Religion Revisited

Religion: (noun) the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods. 

The above is the result of a simple google search of the word ‘Religion’. It is categorized as a noun, which as we know, refers to any class of people, places or thing or to a particular one of these. These days, I cannot help, but ponder over the concept of religion and the more I think over it, the more I am amazed by human’s need for classification. Without further ado, let us explore the concept of religion. 

Once again, the views expressed below are my own and therefore, are subjective. Of course, you are welcome to disagree and voice out your opinion as well. 

 
I remember writing a post in this very blog back in December 2014 in support of the movie ‘PK’. It was an opinion piece on why I felt we need more movies like PK that took liberty to view at the body of religion from an objective viewpoint. As an audience, we are made to look at religion as an external  influence governing every action of our lives, rather something being we are born with. Although my support for the film was met with mixed responses from my friends and colleagues, I was glad there were many out like me, who connected with it. 

In the previous blog post, I ended criticizing religion as a whole, calling it as a bane to humanity. I ended the previous post concluding that the concept of religion is flawed. That is because its creator Man, not God, is flawed. 

 
Two years later, I try to examine my current thoughts on the topic and try to look at it from a different perspective than the one I had before. 

The first question popping in my head is what is the significance of religion in our day-to-day lives? What is the power of religion or its ability to influence the masses so deeply? Why religion does hold so much importance in a person’s life? 

 
Let’s begin from the very start – when we are born, religion is assigned to us, like our name, by our parents. It is not something we choose, but is rather chosen for us. As we grow up, we are inculcated with the values of our faith (which I feel are universal across all faiths). We are advised to be kind to everyone and love every one. We are told not to cheat, lie, steal, disobey and a lot of good values which turn and shape up our mindset on how we view the world initially. Religion teaches us to be good practitioners of our respective faiths.  

 
Growing up in a diverse neighbourhood, I had a more secular upbringing than a traditional one. Indeed, as kid, I often felt out of place among the kids at the church, who lived in the church colony, where there was a predominant Christian population and therefore, only exposed to people of other faiths in their schools or tuitions. 

Today, I feel very glad that I grew up in a chawl; for the exposure I got, not only from my society, but from my father too, who would tell us tales from the Mahabharata and Ramayana along with the Biblical tales. I felt the same joy that I felt in Christmas, during Ganesh Chaturthi and Eid. 

 
I grew up respecting every person for who they are, instead of the label of religion attached by their parents to them when they were born. 

 
Cut to 2017. Thanks to the boom in technology and the rapid development of social media, every person is now empowered with the ability to voice out their opinion. One would think that the reduction of physical constraints would have enabled the human race to advance even further in the realms of development and reach for the stars. Instead, we choose to be divided by the very thing that should have helped us reduce our differences – religious views. 

Before I delve into the damage caused by religious views, I must offer an explanation as to what causes a person to develop different religious views.

 
There is an amazing chapter written by the author Dan Brown in his book ‘The Lost Symbol’, where the protagonist, Professor Robert Langdon is discussing with his students how religious iconography of a particular religion can easily be misunderstood by a person not following the same religion. This is on point and I tip my imaginary hat to Brown for making this observation. Indeed, I can never make a non-christian people understand why a thin white wafer held over a chalice filled with wine is called the ‘body and blood of Christ'. Symbolic imagery like this is common in all religion.  Along with iconography, the practices too may make no sense to others. Can a non-Muslim person come to terms with the slaughter of goats during Bakri Eid? Or non-Hindus understanding what it feels like standing in front of an idol and worshipping it so devoutly?  

 
The point I am trying to make here is that we must try to respect every belief the other person practices, despite us not able to digest the concept behind it. We look at everything from our limited spectrum of knowledge that may have been fed to us since childhood or learnt over by our experiences as we grow up. 

 
Case in point – below is a screenshot I took from a Facebook thread of this guy’s opinion on Christanity: 

This person had made this comment on a post where it was pointed out how some Christians were treating water dripping from a crucifix of Jesus as holy water, which in reality, turned out to be water leaking from a pipe. 

Such kind of statements are rampant everywhere. Be it anyone – Hindus, Muslims, Christians – they all feel the need to defend their religion from what they perceive as attacks from other groups. I see and read posts where people advocating and marketing their religion as the best. I have seen Christians rising to defend their faith against charges of conversions, conveniently forgetting to address the issues of priest-child abuse among the clergy. I have seen Hindus defending their right to have a temple built in Ayodhya for it being the birthplace of Lord Ram, conveniently forgetting the act of destroying a religious structure and the riots that followed. I have seen Muslims defending their faith, advertising it as a peace and loving religion, conveniently forgetting to address the glaring problem of continuous violence in predominant Muslim countries.

So, does religion an indeed a bane of humanity? Religion, like every other thing in this universe, has two sides – the good and the bad. Too often, we tend to forget the acts of charity committed by people.

When a hungry person is fed, he/she does not ask which religion you follow before accepting the food gratefully. When we strike up a friendship with a person at work or school, we do not ask them what religion they follow before we decide to be friends with them. When you stand at the top of a mountain and admire the beauty of nature, we do not question which God has created this beautiful world.

We have experienced miracles every now and then. I feel the touch of the divine, when I visited the temple of Mata Vaishnaodevi in Katra. I have seen miracles, when I have seen people walking back from the mosque outside my chawl, after getting the blessings of the imam for curing their fever. I have seen parents being grateful for their kids getting educated at a school run by missionaries for free.

The way I see it – Religion is an integral part of our lives, no doubt about that. But it does not have to be either. The buck stops with us; the choices we make. It is our lives and we should choose how we want to live, rather than following what has been dictated to us our whole lives. Rather than sticking and reading the same Holy book for a lifetime, one should make an effort to read and understand about other faiths and try to understand what drives a person following Jesus or Allah or Shiva or Mahavir. We should focus our energies on becoming humans and dedicating to the cause of humanity; on how society as a whole can move up and beyond these differences, rather than defending our religions and Gods.

After all, the one who created this Universe can choose to defend itself, instead of asking for humans to do so.