Choice of Religion

©1993 by Spider Johnson   back to Essays

If Religion is as important as it is commonly held to be, then a person's choice of Religion must be extremely carefully considered. It should require as many faculties, consideration and resources as possible, if one's everlasting fate hinges on choosing the correct one. In other words, the care of one's soul, one's innermost Self or Being, the spiritual alive-ness of a person (as distinct from his/her body) hinges upon that single most important choice. Therefore, in order to adequately and properly make such a choice, it should come towards the end of one's life, rather than at the beginning, at a time when we have accumulated sufficient experience and wisdom to distinguish sureness from sham, correctness from quackery, faith from folly. This is contrary from society's teachings, which admonish to blindly accept the "faith of our fathers" hardly before we are out of our diapers. Yet this is foolish thinking, unless the point of Religion is to be brainwashed into a predictable pattern of conformity and obedience (!). We would hardly entrust a 10-year old to make important medical decisions for us, or try an important case of law for us--and these decisions concern only our earthly bodies--yet we are expected to make such an important choice as our everlasting, immortal souls at such an age when "baptism" and "becoming a member" is so ceremoniously and gloriously proclaimed? Nay, such a choice needs all our wits and wisdom and resources! Let it come when it is needed, the final decision, the last word! --at our Deaths! (Until then, let us find Joy in the Journey, draw fewer permanent lines, and have more questions than answers.