I disagree. I got thinking lately (something I tend to do a lot), and I have arrived at the conclusion that religion makes people behave worse.
Want to know why? I assume if you have read this far that you do!
In our justice system, if you commit a crime, you go to jail or serve some other penalty if you are found guilty. Just imagine if there was a person assigned to be your "whipping boy". If you commit a crime, your whipping boy would take the punishment. You could do anything you wanted if you knew someone else would take the fall for you!
But that's not how it works, is it? If you commit the crime, you must pay the time!
Believers view Jesus as their whipping boy. He will take the heat for all your sins and you get off scott free. No effort is required (by many religions). All you must do is accept Jesus and he takes everything away. There is no personal accountability.
Therefore, if a husband cheats on his wife, Jesus can take the punishment. If I covet my neighbor's bike and I steal it, Jesus has me covered.
Religion actually promotes the idea of a "free pass". Some of the most evil things that have been done to other people have been done by religious people.
I am acquainted with a "good" Mormon family. They attend their meetings and appear to be model citizens. However, the mother of the wife in this family has been diagnosed with cancer and this "good" Mormon couple isolated her from the world, refused to give her her cancer-treatment meds, gained access to her money, and neglected her in the hopes that she would die and that they could collect the life insurance money. She got out of this bad situation by calling a friend for help, and this friend had to drive from Utah to California to get her out of there.
Now I am not saying this couple did this because they are Mormons. But I am saying that they are pretty strong hypocrites! They are basically trying to murder their mother for money, all the while bearing their testimonies about how righteous they are.
I propose that the real god that people in this country worship is the almighty dollar!
Religion does not make people good and non-religion does not make people bad. Good and bad come from within each of us. I believe that if religion stopped teaching people that they get a free pass, we would probably see crime rates (and other problems in our society) lessen.
I have no proof of this. It's just my thoughts. It would be interesting to see.
6 comments:
I don't agree with this one. I've seen more genuinely good religious people than bad ones, although that may be due to the fact that I don't typically associate myself with "bad" people. But, you wouldn't be the first to see it this way. This post reminds me of the movie "Dogma". The story line is just that: a couple of fallen angels that commit as many sins as possible before being "cleaned" and able to return to heaven.
I didn't mean to imply that I thought religion makes all people bad. It doesn't. I agree completely that there are many genuinely good religious people who take Jesus' council to love their enemies, do good to those who use you, etc. There might just be a few of the really bad ones, but those few are the ones that make it difficult on everyone else in our society.
So I was flipping through the next blog roulette and almost jumped past this one too until your caption caught me. I grew up Seventh Day Adventist and am now agnostic, I've heard the phrase 'Jesus died for your sins' more than I could possibly count and I have never thought about religion that way.
I think that your interpretation makes a lot of sense. I imagine most people love the idea of being able to do whatever they want, but very few would like the idea of having a whipping boy. It would take a lot to subject someone to punishment for your actions, and the guilt would be overwhelming. But when its Jesus, there is no such limitation. Jesus is an incredibly easy scapegoat and excuse to fall back on while at the same time maintaining a 'good religious life'.
I may be posting about religion soon and this has inspired several ideas of my own. You've shown a very good point and I'm glad that I stuck around long enough to read your blog's caption.
Congratulations, Smartass, you are my 100th follower! So glad you stumbled upon my blog!
Being a former Seventh Day Adventist, what is their general attitude about people who leave the church? I ask because I have recently become acquainted with another former SDA, and her experience is one of rejection and shunning. Is that normal?
Do me a favor will you? When you write your post on religion, let me know and I'll stop by and leave my two cents.
I'll make sure to let you know, and I'm a little pressed for time so I'll just include all that in the post.
Hello Everyone! First time here. One of my ex-Mo brothers and I discuss this topic often. We know of an active Mormon family member and others who have built their empires via theft, siphoning funds, and other dirty biz practices. They are HPs etc... Reading the ex-Morg blogs has shown this to be quite the norm in the Church. We know alot of Mormons who are NOT this way as well.
It is great to be here and read 411's and others' takes on the Morg.
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