Bold Comments about Organized Religion

I do not often post strong comments on Facebook, since my friends are from all over the gamut on religion and politics. But I decided I had to say these things:

Many large religious organizations use their power and influence for political ends, and to guilt-trip money out of their followers. These organizations are not satisfied if a person says, “I will love God and love humans collectively and individually and love the earth that I share with them.” Instead they say, “No! That’s not enough! God also wants you to give us your money and believe every doctrine we proclaim!” The result is organized religion, which throughout history has been a scourge upon humankind.

When Isaiah wrote words that he attributed to God (chapter 1 verse 14), “Your…feasts and your appointed festivals I hate with all my being; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them,” Isaiah was referring to organized religion, not to individual religious people who loved their neighbors.

When Jon Stewart and associates wrote (in the 2010 book “Earth: The Book”) that it is difficult to kill a person, but easy to kill an infidel; and that “religion helped overcome man’s catastrophic tendency toward neighborliness,” he was talking about organized religion, not individual religious people who loved their neighbors.

I am repulsed by the big religious organizations that want to make Jesus merely an appendage of the Republican Party (or the Democratic Party; but you don’t hear much from them) and want nothing to do with organized religion. Pat Robertson’s gospel was, when I heard his show a few years ago, “Send money send money send money bomb Iran send money.” My religion is a private relationship with God. It is, as I said above, I will love God and love humans collectively and individually and love the earth that I share with them.