And No Religion Too

John Lennon's song "Imagine" tends to be played after major world events including this years terrorist shootings in Paris.

So imagine for a moment that no religion existed in the world.  I define religion not as a belief in God, but belief that one must follow a certain set of rules or beliefs to please God or earn your reward.

So imagine a world where spirituality was individual; one could believe in God or not, Gods and Goddesses or not, and it didn't matter what name we called the creator of the universe.  There would be no bible, no Quran, no Torah telling us what to believe.  We'd all admit that none of us have the slightest idea how we came to be and what/if there was a life after this one.

And perhaps most importantly, there would be no need to hate others who had a slightly different set of beliefs from you.

When I was a young adult, I learned in school that the Ku Klux Klan originally targeted Jews, blacks and Catholics.  As I pondered that on the school bus ride home, I realized that if I had been born just 40 years earlier I might have been subject to cross burnings in my yard or worse.  That moment was a defining one for me.  Like others brought up in the Catholic faith, I was taught that ours was the one true religion, superior to all others.  I never imagined that we would be persecuted simply because our membership dues went to the Catholic church.

What's happening in the world today is nothing new at all.  The victims of the persecution just rotate, waiting their turn.  The Salem witch trials, the Catholic Inquisition, the Holocaust, the Crusades; all are historical titles given to times in our past where religion inspired torture and mass killings.

If we could get over the fear of death, perhaps religion wouldn't take such a central point in our lives.  Because in the end, hate is fear, isn't it?  The hate speech in the news these days has nothing to do with facts, but fear.  And if we spend our lives in fear, what kind of life is that?