A Fresh Perspective - 10/17/08
Someone has said that religion consists of creed (teachings), cult (worship), and conduct (way of life). Religion can be healthy or unhealthy.
Unhealthy religion is imbalanced. It is usually a private affair with no prophetic edge. The focus tends to be on one's personal well-being, either in terms of the afterlife or one's present success (or both), while love of others and service to the world, especially the marginalized, is mostly neglected.
Unhealthy religion is parochial - a kind of holy nationalism that espouses an "us against them" mentality. It demonizes people of other religious traditions much the way political candidates do to assert their own superiority. It draws boundaries around one's own group with the focus on believing the right things and worshiping the right way.
Unhealthy religion fosters fear and guilt. It paints pictures of a vengeful God who must in someway be appeased or placated before forgiveness can be given. This God requires a victim to suffer violence. God is hard to please and continually expresses "his" (God is always male in this system) displeasure at the shortcomings and failures of humankind.
Unhealthy religion becomes a means for manipulating God and controlling the worshiping community. God is made into our image and is restricted to the religious dogma and doctrine of the group.
Healthy religion maintains a balance between one's personal relationship with God and one's compassionate service to the community and to the world - striving to solve the problems and alleviate the suffering that plagues society and the persons within that society.
Healthy religion invites us into relationship with the intimate, infinite, and ultimate Reality in the universe. It nurtures both openness and vulnerability to the Divine Spirit, who like a passionate lover, longs to capture our hearts.
Healthy religion employs symbols, myths, and rituals in order to imagine and relate to God, not to constrict or coerce God. It inspires mercy, not manipulation; compassion, not control; grace, not guilt. It nurtures remission and reconciliation, not retaliation and retribution. It's all about love and forgiveness, and invites us to enter into the Goodness that is at the heart of the Divine Mystery.
In healthy religion the deeper we journey into our own religious faith the more we realize that God is too great to be exclusively and rigidly defined or confined by our religious faith, no matter how deeply we experience God through the tradition.
Healthy religion emphasizes the common spiritual bond that unites us all as God's children.