Contemplating, solely on a personal level, the journey based upon the doctrines of religion, I’ve concluded that whenever I’ve gone wrong; made the wrong choices, done the wrong thing, spoken the wrong word, it has been because religion has sucked the very life right out of me.
I was born into an Irish Roman Catholic family. I was brought up in that religion with thoughts implanted in my soul by words I didn’t understand; yet they took deep root and grew into a full blown forest of dark and ominous trees that filtered out all light, leaving me living in darkness. Yet, something within me, for as far back as I can remember, questioned what was feeding my soul, my inner person. I questioned the self-righteousness of a religion that preached piety, good will towards all men, love thy neighbour, feed the poor, help the widow. I questioned this organization called religion, because like the Pharisees of the Torah (Old Testament) they gave me a cup to drink that was bitter, and yet what they gave me to drink was not what they practised.
I recall, later on in years, leaving a Sun-day church service in a Roman Catholic church with my parents whom I was visiting at their snow bird residence in Florida. The priest had complimented the parish and informed the congregants that they’d raised a few million dollars to be set aside for the possible need to build a larger church at some unknown time in the future when he envisioned an ever-expanding parish requiring a much larger church to worship within! We got in the car to drive away, from the then already very luxurious church and grounds, and as we waited at a stop light to exit the church parking lot I looked and say a young man, sitting cross-legged at the side of the road, dishevelled, dirty and gaunt. He looked like he was probably an addict of some sort and his eyes though looking right at us, right at me, were hollow; without hope or care.
What’s wrong with this picture my soul cried out? What’s wrong is here I am leaving this fancy church structure filled with people donating to a futuristic cause when right here, right now…a man is dying right under our very noses.
Religion sucks when it preaches things, when it leads the sheep astray from the true purpose of every human being; the purpose to be human, to be humane, to walked on Legs of Love, to give to those in need, now!
My first religion taught me that if you weren’t part of its “click” then on that fateful day when you died, as sure as you lived and breathed now, you were indeed, “going to hell in a hand basket!” I was born into a religion that for generations and generations before me, in my own family, taught and instilled that it was imperative, that the very soul of an innocent baby depended upon, that the parents get the new born infant baptized immediately for fear that if the infant died without baptism, that infant was going, “straight to hell in a hand basket!” Really. Both of my parents believed that to be a truth, a reality; as did their parents and their parents before them.
Religion sucks the life right out of you. It may be based on the purported words of YHWH and/or Yahshua, but it is then modified and spewed out with man’s own agenda attached to it!
All of those who call themselves “Christians” do so based upon the life of Yahshua and what it is he was about. Thus “Christians” were followers of “Christ” and his teachings.
Tell me, whenever did Yahshua tell us to big fine churches and establishments at the cost of the young man dying on the side of the road? Religion was sucking the life right out of me and I was blindly following its dictates…because, well, because that was the way it had always been, the way of my parents and their parents ad infinitum. Tell me, where has religion done any of my Irish ancestors any good? Hell they’re still battling it out in Ireland; “them” against “us.” For what purpose; to what end is this happening? If it is ever resolved there will be a winner and a loser. But we’ve all lost because we’ve all been lied to. We might work it out, but the underlying hatred and anger will remain; seething within, just waiting for that moment to be expressed, and once again go to war – hoping this time whoever was the loser will come out the winner.
Though you may win the war, you’ve lost life. It has been sucked right out of you and you will never be the same. You will come out with a feeling of superiority when in fact we know, deep down inside, that indeed, as the Word says, “All men were created equal.” We are all made in the image of the Creator…so how can one race, clan, organization, community, religion (which is man made) or country claim superiority. We may be blessed and thus have more material things and opportunities – but is it so, because we are better than another? Absolutely not, and until we can see that there is a gratitude that needs to be expressed for having been so blessed, for no apparent reason, that attitude of superiority and, dare to say, feeling of, “I deserved these blessings,” will remain and keep us divided.
The same thing can be attributed to the various religious organizations whose mandate seems to be to shove down the throats of the individual that “their way” is the right way!
YHWH, Yahshua nor whomever you may deem to call the Creator and sustainers of life, ever preached religion.
Man was created for relationship, not religion, and until we “know that we know” that to be the truth, we shall continue to allow religion and man’s doctrine and hidden agendas to suck the life right out of us – individually and collectively
My remembrances of his crucifixion bring to mind a wooden cross, large spiked nails hammered into the palms of his hands, a crown of thorns penetrating his skull to the bone, oozing blood down his face and into his eyes, likely blinding him; his wrenching cry on the cross, “Father, Father, why hast thou forsaken me.”; soldiers at the foot of the cross gambling for Yahshua’s garments as he died an excruciating, slow and painful death; darkened skies and the shaking and trembling of the ground upon which they sat, at the foot of the cross that bore Yahshua.
