Nov 6, 2012

Religion, Churches and What Drives People Away

Take any religion in the world, and you would find people who used to belong to it and left it. Any, really. There are, of course, some religions that are harder to leave - not because they are true or really engaging, but because they pose an actual, real threat to the lives of those leaving them - but all in all, there are converts everywhere and from every direction. The whole idea is quite amusing (yes, amusing) when you take in consideration how most churches and religious texts go on saying that their religion is the true religion (churches say so, the people most engaged into a given religion, because religions seldom speak from themselves), and the only one to grant you all the things you are supposed to want, namely true happiness and salvation - even if the path to happiness and salvations entails great sorrows, handling over your will and systematically destroying yourself.

Religious movements often prey on the weaknesses of people and tend to organize in ways to ensure power for themselves upon the people they woo. Religions themselves don't necessarily do that - many religions actually have a really good base message, and hold up beautiful values - but as these are overhauled by religious movements of all sorts, the message is used as a bait to gain adepts, only to them tie them down with threats to the whims of the group, person or whatever. In the little I've researched so far about the topic, many of these religious groups and texts (not meaning here the core text of the religion, when there's such, but those written after, allegedly analyzing and adding to the core texts) actually tend to go against the message of the religion itself, or carefully pace around and avoid interpretation that the religion would allow, but which would work against them.  I'll just give you a tiny example from my own religion.

In the New Testament there are several passages were Jesus actually go ranting against the religious groups and institutions of His time. For instance He went crazy (well, that's what He did. I'm tempted to say "berserk", but I1ll just leave it on "crazy") against the merchants that were selling stuff before a Synagoge. Then through the several books enclosed it becomes evident how he goes on against the precepts defined by the church, often by the Holy Book of His Religion and even goes on defying important personalities of it. His trashing of the pharisees are very well documented. Now, you take all that and there's a big chance that your interpretation of it would be "well, Jesus says fuck the church, fuck the holy books, you shouldn't bow and submit to any Earth power but just go on living by God's guidig, which isn't in any of these, but that's all about simply being good, being good to others and love the whole world". You may meditate on this, consider that you are reading about Jesus from a holy book and then re interpret the whole thing. For instance, Jesus said something like "Nobody goes to the Father if it is not though me". So what if that means that the church isn't the way to get to God, but that maybe Jesus was saying that your way to reach to God was... through yourself? I mean, He was in man-form, so he might have meant "Me" as in "self". If you follow that way of thinking, churches become futile, useless, and lose their power over the people, so you can wait until you die for a priest or a shepherd or a spiritual leader to tell you that church isn't the answer, let God speak to you. No, never! The answer you get is a condescending smile with "it's better to leave interpretation to the scholars". Probably if you press much on the subject they will silently wish for the times when people didn't know how to read and the Bible and the Mass was in Latin.

Now, of course they won't shoot themselves in the leg, nobody does that. Churches and religious groups and texts are like political parties - they tell you only what can engage you, not what you want or what you need to hear. However, maybe they should evaluate also the reasons wha people leave the religion. Are they leaving the religion because of the religion itself, or due to the impression the church, the fanatics and the religious texts make on them? From what I've heard from most people who have left religions, they have left because of the people, the churches and often the perceived hypocrisy of the religion.  How can a religion be hypocritical? Well, the base message could be, but most of the times hypocrisy comes from the people affiliated to it. They speak about loving everybody and then quickly jump into speeches of hate and how God hates gay people or interracial relationships and so on.

Yes, a religion could be not for you, but most people don't even get to know that much of a religion before abandoning it. Then, have you notice that most of the Generics (those who say to be of this or that religion but never attend to religious services, nor read any religious texts) tend to be people who remain rather long in the religion? They are less exposed to the often toxic effect of organized religious groups trying to bed their system of believes to fit their constraining, bittering structure that often builds on making you feel hated, undeserving and disgusting. For instance, as a Generic Christian you may live your days thinking "oh God loves me, but He sure rolls a couple of nasty things in my way". They pray when they really need to pray and make it with nothing but hope in their heart. If things are bad, they curse and that's all, if things get well, they are happy. They may or may not think of God at those moments, but in any case, they do seem themselves as deserving people and are sure that God loves them. Many Active Christians I know, spend their whole life thinking about sin. They see themselves as undeserving sinners, lower than the low and in the constant threat of God's hatred. One wrong word or thought, one wrong action and God will hate them forever and ever and all eternity. They pray often because that's what they must do, fill the arcs of the church with money buying all sorts of texts that reinforce in them the image of the undeserving mortal whose every single human quality makes them sinner and undesirable in the eyes of God, and prompts them to be more of what they are not.

For the Generic, God is a God of Love who loves them. For the Active, God is a God of Love who's quick to hate them, and they don't deserve His Love, and should fear Him and obey His every single whim. Whims God oddly don't communicate to them directly but through their religious leaders...

So yes, why is it that people is driven away from whatever religion? Unkept promises. The Religion promises Love and the Church gives them Hate. "Hate yourself, so you can be Loved". Religion promises them Balance, and the leaders give them Extremist Behavior. Religion promises Peace, and the institutions promote War.

You still wonder why people escape and loath religion?

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