, whereas the second makes it the complement of the preposition “for.”
Okay Jason. So, assuming this peculiar construction is legitimate, what does this mean: “A mystery is that special kind of problem which for the human mind has no solution…”? I just don’t get it. If, on the other hand, he had said “for which,” we would understand that the human mind has no solution to the problem.
Hi, Robert.
First, I apologize for sounding so nasty. There’s no excuse for that. I was acting like a pr*ck.
The way I read the sentence is “A mystery is that special kind of problem which has no solution, [not, at least] for the human mind.” I think extra punctuation would have made it clearer. Like this: “A mystery is that special kind of problem which—for the human mind—has no solution.”
What do you think?
Peace.
Jason
No worries, Jason. Your point is correct as a technical matter. But wouldn’t you agree that our back-and-forth on this sentence seems to support the larger point of my review, which is that Smith’s genius is maddingly uneven? Just sayin’!
PRE-SCRIPT! I tried in the following novel-length post to justify why I really value Huston Smith. I re-read my post but didn’t end up trimming it down. My basic point is that I think Huston Smith sincerely prized all religions as truly holy, connected to God in one way or another, and that I think his personal life experience forced him to take risks with regards to tradition. Maybe (just brainstorming here) because after surveying all of the world’s religions, he concluded that (1) the diversity of world religions reflects man’s imperfect understanding of the one true wisdom, that (2) God allowed his wisdom to be adapted to a particular time and place (Islam during the life of Muhammad, Judaism at the time of Moses, Buddhism at the time of Siddhartha) even if later followers (myself included, very often) don’t want these forms to evolve, and that (3) God has given us a life experience (every one of our days having been written in his book before we were even born, says the Bible) we were meant to have, and the intellect to make sense out of it (or try to, but it is a puzzle “which for the human mind has no solution”), including resolving the puzzle of making His wisdom fit a time in human history (now) where all religions are in contact with each other, rather than isolated and free from any contamination. Maybe God wants us to ask ourselves why. Why are there these different religions? Once upon a time, religions had territories, which facilitated keeping to one tradition. The Internet and immigration has brought them into close contact. Maybe that’s intended by God? So that we can call into question what we think is the immutability of our own tradition, whatever it might be.
Hi, Robert.
My evaluation of Huston’s book and message reflect my own life experience, which is unique like yours. Like Huston, I spent a big part of my youth outside of the US, forced to uproot and move to another country every three or four years because of my father’s government job. My Mom was from a Roman Catholic country in which the church was associated with the fascist government (Portugal under the dictator Salazar), which turned her and her family off from it though didn’t shake her root belief in God I think (she died, so I didn’t get to have that conversation with her). My Dad was baptized as a child but atheist as an adult, and had many Buddhist books I discovered as a preteen. I didn’t go to church or get a family religious education as a kid, but was introduced to Buddhism through my Dad’s old books, and also discovered the Tao Teh Ching, which helped me, filling the spiritual void left from no family religion. And, being abroad, I was perhaps passively (unconsciously) exposed to Roman Catholic influences (even just the material heritage of the Roman Catholic church: church building, statues of saints, names of saints given to streets and towns, etc.). Then, back in the States, it was mostly Protestant Christianity I was exposed to (living in Virginia). So take all of this mess and you get Huston Smith’s World Religions in my head. Through no fault of my own: the circumstances of life, being dragged from place to place and uprooted, being born to parents with different upbringings and worldviews, being exposed to different readings simply because that’s what there was to read at home, being surrounded by cultures shaped by different outlooks (Protestant vs. Catholic), being surrounded by people of different colors (brown, black, white, etc.).
I turned to Huston Smith probably to find an answer: how to make sense of all these traditions and live a life that doesn’t reject either, as I had perceived the value in them all. Huston Smith was the child of an American missionary in China. He too was uprooted from his (parents’) homeland! Maybe he experienced the same mental strain as a kid of making sense of Chinese spiritualities and his family’s American Protestantism. He could have coped by shutting himself off to all other traditions but his parents’ when he was an adult, but instead he sought to understand all traditions, recognize their value. And I don’t think he had a choice: his heart and intellect (both of which are God’s territory, so God might have had a hand in Huston’s decision) pushed him to it. A “vocation.”
I think he did sincerely respect them all, and that’s why he wanted to showcase them and recognize their dignity and worth. He didn’t want to change them: so he, in that sense, is an ally of their preservation, at least of their treasures. As far as I can recall from reading the book years back: He practiced Zen meditation for years, then Sufism for years, and in the end of his book he explains how he is Protestant, without claiming his tradition to be better than others’.
I think you are right about the value of tradition. I think one has to be careful not to tinker with traditions whose wisdom one might not yet (and may never) fully understand, at the risk of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But, as a Christian now in my adulthood, I also believe the following Christian messages (as I understand them): (1) that religion is not immune to serious problems, like the legalistic hard-heartedness of the Pharisees and others who would prevent Jesus from breaking rules out of compassion (violating Sabbath rest to allay hunger and to heal others, forgiving whores, etc.), the profiteers (making money off of believers), those who put burdens too great on believers; (2) that the yoke exists but is supposed to be light (but how?!); (3) that the Son of Man is not the property of one faction of humans and is not confined to one worldview or cultural experience or time (“Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head”—Matthew 8:20); (4) that the law is ultimately to love; and (5) that Jesus gives us permission, if we can reach sincere agreement, to prune and improve traditions that may no longer fit the time (but which may once again in the future!) (Matthew 18:19–20). I don’t expect women to cover their heads and be quiet in the church nowadays. Maybe I’m wrong and just the child of perverted times, but my heart isn’t with it, and I think Jesus would let it slide.
Even if all of those arguments are bunk, even if tradition is to be left 100% untouched, the Jesus I *want* to believe in, and the Jesus I *hope* exists, would be ready, if only out of pity (“I pity the fool!” said Mr. T), to soften hard laws, waive others, or make concessions and compromises out of love for his weak and smelly and stupid sheep (of which I am one).
Forgive the logorrhea!