Is God Crazy?

When I was about 5 years old I had a conversation with my next door neighbor about the difference between Catholics and Protestants. In our neighborhood Catholics were distained, and it was hard to hide the fact that we were Catholic with at that time 7 siblings. My Protestant neighbor, also my age, and I determined that both religions had the same cast of characters. Both religions had heaven and hell. And, both preached they were the one and only true religion; if you didn’t belong to that religion, you would go to hell. It was really puzzling!

A little while ago a well-dressed elderly woman came to my door preaching some branch of Christianity. Apparently that version was the one and only way to be saved from eternal hell. The conversation made me wonder why so many religions preach exclusiveness: Our way or the highway, which in this case, the highway is some heinous place or condition.

It just doesn’t make sense that there is only one true religion. There are billions of ways beings can honor their maker.  If it is true that there is only one way to pray, the entity that created this marvelously diverse universe must have OCD. In fact, it must be a sadistic form of OCD! Just think about the countless creatures on earth doomed to hell because they don’t go to worship on some specific day!

The idea that there is only one true religion was born thousands of years ago when we humans thought the earth was the center of the universe. The myth made a little more sense back then. But ever since Copernicus showed how the earth revolves around the sun and Galileo saw moons around Jupiter and modern telescopes found thousands of other solar systems it doesn’t. Today we know there are billions of planets just within our own galaxy. Humans are not the only intelligent beings in the universe just as the earth is not the center of the universe.

Life thrives in the most uninhabitable places on earth making it most highly probable life exists on other planets. Our oceans provide examples of life flourishing in harsh environments without the benefit of sunlight. Some of our ocean animals even consume toxic sulfur as food. It doesn’t make sense that all alien life is doomed because they don’t honor God the one true earth way.

Let’s debunk this horribly divisive myth. It is immature in nature serving only mindless hatred.

Two facts that can’t be debated are that 1) Religion is deeply personal; our individual relationship with our creator is unique much like our fingerprints and 2) Human beings are diverse. Given our diversity and our individual relationship with the creator, the perfect true religion for one cannot possibly be the perfect one true religion for all. The creator of our universe, sans OCD, respects all religions and none.

Humans have lots of reasons for hating and killing each other. Let’s stop blaming whatever created our universe for our bad behavior! Religious exclusion is ignorant. We must accept our diversity. Instead of saying you belong to the one true religion, say you belong to the one true religion for you. Understand that people of different faiths feel as strongly about their religion as you do yours. Start today!

Let’s annihilate the myth and start to eliminate one big reason humans fight each other!