I’ve always believed in God, though at times my actions did not indicate this. While I believed, I did not behave in a manner that honored God in myself or others. Jesus Christ had one major law… to love others as yourself, which breaks down into 2 laws:
- Love yourself
- Love others
For a lot of my life, if I’m being honest, I failed in both areas. The reason for my failures can be stated in several posts, but overall the primary theme was that I didn’t know how to love myself because I did not have any relationship with God (even though I believed there was one) and therefore had no basis for understanding what pure love was. As a result, I fell short in this area and many others.
In this post, I want to dive a little deeper into the difference between religion and making the decision to honor God with your life. Religion is a list of dos’ and don’ts. It breaks down to, “believe this, not that.” It excludes other systems of belief and exemplifies one set of beliefs as the only true belief system. It closes one’s mind to other possibilities and causes judgment of others who do not believe the same thing. I’ve never believed in religion. Even now, while I attend a Christian church each Sunday with my daughter, I do not believe in religion. At this point, I’m sure many of you are reading this and making judgments in your mind about me. Maybe something to the effect of, what a hypocrite, she goes to a Christian church and yet, she doesn’t believe in religion.
I have a hard time believing that a universal God who created us and everything surrounding us set it up so that everyone would need come to Him (I only say Him for lack of a better pronoun. In a worldly sense, “Him” is better accepted than “Her” and “It” would be insulting as it infers lack of life. However, I believe that God is indescribable and cannot be relegated to any pronoun.) by one way. I do not believe that one belief system is accurate, while all the others are “wrong.” Instead I believe, that there is beauty in all and that the sacred has created various pathways leading to truth. I have not heard of a sacred text that outwardly calls us to behave like wild animals and act on instinct. Most sacred texts call us to act in love, which leads me to believe that God is a loving God and that he calls us to become loving (like He is).
Religions, in my opinion, were created to point us to the truth that we are to treat ourselves honorably and that we are to treat other living creatures the same. While some of the stories may be true, having occurred in history, and others may be myth, when we dig into the morals of each story, we can see the deeper messages hidden within. At this point in my life, most of my reading has been within the Bible, but I don’t discount other sacred texts. I read the Tao Te Ching and most of the Upanishads and I do find that a lot of what is stated within is not incredibly different in message than what is stated in the Bible. It is simply another means to an end created in another part of the world. I own the Quran and the complete Zohar, though I have yet to dive in and read what these have to teach. My studies to date have been working through the Bible and yoga’s core texts as I was led to yoga this year also. There is only so much free time I have to engage in what I absolutely love. I currently have a full-time job, which I am actively seeking to let go of, but fearing the loss of security is making this process longer than what it probably needs to be.
I’d consider myself open-minded, yet discerning. My belief on judging one religious belief system as true and others false is that the devil is in the details. There is nothing that pains me more than holy war or fighting over diversity. Has anybody picked their head up out of the ground and looked around a nature? It is entirely diverse. When no 2 humans look or act alike, no 2 snowflakes are alike, there are roughly 60,065 species of trees in the world, about 400,000 flowering plant types, about 200 different types of cells in the human body, and approximately 1-2 million animal species on the Earth, it gives me good reason to believe that God believes in and loves variety. Why wouldn’t God have thrown in many pathways for us to find Him? Why wouldn’t God create many ways to honor Him? Why would God want strictly scripted prayers to be said by every human when he made us so differently?
I was brought up Catholic and one of the things that never made sense to me as a child were those scripted prayers. I would say them and honestly didn’t really understand the meaning behind them, so my heart was not in it even though I was speaking the words.
After reading the Gospels this year, I became a follower of Jesus. He hated religion and religious structure because it countered the mission and blocked the very relationship with God that it was created to lead people to. People were so caught up in judgment and dissension when it came to worshipping God. When I read the gospels, I was immediately drawn to the fact that I, too have always disliked religion and felt that it often did more harm than good.
It’s interesting how the stories meant to show us the way to God are used on this Earth to lead us further from the truth. Instead of leading us to God, we get consumed by the details. We get swallowed up by the ideas of “right” versus “wrong.” We get caught up in the pride that declares, “I am more “righteous” than you.” We get caught up in our otherness instead of embracing our shared humanity. Instead of helping one another to grow and become more loving, we judge others as being less than. Jesus understood love, whether you believe him to be the one and only son of God or you believe him to be a prophet. Jesus is what I have been using this year as a guidepost of where I stand on my journey toward becoming a kinder and more loving human. However, I don’t discredit any spiritual guidance that also points to love as the answer for healing this world.
Oddly enough, as I am aspiring to learn what it takes to grow this blog, I was confronted with the phrase that I find myself preaching so often as it relates to religion, debates and infighting over it, “The devil is in the details.” I believe God has given me a vision for this blog, and while I love to write, the details of creating a business, finding the best webhosts, learning about SEO, branding, social media marketing, costs, etc. have been getting me slightly overwhelmed the past couple of days. In embarking on this endeavor, I’m realizing there is so much I need to learn to get this off the ground and nurture it to success and staring at the many details that need to be completed threaten to lead me toward fear and doubt. In this instance, I’m keeping my eyes on the mission, and choosing to remember the mantra, “The devil is in the details” in an effort to help me steer clear of overwhelm and defeat.
I pray that each of you steer clear of the devil hanging out in the details… whether it be someone who doesn’t think like you, or look like you, or overwhelm at the many facets that need to fit together and be accomplished on your own personal journey.
When have you found yourself caught up in the details? Do you agree with this phrase? What is your take on religion? Share your take on the post and comment below.