We have become used to thinking that religion should provide us with information. Is there a God? How did the world come into being? But this is a modern preoccupa- tion. Religion was never supposed to provide answers to questions that lay within the reach of human reason. That was the role of logos. Religion’s task, closely allied to that of art, was to help us to live creatively, peacefully, and even joyously with realities for which there were no easy explanations and problems that we could not solve: mortality, pain, grief, despair, and outrage at the injustice and cruelty of life. Over the centuries people in all cultu- res discovered that pushing their reasoning powers to the limit, stretching language to the end of its tether, and living as selflessly and compassionately as possible, they experienced a transcendence that enabled them to affirm their suffering with serenity and courage. Scientific rationality can tell us why we have cancer; it can even cure us of our disease. But it cannot assuage the terror, disappointment, and sorrow that come with the diagno- sis, nor can it help us to die well. That is not within its competence. Religion will not work automatically, how- ever; it requires a great deal of effort and cannot succeed it it is facile, false, idolatrous, or self-indulgent.