When I was a little girl, my father used to tell me that if I ate my vegetables I would grow hair on my chest. Although the idea of having hair on my chest was not altogether pleasing to me, I ate my vegetables anyway, knowing that that is what Dad wanted. Perhaps it would not have been such a chore to eat my veggies if he had told me they would make strong muscles, or help me to see better, or help my hair to be shiny. Dad knew that the truth about the peas and carrots wasn't as interesting and he thought that he'd have to say something silly to get me to eat them.
The majority of the world seems to be comfortable in religions where other people are constantly telling them what to do and what to believe. I have been in several facets of Christianity and Islam and have found myself blindly following the "rules" without truly knowing why, and that bothers me. It bothers me that for so many years of my life, I have mechanically floundered around after the words of other PEOPLE and not listened to the voice of the God/ess. I won't say that that time was wasted for me, as we all have to experience life in different ways, but I will say that I did a LOT of searching. I came away from these faith with a lot of doubt, a lot of fear and a lot of guilt and shame.
One of the things I find that I have the most issue with right now, as I am still involved with Islam (and because of my circumstances always will be), is that leaders of religions say devastating things to get people to follow by fear. In Islam there are so many rules, so many "don'ts", so many people saying "we believe such and such" and not actually doing it. For example, I work in a religious school. Every morning, one of the teachers gets up in front of the assembled students to give a mini lesson. (His subject all year was about judgment day, from the trumpets to hellfire--AACK!!) A week ago, he made the comment how "Our religion has a lot of respect for women..." yadda, yadda...By the end of the week he had made the comment that because of backbiting, there are more women in hell than men. (WTF?!?) I was confused, and I suppose my second graders, who really didn't need to hear that (or the entire judgment day/hellfire thing all year) were also confused. I was also angry that he should "suppose" such a thing. I asked my husband about it, as he is a follower of this religion, and he said, "Someone should fire that guy!" Unfortunately, "that guy" is highly revered as a teacher of the scriptures, even though he can't manage a room full of kids, and wouldn't be fired. However, he is going to be "moving on" in the coming year and will no longer be brainwashing the poor students, but I wonder how much damage he has already done. Will these kids grow up to be searching, too? Will they wonder whether or not God loves them or just wants to punish them? Will they do things they would consider sinful and then rot with guilt for the rest of their lives because of it? It makes me very sad to watch this happen when I have been through it all myself, and know the struggles I've dealt with (and still do).
In my class, I'm required to teach a bit of religious study. I try not to cover subject matter that has anything to do with negative issues. They are after all, second graders. I show them how much Allah loves them and wants them to have the best of everything. I teach them that prayer is very important because it is our way to communicate with the creator. I teach them about the "99 names of God" (seperate aspects of God, much like the idea of the seperate Gods/esses, although I dare not make that comparison!) I teach them "moral etiquette", which is common sense, ("please", "thank you", and the like). I will NEVER teach them that they are going to go to hellfire for one thing or another, because I simply don't believe in it. I will not tell them in any way that Allah is going to punish them for some simple act of nothing. By doing this, I am not only following the school rules, but also honoring God/ess. They don't need to know that I don't follow their faith. They see me as good. But, what's more important, is that they come out of second grade knowing that Allah loves them very much and sees THEM as good, and that is all that matters.
