Talking About Religion and Theology

From Death by Bread Alone by Dorothee Soelle:

"At that very moment I rubbed my eyes in astonishment and realized that I had been dead, that the way I had acted toward other people was empty, devoid of all genuineness, depth and authenticity. I had been wearing masks, playing out roles, going through the motions. I had thought I could handle this television interview in the same way I was accustomed to doing other things--like ticking off a list. Indeed, I had thought that I could avoid any risk of talking about myself. But it had not occurred to me that not to talk about myself would have made me do something worse--say nothing that was of substance.

I had thought that I could talk about religion and theology. But one of the strange things about the language of religion and theology is that it does not permit itself to be neutral, a mere instrumentality. When we use such language simply for the sake of using it, the result is sheer nonsense, garbled communication. The language of religion is the vehicle of collective experience and it is meaningful only when it speaks of experience and addresses itself to experience."