Religion: Why We Can't Have Nice Things

Who is God, and why do we rely upon him so heavily in order to get through our day? There are a lot of answers to this question.  Some would say He is the foundation of their faith; someone to emulate and fear, to challenge them to live their lives morally and spiritually.  Others would say God is the central focal point of their religion.  That’s all good and well, but what is religion exactly? For centuries it has been a means to love, hate, cherish and kill.  A way of dictating how we live, what we say, and how we view others.  From the Crusades to World War II, religion has made us blind to the humanity we all share.

The world would be a much better place if organized religion did not exist.

Fourteen years of Catholic School, and that’s the solution I have come up with. Ironic, isn't it?

I have probably spent the better half of 4 days mauling over the topic for this blog.  My original idea of ridding society of cultural ignorance was decent, but I wanted something that has personally hit home for me.  I sifted through a few thoughts, bounced around some ideas with family and friends, and still wasn't happy with what I had.  Until I came home this evening to my mom watching a movie that made my decision much easier. 

The movie:

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.

Wow.

Right then and there I knew that regardless of my upbringing and my education, religion has been the culprit to the missing harmony in our world. 

For those of you who have not seen the movie I so fondly speak of, it is essentially a film about a German boy who happens to befriend a Jewish child living in a concentration camp during World War II.  Many a tear is jerked throughout the film which so gut-wrenchingly portrays the cruelty of the time.

I figure, ever since religion has formed, there have been reasons to hate one another.  People find themselves uncertain and afraid of other religions simply because they don’t have a good understanding of what that other religion is. Really, they are afraid of the unknown.  And how can we achieve a Utopian society this way?

And that is where I get to my point.

People are ignorant.  Plain and simple. I am by no means a cynic, but it really is the truth.  People grow up believing that the religion they practice is the RIGHT religion, and that all other religions, including the people who practice them, should be shunned, feared, and hated.  They don’t know any better. Our narrow-minded society has chosen to ignore the fact that we all believe pretty much the same thing:

That there is some sort of higher being that is greater than us.

Whether you call that being God, Allah or Brahma, we all believe that “he” exists.  It starts to become a problem when people begin to worship this higher being in different, often times very structured and rigorous ways.  The understanding that we all worship with a common purpose has been lost over centuries of fighting over who has the best religion. 

Because of this, religion simply wouldn't work in a Utopian society.  In a utopia, we as a society must strive to create a life for ourselves that improves our civilization in any way possible.  In the grand scheme of things, religion has been the roadblock preventing us from achieving this utopia.  The only way to accomplish this concept is to eliminate organized religion all together.

How would you enforce this concept, you ask? Ideally, I would make all organized religion illegal in a sense.  I would discourage the cult-like behavior that religion has become and encourage independent thinking and discovering one’s own spirituality without the forceful guidance of a religion.  Meditation, strong moral foundations, and personal spirituality would take the place of mindless worship. 

I think it sounds plausible.

I feel like every young person who has grown up in a religious household has experienced a religious existential crisis in some form or another.  You begin to reevaluate why you are going to church every Sunday, why you are a practicing a religion without getting much choice in the matter, and why society has made it okay to ostracize those who practice a different religion than you.

It really makes you think.

Our society would be a much happier, more Utopian, place if religion was disregarded and personal spirituality played a bigger part. 

All I’m saying is: lose religion, not faith.