On Religion

Many religions come to offer man salvation through rituals and sets of doctrines and laws. Yet I have noticed some of the most evil actions have been done by man, have been done so in the name of God. I think of the infighting within the muslim world, where those endowed with the same lecture, who worship the same God and pray the same five prayers, will go to war and commit atrocities against one another. The same goes for Christians, hindus, jews, and atheist. All equally heretical to the next. I have found myself in a never ending conundrum of questions about the nature of God and trying to understand the various different religions and their relationships to one another. But the answer is always the same: “I will never understand.” This is simple, how can I, a man, ever understand God? People have been killing each other for thousands of years trying to understand, how can I ever understand the unexplainable? The task is ultimately a useless endeavor that draws me further and further away from Him. I don’t know how many are going through this same level of confusion when it comes to religion. But my problem resides solely here. How can one have a monopoly of truth when it comes to the All Powerful, All Knowing, Omnipresent, Infinite, Immortal, God? It is nigh impossible for two people to have the same perception. How can I limit God to pages read in a book written for a time and place that is completely foreign to my own? If we accept that God is Living then we have to understand that he is still here and wiser than us, how must we adapt the Universal principles laid out before us to our modern world? How do we meet people where they are in order to build a better world? I believe God is a liberating force, yet time and time again, we live in fear.