Filed under: Spirituality & Religion | Tags: Bible Thumper, Ethics, Religion
I read a quote some time ago that really hit me very deeply….
It goes something like….
“If there were no religion, good people would do good things and bad people would do bad things.
But, it is religion that makes good people do bad things.”
I’ve personally witnessed this to be true in my own behaviour in the past….when I was a Bible Thumper…I definitely was guilty of this many times….and it is a powerful indictment of organized religion generally. I recently saw a religious person…at the work place….a person in a position of leadership at the workplace….physically forcing a co-religionist…to follow some particular rule of their religion….a rule that he chose to enforce physically. It was something that deeply disturbed me…of course it says alot about how I still judge myself for my own behaviour in the past….and try to turn my own karma is some way…I guess…by shining the light on it in these days. My contacts in both the Christian and Muslim worlds bare witness to the way that people will clique together in the work place and push each other to be fully observant to their faith in all ways publicly….being ever mindful of the P.R. aspects to living out the faith. Image has been and continues to be considered so overly important that it continues to trump the substance….it says….” I really don’t care what you do in your private life….but in public you have to appear to follow all of the rules so that we will all look “good” to those that we would try to convert. People can claim all that they want to be “peaceful” people….but their actions will always speak louder than their words.
+ Robyn Graves +
