Love

Image taken from Pictures for Sad Children

Wow. Quite a bit was said in this comic strip.

Most religions are founded on a concept of love. Love for nature, love for each other, love for the creator. In times like these, however, the news and other media are often dominated by declarations of hate. There are people in this world, like Fred Phelps, who are using fear to drive people to church. It says in the Bible,

“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: Love your neighbor as yourself. The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22: 37-40, NLT)

In Buddhist teachings, we see Siddhartha Gautama tell his followers about universal love.

“…Let none cajole or flout his fellow anywhere; let none wish others harm in dudgeon or in hate. Just as with her own life a mother shields from hurt her own, her only, child, – let all-embracing thoughts for all that lives be thine, – an all-embracing love for all the universe in all its heights and depths and breadth, unstinted love, unmarred by hate within, not not rousing enmity.” (The Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha, p. 47)

Islam, Hinduism, Confucianism and Taoism all have teachings about this concept of universal love. Why, then, do we see so much hate and destruction on our TV screens every night? Why, as has happened in the past, are wars fought in the name of our gods that teach us love? Why do we see mothers killing their children claiming to be under the influence of some supreme being?

I believe that the answer is simple – evil can cleverly disguise itself as good. You might think you’re doing the right thing, but instead you’re doing the wrong thing. As churches and religious followers, we need to spread the love, so to speak. We need to tell people out there that are suffering that we don’t hate them. We love them.

We need more movements like “Free Hugs”. We have a responsibility to outreach to the less fortunate, the looked over, and those cast aside to tell them they are loved. We need to stop trying to pass laws like Proposition 8 that tell people we hate them for something that’s an intricate part of who they are. We need to end discrimination, sexism, and all the other bad “isms” we encounter too often right now.

I hope you all will join me in my quest to spread the love. I may not agree with you or know you, but please know that I love you.

The Definition of Religion

All too often, I hear about people who say that they are not religious,  but are believers in some higher power. Some of my more fanatical friends say that this is entirely impossible. Recently, I’ve taken a lot to thinking about exactly what this means.

Webster defines religion as “1 a: the state of a religious <a nun in her 20th year of religion> b (1): the service and worship of God or the supernatural (2): commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance; 2: a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices; 3archaic : scrupulous conformity : conscientiousness; 4: a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith”.

That’s quite a mouthful. If you’ll bear with me, I’d like to break this down and look at each section of this definition.

Starting with 1b, anyone who is a believer in something outside the realm of the physical world is religious. Followers of God, Allah, the Saints, Wicca, nature – these are all religious people. This one seems pretty self-explanatory so I don’t really feel the need to expand too much upon it.

Definition 2 seems to expand upon the ideas of 1b. This is the more acceptable definition of religion in today’s world, in my opinion. A lot of people are specifically referring to the ritual of worship and the set of beliefs a person has when they say religion. Whether it is well established or a single-person’s belief, this is the socially used definition.

Number 3 definitely got my mind working. I’m not a linguist, so I know there’s probably a lot more going on there, but scrupulous conformity seems to describe a lot of different things. By this definition, people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and drug addicts are religious. While it may not be socially acceptable, I would agree that these people are religious by definition. They are not following a god or a defined set of rules, but they are un-wavering in their devotion to something.

Finally we have definition 4. I’m going to digress a little bit here. Recently, I’ve become pretty addicted to Showtime’s “Dexter”. For anyone not familiar, Dexter is a serial killer of murderers. A lot of the show is his perspective on what he and other people are doing. He adheres to “Harry’s Rules” – a set of guidelines that Dexter’s adoptive father made for him when he realized that Dexter was a sociopath. These rules keep Dexter from being caught and allow him to keep killing. Throughout much of the show, Dexter’s faith in his father’s rules is solid as marble – he doesn’t stray from them for anything. I’m explaining all of this because, given our current definition of religion, Dexter is a follower of the religion that his father has bestowed upon him. I’m sure that there are some who would disagree on the principle of murdering. I’m not going to argue murder in this post, but having read about serial killers in the past, religion is a recurring theme. Not in the sense of following a god, but more in the following of rules, such as who is killed, the method, etc.

I’ve looked at the dictionary definition of religion, which is all well and good, but this isn’t the heart of religion and faith. Despite my previous comments, I am of the firm belief that religion and faith are not necessarily one in the same. To have religion, you must have faith. You cannot conform to something, from game rules to a set of spiritual beliefs, without having faith that these are going to work. However, you don’t need a religion to have faith. I can have faith that the tissue I just blew my nose with is really a tree. It doesn’t mean that I am going to revere the tissue and worship it or treat it differently. I just have to have faith that what I believe is right.

Now, this does sound dangerously close to #2 above. However, I’ve simply put forth a statement of faith that a tissue is a tree. I am not worshipping the tissue, therefore, I feel this falls outside the realm of “religious” practice.

It’s a pretty gray area. Even the Webster definition can be twisted to fit what anyone says or believes. I am going to stick to my gut feeling however that religion and faith are not the same thing. Personally, I consider myself to be a Christian but not religious. I don’t go to church every Sunday. Some days, I don’t even pray. I don’t strictly adhere to everything the Bible says. However, I do have faith in God/Jesus/The Holy Spirit (I’m not even going to touch the Trinity today – way too tired) as the divine presence in my life and in the world.

I doubt that defining religion is going to change the world. I just felt like putting my thoughts out there. Feel free to post your thoughts or contradiction or whatever you feel. Please read the “About” page before you post however to read my guidelines for commenting.