When I Speak of Religion 2

I have not forgotten the conversation that started with last month's "If Your Religion..." post, I've just let it percolate a bit more before responding...yeah, that's it. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

After the last installment, my friend responded,

The way you speak about religion/spirituality often seems to boil down to those last four words: "always meet your needs." This is the part that I can't quite get past. My whole faith revolves around God, not around me (or at least this is what I strive for). Of course I believe that God loves me more than any human ever could, and that God wants absolutely the best for me, and that God will take care of me and my needs. So my needs do end up being met by my religion/spirituality. But that's just not my starting point, nor is it my bottom line, nor is it the centre of what I believe. My faith is a response to something outside of myself, and to me it seems sad and small to imagine a spirituality that revolves around an individual human.

...

To the extent that I agree with your "if your religion" posts, it is always because I agree that what you're saying is also what God wants for us. I do disagree with the starting point/bottom line/core belief I am perceiving in your posts that a person's religion must serve their needs. I am theocentric in my beliefs, not anthropocentric. Our ends are often the same, but our means seem to be different, and I believe that the means do matter.

I can absolutely see the issue with the way I've been explaining things. She a good, kind, generous person, who I am lucky to count as a friend, and as such, is actually about the last person I would be talking to in these matters. She absolutely exemplify what I'm talking about when I say that a person's belief system should help them to be "happy and good". If we had about a billion more like her, the world would instantly and irrevocably be a better place.

Everything works out great if one believes that God's plan for them holds nothing more than kindness, generosity, love and joy. But what about those people who believe that God's plan for them is blowing up a train full of people? Or that they are compelled to stick their infant son full of needles? Or to shun someone because of the color of their skin, or because of who they love? What about the plans of a god who is jealous, vengeful, hateful, murderous and cruel?

When one lets an outside force tell them how to behave or think or live, they are at the mercy of that outside force. They could get lucky and have a completely benevolent model, or not. If instead we were to insist on being conscious of our behavior, active instead of passive. Insist on behavior that does the least harm possible and then model our spirituality to alleviate our fears and sorrows from there, the responsibility would then be in our hands and not at the whim of something/one else.

The concept of truth comes up a lot when talking about religion. Seems that one cannot talk about belief in a religion without linking it back to the truth. But if everyone's got it, how can we ever be certain who has the really real truth?

Set aside the desire for the truth for a moment, and consider the possibility of religion for spirit's sake, for wisdom's sake. Let them worship cross-eyed frogs (thanks Mima), and believe in the endless lily pad for an afterlife. Consider religion for no other purpose than to help someone live as good and happy a life as they can be. Understand that generosity, ethical behavior, participation, consideration, and awareness among other virtues, are all absolutely essential. Now, why does it matter that they don't believe the same as someone else, and are unconcerned with the truth?

When a system is set up to include concepts like true/false and right/wrong conflict is automatically included when dealing with those outside of the system. This to me is a fundamental flaw within most religions, and further proof that religion is politics and not spirituality. The means have become more important than the end, and very often the end that was supposed to be there just vanishes altogether.

With the equation, "Mine is right, yours is wrong," aggression is very often the response, because of the fear of being revealed a fraud or a fool. Any sort of resolution ends with someone losing and someone winning. This is counter productive. If instead it was, "Mine is mine, yours is yours," where's the aggression? There's no fear, but instead a connection to the end, rather than the means.

I hope this clarifies things. :)

Till next time, be well,

Red

When I Speak of Religion

My friend responded to my latest, "If Your Religion..." post and I felt that it deserved more than just a response in the comments, as it's a very valid point. I have lived inside my growing awareness of spirituality for a while now and so there are concepts that I take for granted when talking about what I have learned. Anything that makes me better at getting my point across is very much appreciated.

This what she had to say...

"It is my firm belief that there are morons in every religion on the planet. That's just the way humanity is. Most religions are trying to help with this problem, but the fact is that little can be done to help someone who doesn't feel like being helped. Many people think they're part of a religion just because their parents told them so, and it's just a cultural thing, and they have a shallow understanding of their own supposed theology.

Anyway, that's just my long-winded way of saying that I'm a little worn out on the cliche of rejecting a religion based on its followers. I don't think there's a single faith system out there that hasn't had someone leave because they were disappointed in the actions of that faith's adherents. Sometimes people are just morons, and you can't blame God or the Buddha or Athena or whoever for it."

I agree with everything she said, 100%, and it got me thinking that I missed something when I was talking about religion...

The word religion is used interchangeably with spirituality or belief system, I've been guilty of this myself, and for the most part, it's not really wrong. It is the meaning of other words that gets lost when the difference between religion and spirituality isn't explored and understood.

Spirituality is the connection to things outside of the purely physical, the connection to deity, to that spark that makes us uniquely individual, the energy that animates us while living and is glaringly absent after death. It is created by the individual, for the individual.

Religion is the politics of prayer, of worship, it is the politics of connection with deity. It is created by people for the consumption of others. The motives of those who create religion are sometimes altruistic, sometimes they are just controlling. People are flawed, and so are religions. When I complain about a religion, I'm not pointing my finger at "God or the Buddha or Athena...", but at the people who do things in their names.

The God of the New Testament is supposed to be the great good father of all things. He is supposed to be all love, all joy, all grace...and yet people have committed amazing atrocities in His name. Do I blame God? No, I blame the people who were capable of the actions, or who set up the system that allowed the actions. I blame the religion who got Him wrong.

Paganism connects to the ancient cycles of life, death and rebirth, drawing divinity out of the golden lined clouds and settling it firmly within. And yet, there are people who have simply swapped the names and genders of their gods, changed the words of their pleas, but have fundamentally changed nothing, and are still as frustrated as before. Do I blame any of the multitude of pantheons Pagans recognize? No, I point my finger at the religion, or lack thereof, that did not help explain these things.

So you love God, Jesus, Buddha, Athena, but part of what I have said somewhere along the way rings true for you, and your religion makes you afraid...what then?

Change it. Reject that which scares you, and revel in that which brings you joy. Be conscious of your religion, how it impacts your life and the lives of those around you. Try to do the least amount of harm possible. Participate in life, be conscious of the thousand joyous moments you will have and how they add up to a happy life. Let your religion evolve with you, so that it will always meet your needs.

Can it be just that simple? I think so. And yet, not, because I have to be more aware, more conscious, more active in how my decisions ripple away from me. It is admittedly harder somedays to follow my religion of one than to let slip my responsibility and relax under someone else's direction. But I choose, and will continue to do so, every day. That sort of freedom is sweet, and worth the work.

I hope this helps you to understand better the things I say, whether you agree with me or not.

Till next time, be well,

Red