Got Good Religion?
It makes all the difference.
Yesterday we looked at an area of human intellectual thought called Religion.
I think many get into silly protestations that they are spiritual and not religious. This is apples and aardvarks. Religion is a set of beliefs and practices. Being religious is connecting with a particular religion. Spirituality is practicing awareness of one’s inner life. They are not mutually exclusive and I believe the best opportunity to live a fulfilled life is to find and practice a good religion by utilizing all the spiritual self-awareness one can muster.
By working toward a reasonable definition of religion I posed the idea that people, by nature, are religious. It comes with having a specialized brain capable of communication through language. It also comes as a result of the way we come into this world and grow and develop.
What we didn’t get into yesterday, but is critical in understanding the powerful interest people have for this subject, has to do with our limited time on this earth and the fact that no one knows for sure what comes next.
Religions deal with this problem and through dealing with it they affect how billions choose to live their lives. It also affects how we interact with one another.
Let me also be as clear about what we are and are not talking about when discussing religions. We are talking about ways people organize their thinking and practices as they seek to improve themselves. We are not talking about whether or not God exists. I believe he does and this is consistent with my religious leanings, but others do not, and this is consistent with their belief system.
All religions are accessed through believing. Believing is demonstrated by the behavior that follows it. Believing is a relative scale. It can be strong or weak and can fluctuate over time.
Religions have to do with man’s choices and behavior not with God’s choices and behavior. (An interesting topic for another day,)
So here is my first observation about what a good religion should do.
A good religion should make kinder better people. Another way to say this is it should enable us to care more about others and less about ourselves.
If you are searching out a good religion to learn more about, exclude all the ones that promote violence. Having said this, make sure you differentiate the violence of people and the taught violence of the religion. It may be that violent people are using religion as a cover or excuse for their violence. Every religion has to deal with violence because every religion has to deal with the depravity of man.
A good religion should promote law and order and at the same time oppose tyranny.
A good religion should seek to worship a good God. All of it’s doctrines (the written set of beliefs it stands for) should be about this in some way. Another way to put this is to say a good religion is not focused on man as the center of its attention.
Does this makes sense? Am I clear? Am I full of it? Let me know what you think.