How Religion Has Missed the Mark

Continued from yesterday…

If you were raised in the church, like me, then you are familiar with sin and its association with guilt. Sin was essentially a label attached to anything we did that was deemed wrong, immoral, or evil. God hates sin, we were told, and is quick to banish us to Hell for eternity for even the smallest thing we do wrong.

But we can escape Hell if we ask for forgiveness from our sin, and then repent and obey the laws of God to become a better person. I want to state that this view about sin is not a universally accepted Christian doctrine. Many also view sin as missing the mark to who we are—unaware of our union with the whole. Nevertheless, a large segment of Christianity adheres to a more punishing narrative of the meaning of sin.

Not surprisingly, obeying the law (or the rules) to become a better person is the ego’s interpretation of the story of the Bible. It’s the ego’s answer to the problem of evil and what’s wrong in the world. But its message is flawed because it reasons that I (or the ego) can be reformed and saved. The ego wants to be reformed and saved from the evil impulses it developed in its unconscious state. But it doesn’t want to come to an end of itself by surrendering to unconditional love.

To be continued tomorrow…

Adapted from section 2 of Awakening To I Am Love by David Youngren