Take a Chill Pill

I've got a few random thoughts rolling around today . . . so I'm going to put them down - and hopefully they will come together in some sort of cohesive fashion.

Quality over quantity. I've always heard that. And the more I journey through life, the more I believe it. I try to pack so many things into my day. And I measure my days by how much I get done in them. That's too bad.

I'm coming to realize this more and more. My wife and I have been journeying together for almost ten years now, many of those being in pursuit of a Ph.D. We finally attained that for her, recently. And now that we're there, I look back upon different stages of that particular journey; and I wish that I had stopped to smell the roses a bit more (how many cliches is that, already?).

I think this sort of relates to another thought I have been having recently. Religion that is coerced is not true religion. I'm not sure what that is; but it's not religion. I'm convinced of this more and more, with each passing day. But I recently read a blog post from a former pastor of mine, which did a good job of stating that religion that tries to make someone feel superior to someone else is not really religion. That got me to thinking about what religion, really, existentially, really is.

I have been a part of a number of religious experiences in which other people, particularly youth, are pressured into making some sort of decision. It's not necessarily a "do this or die" sort of situation. But the onus is clearly placed upon the individual. And if that individual does not do whatever the leader/speaker/preacher wants them to do, that person is considered to be a failure. The clear example, of course, is a speaker asking audience members if they died tonight, where would they go? (heaven or hell?) Scaring someone into heaven (or one's conception of heaven) has never been a good idea.

But it's not only just these obvious situations. The religious right is all about calling upon religious freedom recently to say that Obamacare (which is a gross misunderstanding of the health care bill) strips away Americans' religious freedom by making Catholic institutions give birth control to its employees. At best, that is a weak case for saying why Catholic institutions should not have to purchase birth control. But anyway, since they brought it up, if we are going to talk about religious freedom - we need to give religious freedom to all people: both for religion and from religion. The same people who are crying religious freedom were the same ones saying that mosques should not be built in certain places. These people want religious freedom for their particular brand of religion. That's not freedom; that's bigotry.

Religion, at its best, is inclusive of all people and is built upon and creates for others: freedom.