John and Lisa's Blue Skies Blog – Soaring with God

In one of my LinkedIn groups, I ran across a post questioning the validity of religion since all it seems to do is calm people’s fears and make people feel “better” than others who are not being “saved.”  The author calls religion a kind of “armor” and claims that, “the day you drop all your armor means you have dropped living out of fear.”  I can see how religion serves those functions for certain people.  However, I posted this response:

I’d say that people don’t need to necessarily drop their religion completely.  Rather, as they mature, people grow beyond the limited mindset of their own religion and their own concept of God to see that all people are brothers and sisters – children of the same God.  We all worship the same God.  Once we begin to realize that, then we’re able to live out of love rather than fear.  “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18).  So for some people, this may mean dropping religion; for other people, it means remaining in a religion but transcending dogmas and artificial boundaries that keep people apart.  It’s possible to become truly mature, open, inclusive Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims (or any other religion).  We’ve all met such people at times.  Such people are often called saints.