Religion
Religion Is Flawed, But My Spirit Isn’t
Religion is flawed.
Not God. Not Jesus. Not the Spirit that shows up at 3am when you’re on the floor. But religion — the buildings, the rules, the men who put themselves between you and the Divine and started charging admission.
I know, because I spent a huge part of my life learning a flawed perception of Jesus.
That’s when I realized: many people spend their whole life learning a flawed perception of Jesus. They spend decades memorizing verses but never meet Love. They learn the clobber passages but never learn compassion. They learn who’s out, but never learn how to sit with someone who’s hurting. They get baptized in water but never in truth.
And some people can’t understand spirituality because religion got there first and poisoned the well. It taught them God was a judge with a gavel, not a mother with open arms. It taught them fear, not freedom. It taught them to argue doctrine but not to feed people.
But some people do understand spirituality. And they’ve come to a greater peace.
I see them. They’re the ones who left the pews but didn’t leave Love. The ones who read Rumi and the Bible and the Tao and see the same thread. The ones who believe God is so big we simply can’t imagine how big — bigger than one book, one building, one man’s sermon. The ones who love the Baháʼí Faith because it says we’re all one human family. The ones who help first and quote scripture never.
I’ve become more spiritual than religious. I love church services online because no one can see me cry and no one can hand me shame with the offering plate. I don’t talk politics or religion anymore because I’ve seen how man uses both to divide.
Religion is flawed because man runs it. And man loves power. Man loves being right. Man loves telling you that your grief means you don’t have faith. That your questions mean you’re backsliding. That your sexuality, your doubt, your depression, your difference — that’s the problem.
But Jesus? The real one? He sat with lepers. He touched the unclean. He told the religious leaders they were whitewashed tombs. He said “love your neighbor” and didn’t add “if they vote like you.”
That Jesus I can believe in. That Jesus gives me peace.
So no, I’m not mad at God. I’m mad at the middlemen. I’m mad that organized religion is responsible for so much mental health trauma, so much self-hatred, so much wasted life spent trying to earn love that was already free.
I keep to myself now. I choose carefully who I let in. I don’t need your theology if your humanity is missing. I don’t need your verse if you don’t have compassion.
Religion is flawed. But Spirit isn’t. And some of us had to lose the first to finally find the second.
