Monday, January 29, 2007

God and Country

For any thinking person life is riddled with the absurdities of people’s belief systems. Personally I wonder why people think royalty has any place in today’s society. Equally, I have no real idea why we maintain an established church. On top of this I cannot understand why our political imperatives pay such overweening regard to any religion, per se. Put the lot together and you have a strange political-cum-social stadium that straightjackets the playing field of thought and expression.

Wouldn’t it be better if religion was a totally private matter between a person, place of worship and his or her god and then we could set about developing social structures that maintain a constant winnowing of the chaff of the so called sacred? If people behave according to the fundamental virtues of their religions but don’t aggrandise such behaviour with the language and gesture of religious superordination, then we may develop better conversations and rub along a lot better.

Meanwhile, we have a royal family, an established church and a governmental system which act together to reward privilege. To salve their consciousness for this self-evident iniquity they then adopt a policy of appeasement for fear of upsetting other religious groups whatever their ethnicity. This whole deluded absurdity undermines any hopes we have of releasing the potential of ALL peoples, regardless. Let’s move towards a society that affirms our rights as equal citizens but denies us any right to expect any more or less than these because of our particular version of God.

Tags: Religion and lack of opportunity