Losing My Religion

There is a small village in the southwest of Uganda called Nyakijumba, near the town of Kabale. I was born there and spent the first eight years of my life calling it home.

I was baptized in the catholic faith, the religion of my father. One of my earliest childhood memories is one of waking up early one morning and finding that my mother had left for morning prayers without me. My mother was part of a group of women who met once a week for a prayer meeting. I had been to a couple of these with her and I quite liked them. The meetings were always in the wee hours of the morning and lasted about two hours. They began with the actual prayers which lasted an hour and the remainder of the time was spent comparing notes on pertinent issues and the latest gossip.

I woke up to find the door locked from the outside. I knew that she's decided to go without me. Perhaps she had failed to wake me or decided I could use the sleep. I quickly washed my face and put on some clothes, my exit would be the window. I opened the window and was greeted by the heaviest fog I had ever seen. I could hardly see a few feet in any direction. Unfazed I jumped out the window and made my way, mostly by memory, out the compound, across the road and all the way to the meeting.

My mother was protestant, something I knew from an early age but did not bother to question. She was much more than that to me. She was the centre of my world; she taught me a ton of things not the least of which is that I should always be kind. She taught me about God and all that goes with that. She bought me the only bible I have ever owned. I think my fascination with words begun with "My Big Book of Bible Stories". I devoured that and then the "Good News Bible" and any other books I could read. By the time she passed away I was in my mind a protestant.

I remember when she was in the hospital dying, I knelt down and asked God to save her. She was dying of AIDS but I did not know. I knew God was all powerful and he had said that if we but asked we would surely receive. My faith was strong and pure; he would hear and answer my prayer. I was a few weeks shy of my thirteenth birthday when she passed away.

For the next two years I questioned my faith and put it to a simple test of fairness as I knew it. My mother had been my go to person for spiritual guidance and it so happened that there was no one else to answer my questions. I had to turn inward, to the concepts of good and bad as I experienced them. I consumed anything I could. I read Mark Twain's "Letters from the Earth", Dan Barker's "Losing Faith in Faith" and of course the bible. But most influential was Robert Green Ingersoll's "Why I am an Agnostic" and discovering the history of the bible and Christianity. I was shocked to discover that throughout the centuries; Kings, Queens, Emperors and even Popes had all manipulated what was put down as "the word of God". This so called sacred book had been written and rewritten by all sorts of people down the years to suit their needs.

Nevertheless my faith could not die so easily, so I gave the good book its due consideration. I tried to understand its message as laid out in the pages. I found that there was a message of peace in this book. A simple commandment, that we should all love one another. But it was not content to stop there. It told of a God who entertained no argument, competition or remorse. You were to love him and no other, if you chose otherwise, you were damned. It was simple intimidation. I could not help but liken this God to my uncle who demanded respect rather than earned it. At the end of my inquiry, I came to three conclusions about the God that I had been brought up to believe in.

1. There was a God and a Devil and this God was all powerful. He held dominion over everything and his word was final. There was no court of appeal on any decision that he made. He had the power to make peace but chose war instead. He was malevolent, conceited and above all a warmonger.
   
2. There was a God and a Devil and none was superior to the other. In fact, one could not exist without the other and so passed the eons playing an unwinnable celestial game of chess. The problem this presented was that there was no motive for the Devil. He was always the underdog, so why keep playing? What the hell was he going to do with all those souls? Surely he had better things to do with his time than run around tempting people.
   
3. There was no God and no Devil. All these things were invented by human beings to satisfy certain needs.
   

I chose the third option and became an atheist.

Over the years, I have come to view religion as a divisive factor in the world. At the heart of its message is the simple statement that we are the faithful and anyone who does not believe what we believe is damned, that they are different from us and deserve all that befalls them as just punishment for their infidelity. While watching an evangelical programme on TV the other day, I heard the preacher say that Christian couples should see to it that they stop having divorce rates the same as of those people outside the church. That simple statement creates a division, a distinction between "us" and "them". It is not hard to see how this plays out eventually.

Most people today see Islam as the most intolerant religion but the idea of religious extremism is nothing new. It has been around for centuries and none have excelled at it better than the Christians. History is littered with their handiwork and despite seeming more tolerant today, it does not take much to incite violence in the church. The church, the mosque and the synagogue can and are all being used as platforms for hate and division.

I believe religion is responsible for a greater share of mankind's wars than anything else. Its ability to divide families, tribes and nations is rooted in the simple fact that at its core is the fact that there is a God who will not make peace or accommodate his adversary. Hence the question I have to ask all who believe.

How does a religion that has at its core a God who is eternally at war with the Devil teach the language of the peacemakers? If we, who are charged with making the peace, should look to our God for guidance and find that he or she has not made peace yet, what do we do?

Religion answers three fundamental questions that plague all human beings. The first is the yearning to know where we came from, the second is to answer why we are here and the third is to quell our fear of death and the hereafter. It will tell you that you are here by God's grace, that you should live by the law he set down while you are here so that you may be worthy to enter his kingdom after this life. It all sounds fine until you find out what God is telling you to do. To kill, disown your family, have nothing to do with unbelievers, treat women as less than equals and many other things. It will also tell you to make peace but this is not a prerequisite, to enter paradise all you need to do is truly repent and believe. All your earthly deeds count for nothing as long as you do not believe.

Most people today actually pick what they need from their religious tomes. The things they believe do not apply to their lives today they discard. We would all hope that you pick those words that teach peace and kindness.

I believe that human beings are born with an innate sense of morality. That the environment in which we grow up contributes greatly to how we view the world and our fellow human beings. That we should come to the realisation that each and every one of us is responsible for the things that he or she does and will be judged thus.

The only religion we need is a true religion of peace, one that simply teaches us to make each other's lives better when we can but at the very least, to do no harm.

Playlist Entry: R.E.M – Losing My Religion