Religions

One thing I've noticed in the past half year or so of trawling through various people's blogs (mainly Downers), is that people like to refer to religion as if it were a dirty word. Religions cause wars, religions are bad. Faith is good, but religion is bad.

Now, there may be some mentalities wherein religion, period, is bad. But I quote the Dictionary's definition of religion:

religion n. 1 the belief in a superhuman controlling power, esp. in a personal God or gods entitled to obedience and worship. 2 the expression of this in worship. 3 a particular system of faith and worship. 4 life under monastic vows (the way of religion). 5 a thing that one is strongly devoted to (football is their religion)

What people MEAN when they are saying religion is bad is that religionous organisation is bad. They aren't saying that belief in God is bad (I hope not anyway, because some of them claim to belief in Him). And I don't think they're saying that a codified system of belief is bad. No, they just don't like set structures.

You know what, people: that's what a faith entails. If you believe in God, and in acknowledging His presence in some way or another, then you believe there should be worship, prayer, a moral code, or something. But as soon as you feel that that such things should exist, you will necessarily have SYSTEMS of doing these things, because there will always be a BEST way of doing these things, meaning there will be rules.

Now, if you don't believe in God, or you don't believe that God needs or wants any sort of acknowledgement from creation, then you're okay. But these people don't seem to oppose acknowledging God. Well, if people are going to acknowledge God, there are going to be better ways about doing it, and that will entail rules. Furthermore, an awful lot of people believe that there are certain divinely ordained authorities or rules to dictate HOW to do that. And if you are willing to let people believe as they will, then you are allowing people to believe that-- and to DO that.

My point: religion is not something you can do away with if you claim to be tolerant of people's faiths. Religion is not seperable from faith. Nor is it a dirty word, a perversion of a pure "faith".

I would use governments as an analogy. There are a lot of governments out there that have given it a bad name, and there are a lot of governments out there that have lost or forgotten why they rule and what they rule for... but does that mean we should abolish governments? Not too many people seriously think so. What it means is that governments need reform.

Similarly, religions don't need to be abolished. They need to be cleaned up. Getting rid of a system of faith will not leave faith intact. So if you're going to respect faith, then you have to respect religion. They come hand in hand.

Religion is not a dirty word.