My Morning Thoughts:

I’m not a religious person, and I understand why people are. I don’t think that people are wrong for having or believing in a God/religion. The power of belief is beautiful and real, we all need to believe in something. So this is just my belief.
While binging on a slew of documentaries about sexuality, strife, rags to success, our lovely planet….I thought of something. In my viewings, often there was a call to God for strength, comfort, and guidance. Or a feeling of failure or confusion about God when tragedy occurred.
In the case of children, it is told to them by their parents and trusted adults to pray to God in times of need to ask for his love, strength, and forgiveness.
Having been raised in a Godless (not loveless) household, and now raising my own children this way, it seems to me that what we ask our children to ask of God they should feel safe to ask in us as guardians of their youth. Religion seems to create complacent parenting.
I realize how offensive that sounds and how defensive a religious person might become reading this, it sounds accusing and judgmental. But by complacent, I don’t mean that religious parents don’t do everything they believe to be good for their children, that they don’t diligently involve them in the teachings of their Lord instilling the community of their church and neighbors, that they don’t create a foundation on which they feel their children will grow into good people.
What I mean is religion creates an emotional complacency, that you don’t have to personally deal with another’s pain, fears, or innate sexual nature. That these are God’s children so He will make it right so long as you ask Him and do right by Him. A child doesn’t have years of life experience to have the faith in something so fantastical, no more than the tooth fairy or Santa Claus. They are doing what their parents want. Children know what is physically there, or whose existence is still engrained in our walk of life that it is obvious that something was once there, but no longer, like the Wooly mammoth.
But if every time your child is afraid, or has been emotionally or physically harmed, or has lied or stolen, or has experienced an erection and can’t stop exploring that, or is drawn to the same sex, or falls into addiction, or is working their ass off toward their dreams, why do we send them straight to God? Why don’t we give them the love, the support, the guidance that we have in ourselves as parents and grownups who have lived a life so far and have their experience to share?
The separation of oneself from their emotions creates shame, fear to do wrong and that someone will find out, and that everyone and God will be angry. Shame is not a natural feeling, shame is manmade, created to control our behavior and emotion. It is a debilitating tactic to keep us from exploring beyond. Animals do not feel shame, they do not worry that all the other animals will be angry at them for the things they have done.
Many religions are fear and shamed based, which means to me, that God is manmade.
The spirit of anything is forever, and those to me are the angels that keep us human, and they are forever passing their knowledge onto us the more we live. #freetobelievewhatyouwill