I have always wondered why the devoutly religious, those who are more pious than thou, knowingly sin over and over again. Why is it that the preacher’s daughter, who has grown up in the house of the lord, often turns away to commit the very same acts that her father preached against? Why is it the Immam, who preaches the will and law of Al’ah, the first to break the 6th law that Al’ah had passed down to man; “Thou shall not murder”? Why do those who profess to know the face and the reasons behind the actions of God lie?
No matter how pious you are, no matter how many religious texts you have read, you cannot know the truth. Pieces of the puzzle improperly formed will never show you the picture that you seek. What may look like a sunrise with one piece, can also be mistaken for a sunset. Some will say that to know the piece represents a sun is to be a step closer to understanding the truth. Yet how many steps does it take to complete a race, if the distance is infinity?
The unknowing, have turned to the all knowing, because that all knowing gives them power. They preach that God’s plan is his own and who are we to question that plan or those who espouse it? We are told that God has grouped the forces that surround us into groups which are evil and good. Yet I wonder if there was nothing before God, no emotions, no matter, absolutely nothing, then God must have created evil.
Or is it that God is evil? In Genesis, creation is described as “When God began to create the heaven and the earth-the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water-God said “Let there be light”; and there was light.” Even in the Qu’ran creation is described as “Creator of the heavens and the earth from nothingness, He has only to say when he wills a thing: “Be,” and it is”. If you understand that in the Judaic and Christian religious texts that darkness is equated with evil, then either God was not the first being, or God is both evil and good, sense what is unknown by God cannot exist.
But what is evil? Does God see the difference in the taking of a baby’s life and that of a criminal? Rather is it humans who by trying to understand have created the graded morality that is so inept? Is it not us who have decided that stealing a loaf of bread so that one does not starve is morally right, while stealing that same loaf of bread for money is wrong? Nowhere in Gods’ law does He establish 1st degree murder and 3rd degree murder, only man has established the degree of one’s guilt.
While man will never understand God’s plan, we can understand man’s plan. All men and women are attracted to power. They may not be able to obtain that power, but they are never the less attracted to those who wield it. The ultimate power is God, and we all are attracted to that power. Yet we can never understand it.
It is not the morality that religions provide that I am railing against but rather the power wielded by men (and women) that their believers blindly follow. It is the fateful belief that man can understand God and through this understanding be judge and executioner of his neighbor. If religious texts provide you with comfort, that is good. If the religious texts help you face death with a peaceful acceptance, that is good. If religious texts help to guide your actions, that is good. But if man through the presupposed understanding of God leads you to harass, kill, or harm your fellow man, that is intolerable and is a misuse of religion.
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