Religion is Destroying the World

My marketing instructor couldn't help but notice my t-shirt (fom SIAN clothing) this morning which depicts a plane dropping bombs. The bombs have this inscription on them: "Religion Is Destroying The World"

Some people are already familiar with the word play and semantics embedded in the message, but some people aren't--which sparks a good discussion usually, and also has the potential to really bug people or even actually offend them.

Anyway, he read my shirt and was kind of like: "Probably shouldn't ask you about that one" in a jokey way (he's a funny guy).

..and I responded with a sort of "it's not what you think it means." So I felt I should send a brief (relatively for me) email that explained the message I was presenting. Here's the email:

Sorry to burden you with the following (haha), but I feel like it should be clarified.

I feel like I should clarify the meaning of my t-shirt this morning ("Religion is Destroying The World"): It's a loaded phrase with lots of meanings. I'll try to keep it brief (haha-I could talk about this stuff forever): First off, I am an evangelical christian--now we have that out of the way.

1: It's addressing the fact that religions are often responsible for extensive injustice and wrong-doing , such as the caste-system in hinduism, passive non-action in Buddhism (extreme self centeredness), jihadist purging and human rights violations in Islam, imperialist superiority in some christian circles (crusades, materialism) etc.

2: Dogmatic aggression. This is a way of realizing that extreme beliefs in any direction often take on religious patterns--such as atheism or agnosticism--or essentially the belief(s) that there is no rule "but my own." In any case, I lump the religious prejudice and persecution in China, India, and Africa (against Christians) under this category. [Not to mention the agression and persecution against non-religious groups, such as ethnic cleansing]. The Chinese gov't in particular is very abusive toward churches that are not under the state-approved religion.

3: This is the primary meaning I see in the message (the umbrella over the previous two as well): The separation (within the christian church) between religion and spirituality. In other words, there are a lot of individual christians who do the religious stuff (like going to church, keeping commandments etc) but do not acknowledge the (what i believe to be) real and living deity behind the religion. I call it the "push button" christianity. When christians focus on the motions without love for God. This results in a dysfunctional relationship with our creator, and sends a mixed message to outsiders looking in.

That's basically it.

I hope I didn't bore you or weird you out with my spiritual mumbo-jumbo. :)

thanks again for a great class!!!!! I loved it!! I'm recommending that anyone considering it go for it.