{mosimage}My friend SMSed me that she had changed her religion. Admitted she is bit a religious girl and she was God fearing. Initially I thought she was joking, but then I learnt that she was really serious and had got converted to another religion. When I called her she started giving a lecture about her new religion and she said that all these time she had been doing wrong being in the religion she was before. What to say, it is her personal opinion, but one thing what I can't understand is "Do religion need to be taken so seriously in a human life?" I personally believe that there is a super natural force above us and there is no denial about it.
The basic evolution of religion is like this:- Once people got civilized they needed a guiding force - the supernatural power was respected and feared, a way to live their life - that's how religion was developed and they wanted to give a form to the superpower - that's how physical form & name of God came into existence. To avoid children doing mistakes we used to say "God will punish if you commit wrong". After a certain age we teach the same child "Love is God" eliminating the initial fear we developed with them. To teach the people the way to live and set an example various epics with incidents around various Gods as characters were written. The epics depicted the culture & ethos of the country & locality the ambience was set. If you had noticed the ambience never extended to the other "worlds".
Since at that time there was literally no communication between the groups and ignorance about the existence of other parts of the world, every culture developed their own set of codes and religions to follow among them. May be if our ancestors had the communication facilities at that time, chances are there that there might be a single religion being followed all over the world.
But. .. the years later passed by, the intention of the religion had been totally misinterpreted and manipulated by the ignorant as well as cunning religious leaders. The sub sects in each religion evolved only due to the differences among the leaders about what to follow. What that was framed as a code of life has been transformed into a communal identity. No God or religion preaches to kill the fellow human beings. No God will tolerate the amount of atrocities and hatred in the name of following them. At the end we all had forgot the purpose why the religions were developed.
If you notice the stories of the Gods, we can find that most of them follow a similar pattern. God incarnates in the poor / noble households and in their life they make the rich and powertul realize that simplicity and humbleness makes one's life complete. All the good heared simple souls who suffer initially were made to achieve bigger to instigate the confidence among the suffering people that their day will come, so don't lose the hope. But we tend to take all the trivial points reflected at that time of culture for our reference.
Don't get offended, as per my knowledge Jesus never married, but in the west where Christianity is being followed majorly the practices of divorce, adultery, casual sex are prevalent. In Hinduism most of the Gods are two wivest may be if those stories were written at this time & mileu, may be with the current cost of living, they can't afford to have more than one wife, so the writers would have made them with single wife.
So religion is just a code to live and choose the best points from them. Don't go behind the trivial and things that can't be followed as example. At the end of the day, being a good human only counts. Not as in which religion you lived. If that's the case we might not have a Mother Teresa or Vinobha Bhave. Do something to your surrounding, society and fear I respect to God, rather than fighting for the religious identity.
){kind=link}