We’ve been looking for a larger house for a while now so while I was walking to the park with my daughter today I was really excited to see a beautiful old house for sale. It’s only a couple blocks from our place now, well made (over 100 years old) GORGEOUS!! So, when we are [...]
I was really surprised the other day when I caught a news story titled “Losing Our Religion” . It turns out I’m not the only one who has drifted away from the traditional religious practices forced down my throat my whole life.
I was raised in a strict catholic home. I attended catholic schools, catechism classes and spent every Sunday in church. Catholisism was the one true religion and everyone else practicing every other religion was missing out on their chance of worshiping God in the only fashion truly accepted by God. The older I got the more I began to question religion, not just catholisim but all religions.
The first time I pulled away from the Catholic church was when I met my first husband, a baptist. My parents grudgingly accepted him into their home after threatening to not attend the wedding because it was at a baptist church (only because we couldn’t get married in a Catholic church because he was baptist). My godmother who was a very old school catholic refused to acknowledge the wedding and sent me a long letter telling me that because I was not marrying a catholic she could not attend the wedding and she could not even send a gift because she believed I was going against God by marrying a non-Catholic. I was shocked. This was the sweetest, nicest, most god-fearing woman I knew – I could not comprehend her intolerance. This was my awakening to the extreme religious hypocrisy in our world today.
After years of believing that catholisim was the one true religion I was now married to a baptist and attending a baptist church. It was pretty cool, I enjoyed the fellowship and appreciated the fact that everyone was welcome and accepted. Then this man I married became a little to excited about religion, quoting bible verses, ” wives be submissive to your husbands”, Peter 3:1-6, while slamming me against the wall and choking me. This just adds fuel to the fire of my religious doubts. I pull further away.
Research has shown that I am not alone in my beliefs. I found a great article by Leonard Pitts, here’s a quote:
“Some have suggested our loss of faith is the result of increased diversity, mobility and immigration.
I’m sure there’s something to that, but I tend to think the most important cause is simpler: Religion has become an ugly thing.
People of faith usually respond to that ugliness – by which I mean a seemingly endless cycle of scandal, controversy, hypocrisy, violence and TV preachers saying idiot things – in one of two ways. Either they defend it (making them part of the problem) or they regard it as a series of isolated, albeit unfortunate, episodes. But irreligious people do neither.
And people of faith should ask themselves: What is the cumulative effect upon outside observers of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker living like lords on the largesse of the poor, multiplied by Jimmy Swaggart’s pornography addiction, plus Eric Rudolph bombing Olympians and gays in the name of God, plus Muslims hijacking airplanes in the name of God, multiplied by the church that kicked out some members because they voted Democratic, divided by people caterwauling on courthouse steps as a rock bearing the Ten Commandments was removed, multiplied by the square root of Catholic priests preying on little boys while the church looked on and did nothing, multiplied by Muslims rioting over cartoons, plus the ongoing demonization of gay men and lesbians, divided by all those “traditional values” coalitions and “family values” councils that try to bully public schools into becoming worship houses, with morning prayers and science lessons from the book of Genesis? Then subtract selflessness, service, sacrifice, holiness and hope.
Do the math, and I bet you’ll draw the same conclusion the researchers did.
Who can be surprised if the sheer absurdity, fundamentalist cruelty and ungodly hypocrisy that have characterized so much “religion” in the past 30 years have driven people away? If all I knew of God was what I had seen in the headlines, I would not be eager to make His acquaintance. I am thankful I know more.”
I have now been married to a Muslim for 11 years and have settled into a comfortable understanding with him on religion in our home. The fact that he was raised a catholic has given us a common bond to build on. I think that, if there is a God, all of these religions were allowed to flourish so that everyone could be comfortable in their religious environment. Instead of everyone building on their common belief in God, it has been turned into an excuse to put yourself above others and hate anyone who doesn’t believe what you do or practice religion the way you do. I am constantly amazed at the extreme acts of hate and violence that these so-called religious people carry-out on others. After living with so many different people of so many different religions I have seen good and bad in all. But I would never, ever believe that only one certain religion is the only true religion. I haven’t been in a church or mosque in years. My faith is mine alone. I would never be so arrogant as to force my beliefs on anyone and I will not listen to anyone who tries to force their beliefs on me.
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