What is Religion? (Part Fourteen)
And so we now have a situation where the very institutions set up to help us through the times of darkness have been corrupted and turned from their purpose and now exist solely to provide for their own existence. Like a cancer turns the factories in the cell aside from their original tasks, something has turned the major Religions aside from their original purpose.
If we look back in history we can see the pattern – over and again the major dominant religion will spawn a new and vibrant expression of the basic purpose. The new way grows apace, until after a time, it too gets locked into tradition, starts to work solely to ensure its own survival and we see a new offshoot begin. Always the new offshoots claim to be returning to the original message, to be more true to the first purpose than the hidebound monolith the previous reformed group has become.
So ‘What is Religion?’ is perhaps best answered by changing the question into – What is religion and how does it differ from Religion?
Small ‘r’ religion is a system for passing along knowledge that is not a part of the mundane physical world. In some cases it has been information about a God or Gods, (and just who they are or were is a whole new question) but in most it has been about how to achieve enlightened status. How to achieve immortality is another theme that runs through the ideologies, and while it has been redefined in our ‘modern’ times to mean after we get to heaven, it seems clear in the myths from the past that they were a little more preoccupied with immortal status within this Universe.
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