“What is the harm of religion?” One would be hard pressed to come up with more of an ignorant question than that…

If you had not been brought up in the Christian and Catholic faith, what would your reaction be to learning about how the Catholic church was complicit during the time of Hitler’s genocide of the Jews?

What would your reaction have been, had you not been taught that you HAD to ‘believe’ in the New Testament or you’d go to hell, when you learned about the same genocidal behavior and enslavement perpetrated by the Christian Catholic “New World” explorers on Native Americans here, when those Native Americans welcomed those explorers but refused to convert to Christianity?

Let’s not just pick on the Christian “faith”…let’s make sure to be fair and equal opportunity-minded in this long overdue, honest discussion about “faith”…

Had you not been brought up as a Jew, and taught that you had to believe the Torah and the Old Testament, how would you react to learning about the SAME genocidal behavior perpetrated on all “non Jews” they referred to as Gentiles or ‘heathens’ and ‘pagans’?

How would you react upon learning that the very atrocious act of genocide that Hitler perpetrated on the Jews during World War 2, the Jews routinely practiced in the name of their “faith in God” against all those they sought to conquer, as they proclaimed according to their “faith”, that they were the CHOSEN RACE of God. (See Joshua Chapter 6 for just one of countless historical examples of that genocidal practice – killing every Gentile man, woman and child, and taking their gold and silver, etc – that the Jewish faith claims was ‘ordained’ by God.)

Does that ‘chosen’ or ‘preferred race’ sound familiar? That belief is still rooted in Jewish teaching today, found all throughout the Torah and Old Testament, being allowed to go unchecked because it is their ‘sacred culture’…it is their ‘faith’…As though such obvious bigotry, displayed in living color with a history of such genocide and violence, must remain off limits as long as it is considered religious ‘faith’.

And it isn’t an excuse to say, ‘Well they aren’t killing and committing genocide here in 2019’. That would be like if the Germans were still actively believing they were God’s chosen, ‘preferred race’…Still believing in the things that Hitler taught, teaching it to their kids in Sunday services, but they tried to make the excuse that they aren’t currently practicing it the same way today.

One is not an anti-Semite for saying enough is enough with the fraud of ‘organized faith’ that has been allowed to run rampant for thousands of years by multiple violators…Christianity, Judaism and Islam being the chief cause of more division, bigotry, bloodshed, genocide, and wars IN THE NAME OF GOD & FAITH than any other reason throughout history.

ENOUGH! It’s time to wake up. Enough with those weak minded conforming sheep who so ignorantly like to say ‘What’s the harm of religion?’ Are you kidding me?? Forest Gump could wipe the floor with anyone who would ask such a mentally challenged question!

Let’s get back to my equal opportunity examples…If you had not been brought up as a Muslim, how would you react to the patriarchal Koran teachings by Muslims that oppress women, teach that they are not equal to men and treat them as second class citizens, teaching that women are to be subservient to men, and that they cannot be in positions of authority over men, especially in Mosque worship practices?

If you had not been brought up being taught and brainwashed with such a faith, how would you react upon encountering it? Would you see such teachings presented as being in the name of God as nothing but atrocious man-made bigotry? Of course you would.

Would you see such a faith as HARMLESS? Of course you would not.

Then tell me, WHY do you so hypocritically remain silent in the face of the same kind of obvious patriarchal, man-made teachings about women found in both the Old and New Testament of the Bible, aggressively practiced and taught by the Catholic church for centuries? To do so is only to enable it.

For example, “The Garden of Eden” story that Jews and Christians both embrace, with a fundamental part of that story being that Eve (the woman) was the CAUSE of ‘original sin’, and that Adam (the man) only ate of the apple because Eve the ‘seductress’ tempted him so, and largely because of her ‘weaker minded’ status.

For another example, Paul’s writing in his epistles that reinforced and taught the common Christian faith that women were made by God to be subservient to men, could not be in positions of authority over men in the church, and could not hold the position of a ‘pastor’ under any circumstance (his word used in that scripture being “Bishop”)

You can quickly see the fraud in the ‘faith’ of the Muslim teaching, but you hypocritically ALLOW it in the Christian/Catholic teaching??

Same thing with the man-made hate masquerading as God’s word found all throughout the Bible (Old and New Testaments) and the Koran, toward all those in the LBGT community.

You would immediately recognize such hate if you weren’t brought up as a Muslim, and discovered that the Koran scriptures routinely called for gay people to be seen as an abomination to God worthy of being stoned to death. But yet many of you look the other way and ignore the very similar condemnation toward gay people in the Bible. WHY?

Understand this: “FAITH” as it has been polluted, falsely defined, misused and abused by power-seeking men throughout history thus far, is the primary obstacle standing in the way of a worldwide awakening of GENUINE LOVE and PEACE.

“Faith” is ONLY sacred when it does NOT have any form of bigotry or condemnation toward others in its fundamental teaching. Otherwise, it is a dangerous and divisive “fraud”, and it is time we stopped teaching that divisive fraud to our children out of family or cultural tradition.

Please re-read that last paragraph and let it sink in, as this is critical to understand, not just for the purposes of comprehending real spiritual truth, but as it relates to our number one purpose here, that being the creation of peace and universal love for one another on this planet.

And trust me, we CAN create peace on this planet…We CAN do it in our lifetime…

But we have to recognize the time has come to wake up to the divisiveness of the man-made fraud that is masquerading as faith in the top organized religions that have been so obsessed with controlling the masses in the interest of obtaining world power and dominance.

Is there a sacred faith? Yes, most assuredly there is. You and I were meant to awaken and be ambassadors for the faith that has NO CONDEMNATION toward others in the name of “God”…

You and I were meant to be creators of peace and love UNCONDITIONALLY, recognizing that all members of human diversity are an equal PART of what “God” is, not some of them being the CHOSEN ONES, and others being less equal or in any way less preferred or separate from the others because of what they spiritually believe.

Such a ‘we are the chosen ones’ teaching, or ‘we are the only ones who are saved’ is an immediate red flag revealing nothing but divisive, man-made fraud in the name of God.

When we awaken to this healthy faith that sees all of us in all our ethnic diversity as holy brothers and sisters, all of us being a PART of what God is…we awaken to a responsibility to BEHAVE HOLY and LOVING toward one another and toward ourselves.

This includes waking up to the holy, healthy way we should naturally know to conduct ourselves, in being an example to young people, not to run around using our bodies like an amusement park, doing recreational drugs, using sex irresponsibly, committing crimes, etc., etc.

Understand another important point: Organized religion is NOT the source of morals, though it so hypocritically tries to claim that it is.

The GOLDEN RULE – Treat others the way YOU would want to be treated – is immediately understood by all of humanity irrespective of religion – even ATHEISTS – as the source of moral behavior. And that basic communal, universal understanding of The Golden Rule was around long before the ‘Big Three’ organized religions entirely bastardized that simple teaching of unconditional love and respect toward your fellow man.

Organized religion and its fraud masquerading as faith routinely teaches practices as I have described above, that treat others who are different or with diverse beliefs and understandings of how to seek the Divine, in the exact OPPOSITE way they would like to be treated – with a ‘faith’ that teaches those ‘unbelievers’ are worthy of eternal torture for not converting to their beliefs.

THIS KIND OF BIGOTRY IN THE NAME OF FAITH AND GOD CAN NO LONGER BE TOLERATED, just like we don’t tolerate the bigotry of the KU KLUX KLAN. But even now such bigoted religious beliefs of Christians, Jews and Muslims are running rampant and unchecked in our country.

Many who may be reading this right now are continuing to teach their children the lie that the Bible is the ‘word of God’, and you are either believing the things I have described above that are all throughout the Bible, or you are looking the other way and pretending those condemning, bigoted, sexist and homophobic teachings aren’t there, when you know they are.

In either case, there’s no excuse for such an ignorant mentality taught to children today in the name of faith. As I said above, being a conforming sheep to such ‘faith’ and just going along with it only enables the division and bigotry to continue, and therein lies the danger that organized religion has caused for too long as a result. ENOUGH with such destructive, divisive lies in the name of God!

With the 2020 presidential election just around the corner, we are currently approaching a critical turning point in our nation’s history that has unprecedented global implications. There’s no excuse for the hypocrisy by many Trump supporting Republican Catholics, Jews and evangelical Christians, who have shamefully created and enabled this national disgrace we have endured over the last couple of years.

Obviously, fundamental priorities like universal health care, better pay and jobs for the working and middle class, and a strong worldwide partnership to address the existential global crisis of climate change are important…

BUT, we need a strongly ethical and moral candidate – someone with more life experience than under 40 years – who is committed FIRST and foremost to the most dire and pressing existential global crisis we are facing: The need to create not just national, but global PEACE & DEMOCRACY, strongly leading by the long abandoned, age old example of The Golden Rule…

Strongly leading by extending that benevolent Golden Rule FAITH in HUMANITY – not in divisive religion – to ALL of our global partners, building trust by FORMALLY inviting them to unite together with us as a true global community, on this our shared home we call Earth, as equal brothers and sisters, all with the same universally shared needs and dreams.

Real faith is not a dividing religion…it is a UNITING, unconditional love and respect for ALL of our brothers and sisters who share this planet together with us.

No one is more elite than others because of their ‘faith’. To believe so is bigotry in the name of God. No one is more ‘saved’ in the eyes of God than others. To believe so is bigotry in the name of God. No one is more ‘chosen’ or ‘preferred’ than others because of their ‘faith’. To believe so is bigotry in the name of God. Teaching such beliefs to children as ‘faith’ in the name of God is inexcusable.

As the saying goes, “We are ALL in this TOGETHER”. And NOW is the time we finally started acting like it as we repair this shameful damage to our democratic ideals and principles in 2020.

Connie Bryan

(Connie Bryan is a writer in Sacramento, CA…Check out all of her material on her website and blog at www.conniebryan.com)