Dated 2-March-2005

Religion seems not to be working in modern society. The reason this may be so is that religion is conforming to modern society. I don’t mean to say that the moral values of religion are changing, but that religion no longer requires people to think. Religion used to be about meditation and using the word of god as a guide to the right answer “think about your sins”. Now it’s about how fast you get through your “Hail Mary’s” and the tithing bowl. It’s about taking the words in the bible and thinking they are FACT and not just the writings of MEN and used to guide you to the right action.

In this world of mass media and thirty-second information clips, God has become a sound bite. Prayer is something you repeat like a mockingbird amongst the living dead of Sunday service. Understanding is no longer thinking but accepting what the man on the pulpit is saying.

Religion has gone the way of the nation with Jesus-burgers and orders of Mc-Holy-Spirit fries, super-sized for a first-class ticket to heaven for those who can afford it. Is this trend, probably an old one, what caused the 60’s counter revolutionaries to turn to eastern religions? These religions are more firmly based on meditation and turning inward for answers. What I find interesting, is that in my reading, the early people of these movements, Buddhism in particular, seem to have used the eastern schools as ways of reconnecting and reaffirming their faith in their “original” religions. The each pretty much attribute this to the mediation practice in the eastern schools.

It is just interesting to me that there seems to be a social pandemic of ignorance, a lack of thinking. This pandemic is even present in the religious institutions of our society. I know that in the past not every person stood up to debate religion and politics, but I think more people did, and even more people cared. The self-instituted ignorance of this society seems to be married to indifference. In the past, even the common person would get riled over something he thought of as unfair. Now we sit calmly in our houses and don’t care as long as the epicenter of trouble is far enough away from our bank accounts and big screen TV’s.

Where is the cause and effect of all this is, I don’t know. How to fix it, I couldn’t begin to guess, except with myself. Only I can make me think. Only I can keep myself informed. Only I can get involved in the issues about which I care. Only I can make me care about those issues to begin with. Only I can sit, think and try to feel a connection with something larger than myself. Any mindless drone can sit in a pew and blindly accepting the opinions of the person up front and call it faith. True faith is hearing the words, questioning them deeply, and still believing. Faith is internal, sitting in the realm of thought.