I told my mother on phone that I am having several issues in school like every normal human being does. At that point, I felt like the whole challenges of life is being stuck in a bag and hung on my shoulders. I just needed someone to talk to. Someone to listen and tell me it's a fleeting phase. Someone to give me a cup of smile, but mum disappointed. She shouted on me and said I was having these normal issues because I haven't called the pastor for long to inquire about his wellbeing. She thinks God is punishing me with problems for neglecting His "son" — I am not worthy to be God's son also, that was her implication.
I felt my heart getting ripped off in bits with a blunt razor blade, so much so that begging death to kiss me once and for all would have been my best choice. I was awestruck by her definition of being human, better out, a Christian human. To her, Christians shouldn't face problems because they're something that never exists — Perfection. Yes, even nature in its glory still bleeds with pain sometimes. She cursed me on phone for being just human — for having problems. Much more like shouting at a dog for barking when threatened. It was a moment of ignorance hanging on the air; an ignorance that has been painted with the brightest colors since one's birth to look like God himself. It is religion, the greatest enemy of mankind.
We all have that one part of our lives that doesn't conform to what we were made to believe. It isn't because we are bad people, it is because human beings are very complex that rules can only bring orderliness but can't control intricacies. We have questions that the best answer would have been to just let it be; but because religion is omniscient, we bask in the euphoria of its knowledge which only complicates things. We wander in sincere thoughts but always afraid to voice it for the fear of not being called a miscreant. We have become a wardrobe of dark secrets.
People get possessed by demons. People receive miracles. Some are beautiful, some are ugly. Some are physically and mentally fit, some are deformed. Everything has its opposite but love unites us all. These things are questions that has no answer most times but we seek to find them. Maybe, just maybe we would become perfect creatures; getting what we want whenever we want it and how we want it. But that is only an illusion of the mind. One can never have everything. These and more we seek to find out. Most importantly, we want to control the unknown — what happens after death. For the fear of death and what happens after, which still remains a mystery to the brightest of us all. So we dressed religion in all shades of perfection with the idea that God is behind everything, good and evil. He either allows it or permits it. He is just there to watch everything happen and have fun watching it.
The problem with religion is that we have saddled it with so much responsibility that it could carry. Religion is meant to bring us closer to God, perhaps a power that unites us all in our individual differences. Instead, we move further apart. The Christians don't walk with Muslims and every other religion or belief systems that doesn't agree with their doctrine and vice versa. Isn't that selfishness? Or No! Maybe selfishness is not a sin in this context. It is a way of life.
We do things because we are scared of what happens to our bodies after death. It is still about us, it is always about us and what we stand to gain in the end, still selfishness. We pray, praise, fight, deny our needs, refute logic and blindly walk into the ocean of life without knowing how to swim because our belief is the ultimate. Every other thing is flexible except belief. All because, we, us, me, I, want to have happiness in the end. On a bid not to seem greedy or selfish, I'd convert you so you would still behave like me before I could love you; in a world where variety is a rainbow — beautiful to the eyes.
I believe there is a God who made all things. Atheists might argue, agnostics might doubt, other belief systems would believe and the human mind will see the truth differently. But the reality is laced in time zero, when time never knew time enough to time the timings of time. There is a magic in energy which doesn't explain how matter and antimatter tends to unite the universe, maybe it is God in them who doesn't want to be explained. Perhaps, showing us a sign of what his mind for creation is that we don't understand. Maybe directing us to a force that unites us all.
The only true power in the universe that makes you realize that something order than yourself is real and worth dying for — Love. Maybe God is love that seats in our soul, powerful enough to bond every single creature into one community if we let it. The animals, the plants, the seas, the lands, culture, race, gender, all in harmony. Maybe that is why we have an interrelationship between them, a symbiosis that can never be explained, but religion doesn't teach that.
Religion finds what is wrong and magnify it above the right, programming our minds for the bad. Making it easier to hate than to love, to take than to give, and to be selfish above all things. It makes us love today and hate when we're hurt, forgetting that pain is a reality we must live with to truly understand love and life.
Religion makes us think that we are lazy. We never do things right. We always have to keep on working to perfection. At the same time, to keep on acknowledging we are foolish without it.
Religion makes us overlook the little things that matter, dismissing the fact that love is infinitesimal just like photons, yet very powerful.
Religion makes us strangers to ourselves. It tells us "No! If you don't look like me, then you're not you and you shouldn't exist outside me".
How we find it easy to make another feel bad when "we're" hurt?
How we see someone born different as an alien monster because he doesn't look like "us"?
How we show acts of love because "we" want to get something back? Something better directly or indirectly.
How we do all the right things we do because we want to secure "our" death and after death?
It is all about us! It is all about our desires. It is all about our wants that are insatiable.
Because religion gives us a hope to our wrong fantasies, we believe it and throw God into the dustbin of heresy.
We believe religion so much that we live a lie while staring at the truth; just like vampires denying the sweet taste of blood.
Religion makes us all hypocrites who know the truth but doesn't wanna accept it. We become monsters that are afraid to die but regret to live.
Religion stole us and our identity. It stole our truth and our innocence. It kept God in a dungeon and made us savour our fantasies and wishes.
Religion is a tyrant! An enemy of God and chameleon of reality. It threatens us with a lifetime of torment if we choose to ask questions. Even when asking questions and having an accurate knowledge makes one free to love on spree.
Religion tells us it loves us but makes us fear it, more like get afraid of it because we can't be our true selves in its presence. Yet, it still tells us that perfect love casts out fear.
The problem with religion is selfishness and fear of freedom to explore life and love without limits.
©Achi Gp Nuel.
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