This past Saturday my grandma stopped by my house. She came to pick up a church program that my mother was making for her for the next day's services. She's always asking me "Why don't you come to church?". Usually I just shrug my shoulders and say "I don't know", but for some reason lately, especially since all this stuff about the pope covering up pedophilia in the Catholic church, I don't feel the need to hide what my true feelings are on religion, especially Christianity. She asked me why don't I come to church on Sunday for the Easter sunrise service, but unlike most other times, I told her the truth. I simply responded, "Because I don't feel like going". After that she went on asking me questions like:
"Aren't you grateful for all that God has done for you?"
"Don't you feel blessed?"
"Didn't God wake you up this morning? You didn't wake yourself up."
"Aren't you grateful to God that you're breathing and of sound mind?"
As she asked me these questions it took everything in me to not burst out laughing. She ends her barrage of questions with one statement that I think sums up the way religious people, no matter the faith, think:
"I just don't understand how you could not want to serve God."
Well, what I don't understand is how people can so blindly believe what they are told without independent investigation. Let me give you a little background on my spiritual journey. My mother is Catholic and my father was a Muslim, but now he is free from religion like me. When I was a baby my father went to jail for four years and my mother, my siblings, and I went to live with my grandma. One of the conditions of my mother moving back home was that she had to go to church every Sunday, so as a result my siblings and I were exposed to the Methodist church, which is my grandma's faith. When my father got out of jail he took over and exposed us to Islam. Since I was a child I have been exposed to different religions and in my active and fertile Gemini mind it just made me have more and more questions about just exactly who was right when it came to spirituality and less inclined to become a faithful and committed member of one faith.
For the past 2 years I have been going deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole and it all started off from me studying African history and doing research on how to make natural products for my skin and hair. I've studied numerology, astrology, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and a couple of African religions and a whole other host of things of an occult and/or esoteric nature and I have come to the following conclusions about religion:
1. Religion is a tool designed to control the masses:
Religion has used fear for centuries to control people. Almost every religion in the world has something in it's doctrine that is designed to make you feel that you aren't worthy of God's, Allah's, Jehovah's, Krishna's, etc. love unless you blindly give them your allegiance. If you don't go along, then there's all sorts of things in place to make you feel guilty about not worshiping a particular deity. When you have people who blindly accept these deities into their lives it makes it that much easier to stomach leadership under another person. How can you be in control of your life on the material realm when you have outsourced your spirituality? As above, so below. Which leads me to...
2. Religion makes it easy for people to relinquish their personal responsibility and their sovereignty by making them search for everything they need in outside sources instead of looking within:
When you pray to a deity the most common position that people assume is to either fall on their knees and look up or in their lives. People are told "All you gotta do is pray to (insert random deity here)and just sit back and wait and everything will be alright". Well prayer minus hard work and responsibility is nothing but a complaint. Only when you stand up and be accountable and responsible for your life, only when you start to live your life according to the laws of the universe (which supersedes man's laws) will you start to see any positive changes. When you're on your knees you're in the perfect position for someone to run up behind you and knock you upside the head and that is what I see going on with a lot of religious people...life is knocking them upside the head.
3. Religion had been used as an excuse to conquer and murder billions of people throughout history and today:
Catholics and Muslims are especially guilty of this. People have conquered, enslaved, and killed many people by declaring that they are doing so in God's name. They arrive with the Bible or Quran in one hand and a sword in the other. With this rationale it is perfectly ok to kill or enslave people because they do not believe as you do. They used the name of God to take over the world saying that they were doing this in His name when the real reasons for conquest are usually economic. For example, passages from out of the Bible were used as an excuse for the Trans Atlantic slave trade. One in particular stands out:
Genesis 9:25-27: "Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers. He also said, 'Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem! May Canaan be the slave of Shem. May God extend the territory of Japheth; may Japeth live in the tents of Shem and may Canaan be his slave'. "
This is referred to as the "curse of Ham" and was the main justification used to keep Africans enslaved. How anyone in the African diaspora can call themselves a Christian after it is well known that Christianity is one of the reasons used to justify enslaving us is beyond me.
I could probably write a book about what I think is wrong with religion, but these are the top three in my mind. Personally, I believe that Christianity is the longest running pimp game in the history of man. Don't get me wrong, there are some good aspects to religion and their is some wisdom to be gained from all religions. The thing is you have to separate the wisdom from the bullshit that is mixed in with it. Do independent research. Don't be so quick to believe what people tell you, especially if it is contradictory in nature. And last but not least, DO NOT let anyone guilt you into going to church, temple, etc. Know that your spirituality is YOUR business and no one else's.
Here are some good links about religion:
Exoteric & Esoteric Christianity Comparison
Does The Devil Really Exist
Jesus and Universal Law
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