Positive & Negative Aspects of Religion

I saw a video on Youtube today that said God caused the Covid-19 virus so that everybody would stay home. I don’t like that idea. It made me think about both the positive aspects of religion and the negative ones.

The video says “Today we are one” and that we should work together. Those are wonderful thoughts. And it has beautiful images, calming music, and a well-written script. A lot of time and money went into that production.

But then it says things to encourage people to be superstitious, to give up our personal power to improve our lives because we are not in control. I don’t like that idea either.

Of course we never have control of everything, but we always have control of some things.

And even the things we don’t have control over, we always have control over how we react to them. We can either get sad and angry, or remain calm, obey the laws of the land, and do the best we can to improve our lives and help others.

It’s interesting that although the virus has been around for months, this video was released just a few days before a number of the world’s religions have their most holy day. Of course that could be coincidence.

It’s obvious the intent of the video is to make people more religious. If you are a religious person you might say that is good, and I’m not saying it’s bad. All religions have positive aspects and benefits to society.

I’m just saying we should embrace the positive aspects and reject the negative ones.

The video says society has been impregnated with negative knowledge and mindsets. It says this challenge has opened a new path only God could have opened for us. Doesn’t that imply God made the virus because we’ve strayed from the correct path? I really don’t like that idea. I believe this life is not always fair, and we need to learn to live with that and be happy anyway. Life is for learning. We need to learn to be happy with life whatever it brings us.

I don’t think I should blame God when something unfortunate happens to me.

I’ve never heard of the person who made that video. He might be a wonderful person doing everything he can to be of service to humanity without benefit to himself. I just don’t like it when anybody encourages people to give up their personal power.

There have been religious leaders in the past who told people they should give up their personal power to God, when what they really meant was they should give up their power to them, because they are the messenger of God. In this video the narrator says “I’ve got great news to share with you” and “what I want to tell you today is…”   Is he saying he’s the messenger of God?

Farther into the video he says “We must win. We must not fail”. To phrase it like that makes people afraid. Wouldn’t it be better to say “It is inevitable that we will win”. To me that’s more realistic. There have been many terrible diseases in the history of the world, and every one of them came to an end.

I was surprised the video personified fear by calling it “he”. Is it implying the devil caused this virus and we need to turn to God to protect us? I’m not sure what the narrator’s intent was there.

We need to be careful of religious leaders who use people’s desire for a better life to take advantage of them, to control them and get their money. I’m sure the person who spent all the time and money to make that video is not trying to do that. But we need to be on guard for that kind of behaviour in all leaders.

I believe there is a God. I’m just saying it doesn’t matter if we believe in God or not
because we have free will, freedom of choice.

Freedom of choice means we have to take care of ourselves. We have to try our best at all times. We have to make up our own minds about what to do, and then go do it. And we need to be responsible for our actions. If we cause trouble we’ll probably have to pay the price. If we do things to improve our lives and the lives of others there’s a good chance we will benefit.

Religion can be a wonderful thing. It can inspire people to be their best, and treat others as they’d like to be treated. But we need to watch out for religious leaders who try to make us afraid of God, and give up our power, feel weak, like we can’t take care of ourselves, or even worse, like we shouldn’t take care of ourselves. We need to be wary of religious leaders who encourage us to give our power to them because they are the messenger of God.

If we give up our personal power we’ll be waiting for someone to take care of us and tell us what to do. That kind of thinking is very dangerous. There are a number of examples in history where it led to atrocities and great suffering.

I hope you enjoyed this article. Please share it on social media and leave a comment below.
Kind regards,
Ken Lapp

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