I am not a very religious person. Does this make me a bad person? I don’t think so. I was raised Catholic but had no real idea of what that meant. I only knew that Heaven was good and Hell was bad – if you were good you would go to Heaven and if you were bad, you would go to Hell. There were various degrees of goodness and various degrees of being bad. My parents really didn’t enforce going to church or praying – we didn’t really do anything religious until we became practicing Jehovah’s Witnesses.
My parents decided to practice the teachings of the Jehovah’s Witness faith and things briefly changed in our house for a few years. I really can’t remember the extent of that change but do know that we began at home bible study groups and were all of a sudden going to church every week. Being a teenager at the time, I was not happy about these study groups or going to church regularly. I can’t remember how strict our family was in terms of birthday/holiday celebrations – as Jehovah’s Witnesses, we were not allowed to partake in these festivities. This phase lasted a few years and as we become older we were given the opportunity to continue these studies or not, most of us didn’t.
So, to recap….I grew up knowing little about the religious denomination my parents instilled onto their children – which was Catholic. We then began practicing the teachings of Jehovah’s Witnesses – during this time, I attended a school that had a huge Jewish student body. In any event – religion didn’t really become something I took seriously. I came to the conclusion that religion was the cause of much bloodshed and was invented to keep society under tight control. Do I believe the same thing today?
Today – religious ideologies have reinforced my beliefs that religion is a means of control. Much of the negative news stories on television or in the news revolve around wars, death and destruction based on different religious views. In North America, many people vote based on the religious beliefs of their members of parliament, which in turn can dictate policy based on those religious beliefs. I believe that religious beliefs should not intervene with government/political policies. I also believe that religion isn’t all bad – the only time I have a problem with religion is when it is used to incite hate and persecute those who don’t fit to the specifications of the various religious denominations. Religion has enforced that we are all sinners but that some sins are much more serious than others. To me, ostracizing women for wanting to preach the word of God is not really inclusive. Eating shellfish shouldn’t be grounds for putting someone to death (even though I don’t support eating any meat what-so-ever). The rules in the bible don’t give any clear definition as to why those rules exist – in my mind, they were written by men who wanted to have complete control of those who may have thought differently.
How can I function without any faith in a higher power? I truly don’t know. Whenever I think of giving myself a label in reference to whether or not I believe in God, I can only think of Agnostic. I don’t really believe that there has been substantial evidence the supports the existence of God – the stories were fantastic and inspiring but very sensationalistic and meant to instill fear in people. In the same breath – I am uncomfortable in saying that a God-like energy doesn’t exist. There is much that is unexplained that leads me to believe that there is definitely something much bigger than all of us. Call it God, call it Allah, call it Jehovah, the Divine, Energy, Ra, Universe, etc., whatever it is, it is all-loving, supportive, non-judgemental, compassion, kind and caring which is definitely not what most of today’s modern preacher’s are telling their parishioner’s.
My religion is based out of the simple teaching that we should treat others how we want to be treated, with LOVE. LOVE is my religion and with love, we can definitely become beacons of positive change.
COALITION OF POSITIVE ENERGY 