Thoughts on Value systems and Religion
I'm sitting in a Tullys (bless them for free wifi throughout the day; this, Starbucks, is why I spent the week at Tullys instead of with you...LEARN SOMETHING), and am reading Elf's brain today, specifically about the anti-gay Alabama A.G. who is rumored to have been caught by his wife playing "hide the salami" with his male aide. And in a pathway that is too complicated and insane to repeat to you, I started thinking about how we, as a country, are so stuck on religion as our platform for delivering a moral/ethical value system.
It occurred to me that religion doesn't do that at all. Beyond the formal term "religion" really being meant to refer to a spiritual system that has become "corporatized" complete with policies to follow, possibly a book to guide the adherents, priests to "lay down the law" as it were...even beyond that, calling religion just a spiritual system, still, we in this country actually don't use it as our basis for our value system.
We have a value system set apart from religion/spirituality. In fact, we determine which religions are "legitimate" in this country *based* on this non-spiritual/religious value system. Many in this country claim that we follow a "Christian-based" value system, but that is wrong, because not only has Christianity changed over the years and centuries, while our value system has in fact gone in different directions, but Christians in this country practice the faith differently from Christians in other countries.
In other words, our non-religious value system *molds* the religions that it comes into contact with to become more like itself. This is the reason that we feel so uncomfortable with religious groups that refuse to use medicine to treat their dying children, rather using prayer (which *does not work* without medicine...even medieval monks knew that!), or groups that force totalitarian dictatorships upon their cult groups, or groups that try to spiritualize science by removing all of the facts that they don't agree with. Because all of these violate our values systems in this country.
And that is the message that we need to get out to push in the face of the religious-right which strives to claim only one religion has cornered the market on values, ethics, and morals in this country.
It occurred to me that religion doesn't do that at all. Beyond the formal term "religion" really being meant to refer to a spiritual system that has become "corporatized" complete with policies to follow, possibly a book to guide the adherents, priests to "lay down the law" as it were...even beyond that, calling religion just a spiritual system, still, we in this country actually don't use it as our basis for our value system.
We have a value system set apart from religion/spirituality. In fact, we determine which religions are "legitimate" in this country *based* on this non-spiritual/religious value system. Many in this country claim that we follow a "Christian-based" value system, but that is wrong, because not only has Christianity changed over the years and centuries, while our value system has in fact gone in different directions, but Christians in this country practice the faith differently from Christians in other countries.
In other words, our non-religious value system *molds* the religions that it comes into contact with to become more like itself. This is the reason that we feel so uncomfortable with religious groups that refuse to use medicine to treat their dying children, rather using prayer (which *does not work* without medicine...even medieval monks knew that!), or groups that force totalitarian dictatorships upon their cult groups, or groups that try to spiritualize science by removing all of the facts that they don't agree with. Because all of these violate our values systems in this country.
And that is the message that we need to get out to push in the face of the religious-right which strives to claim only one religion has cornered the market on values, ethics, and morals in this country.