Oh what a giant can of worms this topic opens! Now what angle to come at this from?
I started going to a little christian church when I was in 2nd grade. We had moved to our family farm, having cleared acreage and bought a single-wide trailer to live in while we built our house. Going to church was a symbol of our settling into this new farm community. My mother went to church as a child and wanted her children to be raised similarly.
This particular chapel wasn't for us when they began to split, some following the pastor who left to shepherd others. I was too young to understand why he left, but I did understand snobs and I felt some of the people there thought they knew better than others. I was upset about leaving. That was the church where I learned about Jesus and where I gave my heart to him.
The new church was friendly and I soon wanted to go to Sunday school with my peers. I had the most wonderful high school sunday school teacher and my sophomore year brought me to youth group with a new leader who was also fantastic. I did a study on Revelation, underlined and highlighted my Bible, and switched to Christian music, which I still commit to to this day.
My personal experiences shaped me into who I am today and religion plays a huge role in my makeup. Especially the teachings of Jesus who preaches and leads by an example of love.
Is religion tearing the world apart? Yep. There's been spiritual warfare since the fall of an angel, and human warfare since one tribe saw another from a distance. Make that, since one brother became jealous of the other.
Who is right? Only God knows. If you don't believe in Him, then no one knows.
Do you have to pick a side? Even agnosticism is a side.
Can't we all just get along? We are all sinful, with pride and jealousy, so um, as humans, no, we can't.
Can we try? Yep, but it requires daily discipline to keep our minds and bodies in check. Even best friends fight sometimes. Feelings get hurt, even between lovers. And if lovers can spat, then think about whole countries trying to get along with each other!
So is it futile to love? No, love is the only way to overcome our sinful natures, always wanting to pick fights. Love is the only way we ever get any happiness. Kindness comes from love. Kindness, even its most basic form, tolerance, or self-restraint even, cannot come from hate. If we lack even that, we will kill ourselves.
So my view of religion is basically to love. Were it not for my church, my parents, and my own study, I'd be loveless.
Someone who says it better: Alexys Fairfield (link to a post)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. anyway, because it was all I knew. Self-restraint comes from self-love.
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