Religion and Nature

Religion. It’s one of those things we’re not allowed to talk about in bars. Just blogs.

If you’ve ever been handed a pamphlet at the mall or gone to church, you’ve heard you were born with a hole; a metaphorical hole that needs to be filled. It cannot be filled by a passion for learning or being close with friends. Only the Lord can fill this hole.

But, lately, I’ve been thinking about humans, and how we love being right about things. Religion is carte blanche on being right.

The Lord’s word is indisputable. If you know the Lord’s word, you’re right. Ta-da! No more doubt. No more losing arguments. No more internal uncertainty. You’ve ‘filled your hole’ or need for being right.

Religious people have passion, no doubt. And we put a ton of resources into praising the divine trinity. Are we wasting our time?

Let me tell you how I ‘found’ Jesus.

Many people don’t know this about me, but at one time, I was a solider of the Lord. I went to church camp every summer, sometimes twice a summer, and even ended up working there. When I was at camp, I was outside a lot. And we constantly prayed to God, and thanked him for the awesomeness of nature.

Since then, I've realized nature was my evidence of a creator. And it still is. But nature isn’t evidence of the Garden of Eden, the Immaculate Conception, or the Resurrection.

My point is this: are we praying to the wrong God?

Imagine if we could harness the power of religion, and turn it into energy toward cleaning up our Earth. Imagine if instead of going out and cutting down a Christmas Tree, we went out and planted one. Imagine if, every Sunday, we gave thanks to the land that feeds and shelters us, instead of giving thanks to an invisible God.

The past hundred years have been a whirlwind of technological progress. But technically, our beliefs have not ‘progressed’ at all. Will the agent of change be global climate change? Will it be a religious Armageddon? Or will it be a generational shift, where we quit wasting our time, and start making heads-up plays.