Five Steps Towards Losing My Religion

They say time changes the way you think and perceive things. But in my case, my feelings and two-cent opinion regarding certain things have surprisingly not changed. Religion, for instance: my opinion on this subject is the same as it used to be, say, half a decade back. I’d written the following piece a good many years back for a weekly thing I was working for back then. Thought I’d share it with you today.


LOSING MY RELIGION
When REM sang this song, they got the Grammy. If I repeat the same phrase in the wrong place, at the wrong time, I might get ostracised. Why? Because religion is larger than life. Larger than you and me. Larger than anyone. Hell, it’s even larger than god!

But as I have a knack for getting into trouble for speaking my mind, I’ll take the risk again - I lost my religion. I just dropped it because it just didn’t make sense to me. It just didn’t! When? I don’t know. It was not like I woke up one fine day and realised that I didn’t like religion anymore. It was rather a gradual process… the process towards losing my religion.

Before any misconception breeds, let me affirm here that I am not an atheist. And no, I don’t have any problem with god. It’s the religion part that irks me. Now, I come from a religious family [whatever that means] and my father would roll in his grave if he knew that I would be writing this piece. In fact, there was so much religion everywhere while I was growing up that it made me sick. Religion was shoved down my throat to the extent that I choked.

So what’s wrong with that? Nothing much actually, but this forced religion just took away my chance to find god on my own and build up a rapport with him/her. Since there are so many gods and goddesses in our land to choose from, I could at least have enjoyed the freedom to choose the one I wanted to worship. Or invented one for that matter! But, no, I was dragged by my collar and told that this particular deity was the one I was supposed to revere. There goes my free will! Step one towards losing my religion.

Okay, Mr God looked decent enough [at least in the crafted images; never got the chance to meet him personally!] and appeared pretty harmless. But then again I was told that I was supposed to fear him! Now why the hell is that required? Is this some sort of tyranny? When do we have to fear someone superior? Point A - when we are in the wrong. Point B - when the superior finds us too inferior that he wouldn’t mind stubbing out our puny existence.

Let’s analyse Point A. Now despite all our vices, we can’t be in the wrong 24/7, right? If so, what is the need for this perpetual fear? Is being born a sin [like some say] and we have to be forever sorry for our existence? Or is it some kind of a feed-on-fear theory crafted by a handful of people for their interests?

Point B – If god doesn’t care a fig about us, why should we worship such a bighead? I think god equates love; so from where did this ‘fearing’ part creep in? Beats me! Maybe our folks haven’t read their scriptures right coz from what they tell me, this grand old man sounds more like a dictator to me, the one who needs fear to keep people under subjugation, than a loving Father. If god is a bigot, I don’t want to join the party. If he is not, then the religious heads are painting a totally wrong picture of him and I don’t want to buy that. Step two towards losing my religion.

Okay now, folks admit that god is love and religion is all about loving and sharing. So then, show me love. Yeah, just show me where is it? Does loving a certain god [or is it religion?] mean wiping out other religions? Is that what love means – waging a ‘holy’ war? And what are we sharing – hate, greed and fanaticism? Does religion mean another Gujarat? Or does it mean Talibanisation?

Don’t you think that religion has been [mis]used by the politicians and some god-men one time too many for their vested interests? So much so that religion has been rendered a dirty word. It has been politicised; it has been turned into a dirty game. And poor ol’ god has been left in the corner to nurse his own wounds. Step three towards losing my religion.

Okay now, let’s spare these crooks for a while and look within the institution of religion itself. What do you see? Love, devotion, feeling of oneness? Bullshit! I see a race for one up-manship, I see hypocrisy, I see double standards, divisions and discords, I see lust for power and money, I see everything else apart from love and god. Maybe god too must have had too much of this and took the last bus out of here! And I don’t blame him. Step four towards losing my religion.

And then I observed that people believe bribery to be a way of life and even god could be bought! If you grease god’s palms with sacrifices, gifts and ‘donations’, the gates of heaven will be wide open for you even if you butcher half the mankind on earth. If they think god is the creator, the protector and the giver of all things good, how can human beings ever dream of winning his favour by donating some cash to his coffers? Do they really think that god can be bought? Who gave them the idea in the first place and why? I don’t think I need to elaborate on this! Step five towards losing my religion.

“If there is a god, we must see him; if there’s a soul, we must feel it; otherwise it is better to be an atheist than to be a hypocrite,” thus spake Swami Vivekanand. Though I admit I haven’t seen god, anything good, no matter how small it is, reaffirms my faith that there is someone out there watching over us. There has to be one; otherwise we wouldn’t be here in the first place!

However, religion has long stopped serving its purpose. It has remained nothing but an old worn out cloak that is being dragged around to serve anything but god. Besides, I don’t think god is so publicity crazy that he would need religion to create hype around himself. It makes me sick to think that we have gone down so low to the extent that even god is used and abused for power.

I don’t regret losing my religion and I guess god wouldn’t mind it too. We both got better things to do!