As a person that was raised in a religious environment I don't consider myself an expert in religion but an expert in reality. I really believe that people use religion as a crutch to lean on or to blame. When someone is looking for a job they go home and they pray and leave it in God's hands. Look, God would want you to be happy in your life and will provide you with the intelligence, resourcefulness, and desire to find food, water, and shelter. But if you think he'll help you land that job you want that's laughable. It's your own drive and determination that will do that. If you look inside you have a conscience. That right there is your God right inside of you. If you're thinking really hard to make a decision and you have to force it then you probably made the wrong decision. When you're about to do something you feel might not be right then it probably isnt. I'm not the morale police. I've walked in on friends snorting coke and other things. Who am I to judge? I don't know what that person is dealing with and I don't have all of their answers. But I do know that I am not automatically inclined to do something because someone else does. Just like I have no right to judge them for what they are doing. If I do want to get involved then I better be ready to help without telling them what to do.
The problem with religion is that there is a group of people that show up on Sunday and sing a few songs, listen to a few bible verses, say praise God a few times, and then they feel entitled to act as if they have all of the answers. Just because you show up does not make you Jesus Christ. I understand that those specific individuals use church and religion to make themselves feel better about the life they're leading. How they're able to separate their life and treat people with less than respect while conducting the rest of their week but then magically become holy when they walk through those doors of the synagogue. If there are so many church going people then why are there so many people cursing each other out, flipping each other off, and treating each other less than humanely? It's because people lead double lives. People constantly tell me that I need to go to church more and take my kids to church more. I tell them that I live in church every day. I walk the walk. I'm not saying I'm a saint or anything even close. I have my troubles but what I do every day is treat people with respect and the way I want to be treated. I teach my kids the same thing. While they are excelling in a lot of areas people tend to treat them badly. I'm honestly not trying to brag or boast here but it's because of jealousy. I was one of those kids growing up. I moved from place to place never had a father and my mother left early on. It caused me numerous issues including; abandonment issues, low self esteem, anger, jealousy, and resentment. It's taken a lot of years just to identify a lot of these and will take more years to resolve if I ever do.
I hope I never become one of those people who think they have all of the answers and stand up on their soap box preaching even though they've got skeletons in their closet they still havent cleaned out. Preaching to their brothers and sisters about living like Christ when they are only a shell of what he represented. I believe to truly be a leader and to live like Christ is so far from our imagination that the book of revelations is presented as a fact that will happen instead of a warning of what will come if we don't heal our earth and humanity. For someone to even begin to put their feet in those shoes they would have to shed all of society. They would have to not care about any possessions, perception, political correctness, money, power, esteem, greed, or peace. They would have to spend every day as a selfless desciple of humanity. Spreading the word of love, giving, sharing, and meditation. They would have to be able to walk into a room of white suprmecists and exclaim with excitement and love of how they love people of color and differences. These days I hear so much political correctness and perception and very little honesty and reality. I can barely be honest with my wife about my thoughts of infidelity and the acknowledgement that my flesh is weak. I'm only saying that we should live our lives every day with love, compassion, and humbleness instead of greed, judgementalness, and ego. Our economic system is Capitalism but why do we make that our way of life? It's because we worship money instead of a clean heart. If we spent our lives trying to reach a place where we have peace of mind and heart and less time reaching wealth, power, and esteem we could all work together to achieve a global connection. I didnt even mention war! If I could leave you with anything today it would be with the hope that instead of thinking you are the answer remember one simple thing. You do not have all of the answers so "Lead and be led".
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