Youtube: The Religion Factor
There is something to be said for the increased level of morality that religious training inspires in people. For some, however, the motivation to do good is often driven by fear of the consequences for doing otherwise. For centuries, the church has used the fires of hell as a means of keeping their flocks on the straight and narrow. On our journey home, the time comes when we take a deeper look at the ideas we’ve been handed.
It should come as no surprise that Jesus had a different take on God and the notion of sin and punishment. God does not react to human behavior, good or bad. “… for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). This statement is a clear contradiction to religion’s depiction of a capricious God. Our journey home begins with a healthy understanding of God. As Mark Twain pointed out, “It’s not what we don’t know that gets us in trouble. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.”
While our understanding and attitude toward God can change many times, God is changeless. The purpose of meditation is to sensitize the mind to the point where we can observe and experience the subtle presence of God as the living energy from which our being rises. St. Frances of Assisi suggested this when he wrote, “What you are looking for is what is looking.” Such direct exposure not only clarifies our understanding of God, it also sets us on the highest moral path.
We are under no obligation to settle for depictions of God filtered through religious institutions and professionals. These only pass on ideas that have been handed to them through so many generations that they treat them as truth and probably believe them to be so.
To love the lord your God is to seek direct revelation from within the “inner room” of your own being. It is up to each one of us to separate truth from fiction, to come to know our own indwelling lord as the advocate and comforter that is with us always.