A dilemna.

A friend of mine made a jab at me the other day because of my facebook religious view "Open-minded Christian." Her interpretation? "That just means you don't go to church." After some thought, it turns out she was right, but not in the way she meant.

I've been pondering why I don't go to church anymore. Is it because, like so many people, when the parental obligation was removed, my apathy shone through? Doubtful. I have a pretty rational view of the world, and as such can realize when my own beliefs are irrational. My beliefs are real beliefs, though many would argue otherwise. And it's not a reaction to the excesses of the faith, for I've never been able to fault the wisdom of one person for the mistakes of many. This said, there is a genuine balking feeling in me at the thought of going to church, and it's made me curious as to why that feeling exists. It was a passage from James Baldwin's "The Fire Next Time" that shed light on my situation:

"It is not too much to say that whoever wishes to become a truly moral human being (and let us not ask whether or not this is possible; I think we must believe
that it is possible) must first divorce himself from all the prohibitions, crimes, and hypocrisies of the Christian church. If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of him."

All organized religions are inherently evil. This may not be their intention, but evil exists because of their actions nonetheless. Churches exist to interpret the philosophy of a man. (I'm speaking in general terms, not just of the Christian religion.) If these organizations existed to facilitate a free flow of ideas over the given philosophy--a truly free flow--then perhaps that evilness would be mitigated. But even the most benevolent church exists to preach, that is to spread a specific interpretation of a philosophy. In essence they are asking (and more often demanding) a capitulation of free thought to accept the one interpretation. In exchange, you are offered safety in the next life--even though in every religion that safety is already freely offered.

When free thought is surrendered, man no longer truly has a free will--he no longer has that which defines humanity. Anything that causes man to surrender his very essence can only be evil, even if the intentions are well-meaning. Worshiping a deity or following a philosophy is itself an exercise of free will. In order for a religion, that is a way to worship, to be truly good it must divorce itself from organized interpretation. Only then will the control, the blindness, the violence, the fear, that has come with every single religion, whether the monotheistic Christianity, the pluralistic Hinduism, or the self-deitization of the modern Buddhism. If not, if the notion of God is used to perpetrate fear and the denial of self, then God ceases to be valid, and what Descartes inadvertantly started, and Nietzsche perpetuated will be completed by the very organizations that claim to serve that which it is destroying.

If God undeniably exists, then religions are dutifully bound to reject the confines which they themselves have created. Only be removing the ideological confines that each ones places on the interpretation of their respective philosophies, and promoting a free exchange of, at times, conflicting messages, can their proverbial souls be saved.