Forsaking the Heavens

The relationship between spirituality and religion is a funny thing, at least for me. I was raised a God loving, Pope fearing, confession making little Catholic. And Catholic is probably what I will call myself to my dying day but for reasons much different than what is to be expected. I've loathed every minute I've spent at mass, practically cried from boredom during Wednesday night religion classes, and refused to go through the process of confirmation not so much as a right of independence but because I have fundamental objections about defining my own relationship with God through a religion that is so secularly motivated and divergent from its original intentions.

Still I believe the Roman Catholic faith to be truest to its original form and if I were forced to choose say a church to be married in, you could bet your own faith that it'd be in a Cathedral. Really though all that you hear in a church is propaganda (a word derived from the phrase "propagating the faith" subsequently coined by the Catholic church itself). When you attend mass you are subjecting yourself to someone else's explanation of their own faith. They reveal to you their relationship to God in hopes that with their guidance you will do the same. I imagine for a lot of people that if you have some high and mighty ordained priest telling you what to think and how to relate to God it saves you a lot of time and trouble.

I for one think spirituality goes far beyond an hour a week spent sitting on some terribly uncomfortable bench. But for most people, it's just that. I am by no means a theologist or an expert of any kind but through a lot of thinking and the exercise of common sense I've come to my own conclusions about not only the role of religion but also the advent of the Bible and similar texts. Heck, I even have qualms about the idea of an actual God. This is not to mean that I would encourage each and every person to forsake the idea of modern religion, just think about what makes sense to you. Everyone has their own individual ideal of God, heaven, hell, etc and I think it is this divergence alone that makes me believe spirituality is entirely within the individual.

At the time religious followings were formed, society as a whole needed guidance and a reason to adopt and defend morality. A group of brilliant and likely enlightened men set out to weave a set of stories and propagate their own faith in hopes that it would inspire and motivate society as whole. They were largely successful thanks to their collective genius. To say they had a mandate from God is up to your own discretion and to your own beliefs of what the entity of God is. I for one believe that their own idea of God enabled them with the faith and power to spread their good will.

But then again, I'm just little old me. I don't know a whole lot about anything but I like to pretend that I am wise and all of those other good things. Call me a bad Catholic but at least I don't support killing innocent babies.