Thinking. Loving. Living. Level. Being on the same level. Feeling levelled.
To be clear, I don't care about religion. To me, it's just an insult to the universe. A way to make your mistakes ok. A bad excuse to be an equally bad person. If you need religion to make you care about other people (not understanding why to do it, but to start doing it) you have a serious problem and you should probably see a therapist. (More like something else to do, than to find anything important, considering therapists are just people too.) Or go stand in the corner and think about what you've done.
The quote I wrote about religion came up in a discussion with a friend, who made the argument that jehovas are better than other religious people, becuase they call God by his Name. There are many faux pas in this, which I'm sure are as clear to you, my intelligent and attentive reader, as it is to me. First of all, aren't we supposed to be of equal value? Second, if there was something like a God, a force that could actually sort out your problems for you, should the uttering of the specific name really help in getting the attention? But, looking away from these somewhat upsetting matters, the argument lead me to that quote.
I actually thought that the quote, about how to explore the name of God, underlined what I had just wrote about looking beyond. And I don't think it's the only thing like that you can get from reading the Bible. I made the argument to my friend that the Book might have been intended for us to read as one of these popular self-help books. There are bound to be some answers in there for you, if you read it right. If you could just, please, look through the surface, the laws, all that is apparent. How crooked is society, when people turn to religion to excuse themselves? Considering those who are not help seeking in the way that they are reading a book, but is actually asking for help in prayer, it might work, because they are talking to themselves. Something that is usually frowned upon.
I have a great faiblesse for churches though. Maybe because they are real? Often they are beautiful, engaged a lot of handy artists in their building phase and I guess they speak of human history. The churches can stay, religion may go now.
The equal value thing is very ambivalent in christianity -- owing to the fact that the jewish faith doesn't really have it. You can't believe people are equal if you believe that you're the chosen few. Similarly, christianity silently rates people by level of devotion and "purity." (Which is of course not saying that all christians necessarily do.)
ReplyDeleteExcuses are sadly one of the central themes of our culture. I don't know if this originates from catholic times, but it has certainly saturated our whole society. It seems to me that a lot of people have trouble distinguishing between reasons and excuses, which is horrifying when you think about it. The occasional white lie is defensible enough, but not knowing which of your -own- thoughts are excuses and which are the real reasons... staggering. (This of course goes deeper into rationalisation. An interesting subject.)
I tend to say that I have nothing aganist faith, but I deeply abhor organised religion. People can believe whatever they want, but when they build hierarchal organisations and power structures around keeping and spreading that faith, I get all rebellious, like.
Love the idea of the Bible written as a self-help book. I mean, I hate self-help books, but there are clear similarities!
Anyway, interesting read.
I was actually thinking the same, but about the Jehovah. I don't know enough about Judaism to have an opinion really. My main belief is that religions do often keep people out, making a few very special. That seems, as you wrote, against the original purpose. This is also one of the reasons why I think people so easily puts their whole lives in the hands of their religion. Once you're let in, you want to do whatever it takes to get to stay.
ReplyDeleteGood point about not being able to distinguish between reasons and excuses, I might explore that further.
I don't think very highly about self help books or all the different kinds of life coaches that are now around, but I know there are people who use them as a tool to understand themselves better and in that area the Bible might have a good word or two to offer.