Religion

Tell me what it is about religion that makes it such an overwhelming Master. In every religion, there are fanatics, those who are so enraptured by the words in that religion's holy book that they will stop at nothing, including murder, to make everyone see that their religion is the best.

If we look at the holy books for most major religions, they are all rather alike. They all recount the adventures of their big holy man. But here's where they're really alike. Not a one of them was written by anyone who actually witnessed those adventures. They were written many many years after the fact, by people who wrote down what they'd heard for years. So let's think for a minute, please. You know what it's like to have a family story. It gets told by so many people, over and over and over again, until it's nothing like the original story. It's been reinterpreted by each and every storyteller. But you write down the version you've heard and you call it "the true story." Is it, really?

If we could be honest with ourselves, we might look at this objectively and realize a few things. These stories were told to do a specific task. They were told to keep kids in line, to organize a tribe of people, to set down parameters for that specific group. They weren't meant to be the rules for everyone but for that one particular group. The older stories were made to be more frightening, so that everyone understood why the rules were the way they were. Then we move into the newer stories, where love becomes the overwhelming message. But the followers, who were brought up on the older stories, can't help but add their own admonitions for the next bunch of followers. And because they were brought up on the old, vengeful-type stories, guess what their writing is going to have predominantly? Yep, all sorts of rules to follow, all based on the stories they grew up on.

See, here's what I don't understand. If God is a god of love, then why was he so vengeful in the old testament? And why does he let his son be so lenient? If God is a god of love, then why does he let anyone die from things like disease, murder, or hate? It just makes no sense, no matter how you look at it.

That's the main reason I consider myself to be spiritual, rather than religious. Believe in a higher power but don't use that higher power to rule your life. Because all the rules weren't given by it but by the people who wrote them. Regardless of if they were inspired by that higher power, they still were the ones who passed the rules down and eventually wrote them down.