What Religion Should We Be?
The Million Dollar Question! In the U.S. particularly, religion is rapidly changing face. It seems that Protestants are rapidly becoming a minority, while the unaffiliated is the growing percentage. The catholic church has a shortage of priests, and the only thing that is keeping the Catholic Church numbers from rapidly declining is the amount of immigrants that are coming in, mostly from Latin America.
These are the findings of a groundbreaking study of the American religious landscape, conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and public life. Nearly half of the American public are saying that they are a different religion than they were as a kid. This study is based on a survey of nearly 35,000 Americans age 18 and over. Protestants have been on the decline since the 1980’s, when 2/3 of the population claimed to be just that.
Why do you think this is? Are we tired of hearing the threats of eternal damnation if we don’t live right? Are we tired of the wars fought over who’s God is right and who’s is wrong? Or are people realizing that looking for God outside of themselves is a dead end street?
Lets digress a bit and consider religion from primitive times. Primitive man feared the moon and the stars, not to mention the sun. They had fear of the snow capped mountains and the rushing streams that often would overflow and cause ravage to their land. They were in awe of the birds abilities to fly, and revered the mighty elephants and lions.
This progressed from fear to awe of the great wonders of the world, and then developed into worship. This was the beginnings of nature worship or animism. Further progressing beliefs evolved into spirit beings inhabiting the heavens and earth, people feared curses from the spirits unless they worshiped them and paid homage.
This developed into pantheism, where believers regarded everything in the Universe as God, then came a primitive form of monotheism, that proclaimed that one and only one God existed and presided over all things. Religion developed because of a fear of death, people wanted a hope that when our physical bodies died, that there was something else.
The Buddha first taught that you can only depend on yourself, if we depend on others, and then they forsake us, we are at a loss. The Buddha taught that there is nothing other than the Law, namely the truth, and that we must not depend absolutely on others. (Others meaning gods or beings that are considered to exist outside of ourselves)
“Make the self your light, make the Law your light”. This is the most valuable of all the innumerable teachings concerning human life and religion. Through this we understand that we depend on the Law, which exists both within and outside of ourselves. It is this truth that permeates the entire universe. Our body is produced by this truth and is caused to live by it, our mind is produced by this truth and is caused to work by it.
Everything is produced from this truth and caused to live by it, the heavens, earth, plants, birds and beasts. If we are in harmony with all that is around us, no suffering or worry can trouble us. This is the very definition of true peace of mind. Our consciousness of being charged by the great universal life (Great truth), gives us the hope and courage so that we may advance On The Path and carry out our daily life and activities for the benefit of others in the world. Take Care my friends!
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
This provokes thought. We certainly have many choices. The media coverage of the release of the Gospel of Judas reveals many more kinds of Christianity originally existed than those most common now. Modern authors like Neale Donald Walsch sense that a new kind of spirituality is evolving to cause us to rethink the purpose and practice of all religions. Walsh’s experience, documented in the Conversations with God Series and other books, reveal the idea that God wants nothing from us. We only begin to figure this out as we learn to reconnect with self and work through all our earthly conditioning which distracts us from the “truth.”