Perspectives on Religion

Since becoming a mom, I felt the need to come up with a consistent approach to religion. My son will ask me questions and I am concerned that my answers have to be logical, rational ones. It’s tough for me to convince everyone around me that I don’t see religion as a necessary component of life. I believe that a human being can live, know Good from Evil, Love from Hatred without a religious reference. I was born and raised Muslim, a very light form of Islam. My husband was born and raised catholic, a quite conservative style of Catholicism. Our best friends are Jewish. This is exactly how I see my world pluralistic and loving with religion as a vague background not so much needed in our interactions with one another, but every now and then celebrated as part of our human heritage.

Religions came for a purpose and contributed to some extent to a new form of society: a relatively improved one. I see prophets as great people who had a political and social agenda, who saw that reforms were needed and who were able to convince people around them of the divinity and the sacredness of their mission.

We moved from primitive societies to civilized ones through different stages, the religious society was one of them. But even religion as a basic structure for society had its limits. Thus, new ways of thinking brought many parts of the world to secularism. Today we belong to a new type of society that of rationality and science, a borderless society exposing our histories and interpretation of histories, cultures and ideologies: We live in the era of mass communication and information, of mass interaction. So I look around and say: what a pity, what a violation of innocence and human dignity to teach a little child that God chose to talk to some people rather than others: that Jesus or Mohamed carried messages for us to implement thousands of years later as an absolute truth.

Why limit a child? Why not raise a free thinker? God might have used people to talk to us. But I doubt it that a super entity, like a God, would need messengers. Nature, the world, the sky, the oceans, the trees, the animals, the seasons, the people all speak to us. They tell us that there are things greater than ourselves, there are things to love and protect, and that peace is harmony. Nature talks to us in different ways. If there was a God, I love him/her for the greatness of the world and for speaking to us through nature and its mysteries. If there was a God, he/she would be so great that they wouldn’t need to tell us more than what nature already speaks to us. If there was a God he/she will be beyond the religious discourse and its lack of realism. She or he wouldn’t want us to fear her/him or his/her reprisal. If there was a God, I pray to her/him to clear the way for my child, to give him the means of critical thought and to give him the right to live without belief if so my son chooses.