As long as I seem to be getting into an enormous amount of trouble for my last couple of posts/quotes here’s another one.
“There is no true religion that excludes the great multitude of souls from eternal salvation in favor of the few who, no matter the totality of their earthly deeds, good, bad or indifferent, just so happen to be true believers.”
I say this with no particular time, place or specific religion in mind. There have been and will always be plenty of false prophets and they will continue as always to find their faithful. I personally find it sad that there are people who believe just to believe and that alone gives them the right to be high and mighty about their religion, with, but most often without a second thought as to the actual let’s call it viability of the Gospel they have chosen to blindly but piously follow.
It’s as if belief alone can justify the underlying dogma that now guides their journey to the other side. I for one do not trust anyone who would give up the magic and miracles of this life for nothing more than the promise of a better after-life, particularly if it involves blind adherence to the words of a religion that demands I show faith but filling what I consider to be the Godly tip jar.
It often amazes me how we are all quick to point out sharp, unfair and predatory business practices in society and even from time to time punish the wrongdoers in the process. You know, scam artists? Ponzi schemes and general white collar crime come to mind.
But do the same exact thing in the name of religion? And somehow the exact same actions are not only condoned, but encouraged as a means of finding purpose through piety, salvation of the soul through sectarian means, and eventually, one you dispense with what I consider to be a very strange concept of “original sin” or, as I like to call it, having the deck stacked against you before you even start, the true and holy “good” within one’s self and hence, a seat at the feet of God, or if even luckier at his Seder table.
Let me ask you a question. If you were so blessed as to be one of God’s dinner guests, would you be sitting at a table of golden splendor or one of a carpenter? A beggar? Or of one of ten thousand other miracles our Creator made and placed upon his world below? Do you truly believe the road to heaven is paved in gold, silver and riches beyond us mere human’s imagination?
Or could it be lined with the broken bodies and souls of those we chose to ignore? Perhaps the corpses of those where we ourselves caused pain? Perhaps even death. Not necessarily with our hands but with our indifference to their plight? Harm due to our bigotry? Our fear and our misconceptions about what it means to be different, when in fact there was no actual difference to begin with that could have even made a difference at all?
For isn’t it true that we kill, if not physically, then perhaps mentally and surely as a matter of spirituality that which we don’t understand? This may sound a bit alarmist, but I have always been horrified by claims of the “one way” often evinced by a single index finger in the air pointed toward the heavens as proof of the virtuous, upright and high-minded morality by shared belief and sheer numbers.
It shouldn’t surprise me that some of my observations, and they are merely that, thoughts which you can consider and/or discard as you wish, cause such a ruckus at times. I mean, I guess I should feel lucky that I haven’t fallen prey to the Spanish Inquisition, my fate to be recant or suffer the iron maiden for my acts of heresy, you know, like the Earth revolving around the sun? Or any similar thought or act that doesn’t place man at the egocentric center of his own uniquely egocentric universe?
In the final analysis, all I am saying is I do not have to believe in the same story, or in the veracity of your story because you believe in a story. And, if it is somehow important to you that I do, well then, I ask you to check your faith credentials and see if they are what you claim them to be.
For inside, in the darkness and quiet of your heart and your mind is where you will find the truth. All of it and if that scares you, it should. You will not find divinity in wishing for the return of Biblical times. If you need a miracle like parting the sea to validate your faith, you are not looking for where true faith lies.
It is not in the songs, hymns or psalms of devotion. It is not imbedded in the sound of bells or depictions in stained glass windows. You will certainly not find your way home by self-flagellation or similar acts of degradation to the mind, body or spirit.
Why do we fear the here and now? Is it because we feel and inflict pain in the moment? Why do we prefer to spend our time regretting our perceived failures of the past and fear a future that may or may not materialize rather than live in the present?
Why are we still no different than our earliest ancestors? Huddled together in a cave wondering who or what to pray to so the wind and the rain will stop? Despite our assertions that we are civilized, we are still a superstitious lot ready to believe in the unbelievable if it makes us feel safe and sheltered from the storm.
Such a waste to entirely live this life in service of the next. It really is.
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WOW! Powerful! This brings to mind a couple of things. As Lew Wallace once said, in Ben Hur, "If there is a God, why does he not do right by the world?” I also allude to Freud's psychoanalytic perspective. Freud viewed religion as the unconscious mind's wish for fulfillment. Because people need to feel secure and absolve themselves of their own guilt, Freud believed that they choose to believe in God, who represents a powerful father figure — something the can now be set aside in favor of reason and science. It also brings to mind Dostoevsky's and Camus's specific view on life, "The only reality is life is its absurdity. — Dr. Jaime Casellas 😊