Is Religion Just for the Weak?

Sage thoughts from the Maverick Philosopher:

Jesse Ventura: “Religion is for the weak!” Religionist: “No it’s not!” Such knee-jerk opposition avails nothing. Ventura is in fact right. What Ventura doesn’t appreciate, however, is that we are all weak. The correct response to Jesse the Body is not one of diametrical opposition but one of ju-jitsu-like concession.

We are all weak relative to a standard of true strength. We are weak in body, in mind, in will. We vacillate in our affections. A body that can lose its strength in a split-second due to a brain aneurysm, say, is only relatively, contingently, and temporarily strong. Such strength is nothing to brag about. Or is Ventura’s strength so awesome that it is proof against every contingency? Can he maintain it indefinitely? Is he causa sui? If not, then why is he so proud of his prowess?

The great religions teach the simple truth about our weak and indigent condition. (Whether these religions provide a genuine solution to it is another question.) The proper counter to Ventura is to point out to him that the sense in which he thinks that religious people are weak is not the sense in which they know that we are all weak. Religion is not a projection of the merely contingent weakness of some of us, but a sober recognition of the necessary weakness of all of us. Religion doesn’t exist to make good the deficiencies that we can and must make good by our own efforts, but to ameliorate the deep-going deficiencies that none of us can ameliorate individually or collectively.