Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
This website is all about improving your life and growing as a person, so it was inevitable that I was going to write about religion. In this article, I’m going to explain why exactly I dislike religion and choose to spend my weekends on more productive pursuits.
This article is about every religion – I don’t single out Christianity, Islam, Judaism, or Hinduism. There are differences between them, of course, but they have the same effect. And that effect is wasting your time.
1. You’re doing the same thing week after week after week.
I would be more inclined to enjoy church (or synagogue, or the mosque, etc.) if it was actually interesting. I grew up going to Baptist churches and they were all the same. Even churches in other countries are carbon copies of each other.
In the Christian tradition, for example, people get together to sing the same dozen songs they sing every week, pray the exact same prayer “for the church, for [so-and-so] who is in the hospital, and for the nation to stop electing Democrats because America is going to Hell,” and to listen to the preacher deliver a drawn-out sermon that most people don’t actually pay attention to.
In the mosque, the Imam leads the congregation in prayer (even though the prayers all come from the Qur’an and the Hadith). Muslims are required to pray five times a day already, so why do they need a religious authority to help them out once a week?
I don’t have a problem with spirituality, but mainstream religions are suffocating the positive aspects of faith under a blanket of stagnation and boredom. When I was younger and my mother forced me to go to church, I spent every Saturday night planning out how to pass the time in church the next day. My plans ranged from painting my mp3 player headphones to match my skin and clothing so I could rock out to Jimi Hendrix to volunteering to handle the sound system so I could play computer games in the church sound booth.
That last one was a bad idea – apparently, the sound booth computer was hooked into the church speaker system, so suddenly everyone in the auditorium was deafened by my game of Frogger.
You have better things to do on your weekend that repeat the same monotonous process that you’ve been doing for years. If you’re seeking true spiritual growth, it won’t come from banal traditions.
2. Church is the worst place to find God.
I don’t understand why people choose to worship an almighty creator in a building that they constructed themselves. If you truly want to give respect to an omnipotent God, worship him in a place that he built!
There is a church just outside of Sydney, Australia, that I completely love. It’s called the Maroubra Surfers Church and it uses surfing to build a sense of community and worship. If there was something like that around my house, I would consider visiting.
I’m a fairly spiritual person, but I feel completely restless and uncomfortable inside a religious building. When I contemplate the divine, I do it in the woods, on the side of a cliff. When I want to experience the power of the universe, I visit the ocean or look through a telescope.
If there is a god (or at least some cosmic force), you won’t find him in your sterilized churches and mosques – connect with him through action, not through abstract discussions under fluorescent lights and an architecturally-designed steeple.
I would guess that most people who have some sort of spiritual moment or “communion with God” don’t experience them in a church or a mosque. I certainly haven’t.
Skip church and go explore the world that your god created for you.
3. God doesn’t operate on Sunday mornings only.
Whenever I find something awesome to do on a Sunday morning, I don’t even ask some of my more religiously devout friends. “Can we do it in the afternoon? I have church.”
I don’t want to be insensitive, but no. We can’t always do it in the afternoon. Sometimes things are only possible on Sunday mornings (I once had a SCUBA diving class that started at 10 a.m. on Sundays). Sure, I could have found one at a different time, but I would have had to wait a couple months and I wasn’t willing to do that.
Sometimes things are only available during your scheduled time of worship. I’m not sure why people feel so compelled to go to church that they give up incredible opportunities for personal exploration and development.
If you’re concerned with spending time with God, then schedule a time before you go to bed or early in the morning for him. If you truly believe in an omnipresent god, then you can spend time with him outside of 9 to 12 on a Sunday morning.
If you’re afraid of being condemned from the others in your religious community, then you need to stop caring so much about what other people think. The heart of spirituality is the relationship between you and your god – I don’t care what religion you associate with, you should never let the opinions of others change how you practice your faith.
So talk to God when you’re bored at work on Monday morning. Pray during your commute. Sing songs of praise in the shower.
He’ll listen.
4. Religions never practice what they preach.
I have nothing against faith. I agree with many of the teachings of Mohammed, Jesus, and Buddha. But I hate churches and religious communities that don’t pay attention to their own message.
In the book of Matthew, Jesus said that “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” This is a fantastic command to get people to consider the plights of the poor and needy, to shelter and care for those who need it.
But I’ve heard so many selfish and contradictory statements coming from church pulpits and pews. People praise God for their comfortable lives but only use their wealth for themselves. Every church has some sort of organized evangelical program, systematically going into the community and trying to convert people to Christianity. But so many fewer have similar programs to go out and feed the city’s homeless or help teach at an after-school activity.
If you truly want to follow the teachings of your religion, skip church and volunteer in the local homeless shelter. Help fix up a run-down neighborhood. Join Habitat for Humanity and actually contribute to your community instead of condemning it to Hell.
5. Don’t become one of the mindless clones.
Most people who go to church regularly are boring and won’t help you grow as a person. To be fair, most people you meet fall into the category. But unlike most people you see on the street, you’re choosing to lock yourself in a room with these ones for several hours a week.
Once of my favorite things about pursuing diverse hobbies and habits is the people. When you skydive or rock climb, SCUBA dive or travel, you meet the most fascinating, excited, and alive people on the planet.
Living an exciting life becomes infinitely easier when you surround yourself with exciting people. Most churchgoers have been attending the same church for years – they’ve probably been going to church since they were infants. They aren’t interesting. They’re stagnant, and you’re on the path to becoming one of them.
You have to find those people who live at full speed. They’ll be more diverse, interesting, and edifying than anyone you’ll meet in a church. And some of them will be profoundly religious. I’ve been skydiving with a member of the Christian Skydiver’s Association and I’ve traveled through Italy with a Seventh-Day Adventist missionary from Brazil. You can find people who share your beliefs outside the doors of a church and you’ll learn more from them than you would ever learn by listening to sermons for years on end.
Break free from the pack and live your own life. You’ll find your brethren.
