Religion is a set of beliefs, morals, disciplines, and instructions that are to be followed by those who accept and understand religion. It is basically a social-cultural system that revolves around believing in a force that is the most powerful and controls everything.
Our society has completely changed the motive of religion into something which is anti-life, which demands us to live a life that is worth nothing, which lets us completely shun our life and pretend to be religious.
Religion should benefit us and the generations to come. It should give us peace and answer all our questions. But unfortunately, we have completely changed the meaning and purpose of religion.
Sitting 24*7 in a temple or mosque, reciting the prayers louder and louder, announcing strict rules to be obeyed by the people, does not make us religious in any way. Sitting like a dead, doing nothing, and waiting for miracles to happen can never be religion.
Religion supporting anti-life is a notion that is deep-rooted in our system. We have been groomed in such a way that even though we don’t want to accept it, we still find ourselves practicing it. We need to throw away these conventional and obsolete roots that have destroyed not only our society but our nation as a whole.
We must understand and analyze how these deep-rooted, pre-conceived notions have hampered our growth and development. And religion would never stop us from growing; instead, it demands that we grow in the best way that we can. And Religion can never be anti-life, and if it is anti-life, then it is not religion.
What Is Life?
The basic difference that distinguishes a living from a non-living is growth. In this world, animals, humans, and plants change and grow every day.
Night changes into mornings. A baby develops into an adult, a human dies and transforms into the soil, a river flows, the earth revolves around the sun, etc. All these things on their own reflect growth.
So, if growth is so important for life to exist, then how can religion be anti-life because life is growth, and growth is life. Stopping and not developing is not religion, but growing and understanding life is religion.
Our lives are not without meaning. Why would we be even born if we had to shun everything down and live a life as if we were dead? Life is supposed to be all about growth, not just growing in terms of our body, but growing our mind, our thought process, our beliefs, our society, and our nation.
We need to grow inside out. Only then the purpose of life will be fulfilled, and only then true religion could be understood.
So, life isn’t without any purpose because life comes with a big purpose: growth. This is the notion that is to be instilled in our society for generations to come, and this is what religion actually preaches to us.
Religion And Spirituality: Helps Finding Purpose of Life
Since we have already talked about religion and its actual purpose, now we need to shed some light on Spirituality. It is all about finding meaning in everything we do, be it life, religion, perceptions, ideologies, or theories.
Spirituality revolves around finding and enhancing the connection of your soul with the divine source. We tend to search beyond the limitations of our minds and body and try to answer the questions like:
- What is my purpose in life?
- Why am I alive?
- Am I living my life correctly?
- What is the meaning behind my existence?
Once you ask these questions to yourself and try to find their answers, you attain liberation and move ahead towards spirituality. Spirituality demands us to look after ourselves in terms of health, emotions, intellect, and beliefs. It tends to allow us to go through self-introspection and understand ourselves more than anyone else could.
And now, if we talk about religion and spirituality, these two realms share the same amount of differences and similarities, which makes them some sort of equal.
The basic and the most vibrant difference between the two is that religion as an institution advises you to get closer to God and obey him through collective form but spirituality, on the other hand, lets you explore the divinity through your own self. Spirituality focuses more on self, unlike religion.
Religion is based on tradition and cultural beliefs and has a definite structure or an organized way to follow, while spirituality is more about finding yourself, the answers, and the divine source in your own formless and unorganized way.
Spirituality and religion are almost similar, and we have often seen religious people following spirituality and spiritual people not following any religion. In both cases, we need to understand ourselves, our needs, our society, and our beliefs to understand these two realms, which seem similar and different at the same time.
Thus, religion is not what we understand it to be. It is so different from our preconceived notions about it. We need to understand the actual meaning of religion, its purpose, aim, and what it demands from us, as religion can never be anti-life. We can only understand the actual purpose of religion by exploring spirituality which automatically leads us to explore the meaning of life.