The Purpose of Religion - Part Two...

Yesterday, I asked "What is the purpose of Religion?" and then I attempted to provide an answer. Let me continue that attempt again today...

If you do a search on the Internet for the number of different religions in the world today, you will find that there are 21 major religions, and an unknown number of smaller religious groups with a wide variety of beliefs.

The purpose of a religion, yours, mine, or anyone's should be for the benefit of one's spirituality. Religion should not be some kind of competition in which yours or mine is believed to be better or somehow more superior to another. Nobody knows for sure what the ultimate answer to that would be, and as a result of this not-knowing, there are those who use this to take advantage of our ignorance by providing their own invented answers to our questions. But the fact remains that we are not meant to be fighting over details which may be beyond the ability of humans to resolve. 

Religion is about faith. Not about gunpowder, or killing those who are different, or those who cannot be converted to your beliefs. Religion isn't about improving your situation here in this life, although many have sought to use it that way. Religion is about the eventual disposition of your soul, or your spiritual essence, hopefully to some better place than where it is now. And that cannot be done by doing evil or becoming a killer. Not if you hope for something better in an afterlife beyond this one. 

And I can't picture a God who plays favorites among those who believe in God. Nor can I imagine God as being some kind of parliamentary democracy where decisions are made by consensus among a group. But as it says in the ancient Egyptian text of 'The Book of the Dead' from about 3,500 years ago, "Not known are the things which God will do." Some things are beyond our understanding. And that means all of us - not just some of us.