"I Believe", in Keeping it Personal

A friend from a mixed marriage talked of the religious identity (or lack thereof) for her children in a recent post, and while reading it, I found links to a couple of other similar posts. As a fairly passive atheist, I have always observed these debates from the sidelines. But increasingly in today's world it is a serious responsibility for parents what religion their children grow up to follow. For the world seeks to categorise, to classify. You can bring up children to believe in an abstract notion of God, or to believe in nothing and therefore everything, or to skirt the topic of religious identity entirely. But your task doesn't end there. As they grow up, the world will ask them what their identity is, and you should ensure that you have given them the confidence to cope with the looks the answer "nothing in particular" will bring them. For this will happen at an age when they will want, desperately, to belong, to fit in, not to stand out for any reason.

At the same time, I hope that, with the world opening up and people's minds keeping pace, there will be plenty of little mixed-creeds, children with mixed identities who choose to remain ambiguous on their religion of choice. Who are therefore sensitive to all faiths but fundamentalist about none. Who can accept that others may believe in different or more or fewer or no gods. As battle-lines are drawn and people are urged to fall in line behind one particular flag, such an army of mixed-creeds will be helpful in retaining sanity and balance in a world that can start leaning, dangerously, perilously, to one side or the other.

For the problem with religion is when people take it outside their hearts and use it as a lens to see the world around them. Sheltered Sanity, another blogger I read, starts her post by saying that organised religion can do more harm than good. That is something I have believed for a very long time. The problem lies not with religion itself, but with interpretations of it. For no one seems to be content with believing that there was a wise man/woman/group of people out there who are our shelter and guide and saviour. They must construct stories around them and when those stories are at odds with other realities there is, literally, hell to pay. So you have Darwin getting flak from Christians for dethroning Adam and Eve as our parents and putting apes in their place. So you have Hindus telling Muslims that we had a temple here first, and then you people built a mosque over it. So you have Israelis telling Muslims, hello, this land is ours, move it! So you have ... a right royal (un)holy mess.

Why is it that something which is just supposed to bring us inner peace becomes a turf for war? How can someone rest his/her conscience if they have used their faith---an intensely personal thing---to commit violence? Religion is a private matter. It is supposed to bring us peace, not snatch the peace of others. We need to keep it individual and personal. After all, at the core of each religion is morality, forgiveness, piety, faith, humility, and spiritual calmness. It is crucial to recognise that every person, from every faith, is just another human being trying for inner peace. Only then will we learn to coexist.