Recently, I went to see the film Heretic. I was curious about what it would portray about religious thinking, and I wasn’t disappointed. I won’t spoil the plot of the movie here, but I will discuss some of the arguments made during the beginning and middle of the film.
The antagonist Mr. Reed (played by Hugh Grant) tries to dismantle the faith of two university-student-aged missionaries who come proselyting at his door.
One of the tools he uses is binary, or all-or-nothing thinking about religion. Binary or dualistic thinking groups things, organizations, frameworks, or people into two different, usually opposite categories. It focuses on only two possibilities, most often “good” and “bad,” or “true” and “false.” This all-or-nothing approach ignores the nuance between these two poles, and because of this, it can lead to distorted thinking and logical fallacies.
Reed’s basic argument is that if something is questionable or sketchy about a religion, everything in the tradition is likely bad and false. For example, he argues that since religious leaders sometimes overstep and abuse their power, no revelatory content from religious leaders can really be trusted. He argues that since ancient mythological figures share traits and life events with divine figures, God must be just a creation of the human psyche rather than something real or truly mysterious. He also asserts that since religious movements build upon each other over time, sacred texts are most likely created to control and influence the populace. He also points out that some religious leaders like to use binary thinking themselves, quoting a past leader from his young guests’ own tradition, who said that religion is all true, or it’s all not.
Mr. Reed’s dualistic arguments reach their pinnacle when he presents the two missionaries with the choice of two doors: belief and unbelief. He characterizes belief as being under the authority of a God who antagonizes your every move. Unbelief, he says, is equally terrifying because you’re on your own in a vast universe. The sway of his binary rhetoric starts to break down here. It’s fairly obvious he only offers a polarized, reductive, and pessimistic framing of both religious and non-religious spirituality. A scrupulous, scary God is certainly not the only way to understand the nature of divinity. Existential loneliness and meaninglessness are certainly not inevitable outcomes of not being religious. One of the missionaries resists the duality, asserting that most people are somewhere in between belief and unbelief.
Binary thinking is sometimes useful as we make day-to-day choices based on one minor experience with something we use to judge the greater whole. If I see an ingredient I don’t like in a recipe, I might choose not to make it. If I enjoy the first page of a book, I might opt into buying it. If my house-sitter steals from me once, I'll likely never hire them again. Yet binary thinking about more complicated parts of life like spirituality can be overly reductive. As Richard Rohr has written, “Binary thinking…is completely inadequate for the major questions and dilemmas of life” (The Naked Now pg. 32). When we apply all-or-nothing thinking to life’s mysteries, it can lead us to make big final choices on issues before carefully examining details or to cling to simplified versions of the truth. It can also lead us to harshly judge, misunderstand or exclude other people. At the university and in spiritual circles, the goal is usually to do the very opposite of this: to work through highly complex ideas, histories, experiences, meanings, and identities as thoughtfully as we can. Many people out there may try to sway us with binary thinking about faith and spirituality, but we don’t need to buy into such arguments or propagate them. We can role model nuanced, slow, thoughtful, approaches to difficult issues and complicated parts of our lives, including when it comes to religion.
Among Mr. Reed’s problematic assumptions that contribute to his binary thinking about religion is the idea that objective evidence is required to accept something as true, good, and valuable. In the Western world, there is an often unacknowledged bias toward thinking that what is most valuable about religion is its capacity to teach us what is definitively accurate. Yet religion does not work to provide us with “right” beliefs proven using secular methods. While some faiths might even promote this idea at times, this has never really been the real function or benefit of religion, in which things are meant by definition to be left as questions of faith. What religion can do is connect us with things that are greater than ourselves that help us feel belonging, hope, and love. This can include a supportive community, spiritual or mystical experiences, values and principles to live by, and a higher sense of life purpose.
The film spoke to me as someone who values spiritual independence. I see the validity and value of the grey area between belief and unbelief. Doubt, uncertainty, and intellectual humility are conducive to growth, wonder, and developing a stronger sense of self. I’ve learned from my own study that in many cases, the same religious leader can have been unselfish, inspired, and generous to others, and in the same lifetime can become caught up in their own blind spots, foibles and foolish mistakes—people and their spirituality are messy and complicated. I see that sacred texts can have incredible beauty, transcendence, and troubling problems all at once. I also know for myself that sometimes the community belonging and spiritual experiences religion might offer us are so compelling that we might not even care much any more about whether we agree with the beliefs taught by a religion. And I see that the interconnections between world religions are something that can strengthen and enrich, rather than deconstruct, faith.Ěý
Heretic shows some of the beauty of the mystery, uncertainty, and spiritual agency that is part of the human condition, and the wisdom of opting out of all-or-nothing thinking when it comes to faith and spirituality. It also invites us to consider the benefits of drawing on spiritual practices and faith in our hardest moments, how these things can open more possibilities. If you enjoy horror films, I do recommend Heretic for its exploration of arguments for and against faith and spirituality. There are many other themes, including religious women, violence against women, and womens’ resilience that are even more at the heart of the film than what I’ve discussed here.
Ěý
