Did You Inherit Your World View?
Interesting Questions Have Interesting Answers
Organized religions are cultural constructs.
There is no directive printed in our hearts that guides us to the feet of an almighty being. We come into this world quite by chance and just as randomly inherit a culture.
That culture will determine our world view going forward.
Across the world there are many organized religions. Flip a coin as to which religion is the true religion. Even if a person wants to attempt to experience a spiritual life for themselves, they’ll never know if they’ve chosen the true religion. It’s risky business to even try to identify the one true god.
What if you’re wrong. Then what?
The purpose of organized religion is to define cultural norms, cultural expectations, and solidify cultural conformity. It always produces a hierarchy of power.
Down through the ages, religious leaders have wielded as much power as the king.
Even in a country like the United States, where we claim that our forefathers designed a deliberate separation between the church and state, we’ve never really managed to accomplish that separation. Oh, sure, when push comes to shove, perhaps in a legal sense the division has sometimes been supported. In our everyday lives, however, Christianity (our nationalized religion) has had free rein to influence, prohibit, and sanction.
Getting a divorce, an abortion, praying in public, swearing on the Bible, getting married, even our designated national holidays are heavily influenced by our Christian traditions.
If you don’t think that Christianity has been nationalized, then ask yourself why we’ve never had an atheist or a Muslim president. Do you really think they’d be allowed to fill the top political position in the country?
Maybe someday but not yet.
Our culture is permeated by and steeped in religious expectations. When the church didn’t condone divorce, the state made a divorce difficult to attain. When the church didn’t support mixed marriages, the government made laws against these unions. When the church prohibited abortion, the government made laws to deny women the right to do so.
Why? Because human behavior is far easier to control with cultural expectations than with laws. People rarely question the culture they inherited at birth. Everyone embraces it and so it seems natural.
It doesn’t have to make sense or be fair.
You can see the same predictable outcomes all across the world. The specifics of the cultural constructs may differ, but the willingness of citizens to comply remains the same. Our world view is determined by our culture.
We think other cultures are weird not ours.
People from other cultures, however, think we’re the weird ones. For example, a culture where women don’t wear clothes from the waist up is shocking to us, but not to the child that grew up seeing a woman’s breasts. To them, the breast is no different than an elbow. Their culture didn’t identify the breast as a sexual object, hide it behind layers of clothes, and ostracize people who dared to show their breasts in public. Even though the true purpose of a breast is to feed babies, in a culture that has sexualized the female breast, feeding a baby in public is stigmatized.
Both cultures view one another as weird, however.
Both cultures tend to think that their cultural constructs are superior. A child growing up in either one will rarely question their culture. They don’t even know they have a choice. And, if they do question anything, they’re immediately labeled a misfit. The price of being a misfit in any culture can be steep. Who will hire you, marry you, be your friend?
Religion is no different.
All religions are cultural constructs. They may have morphed and changed, been tweaked and altered, but in the end they remain part of the tribe’s drive to control the people.
Religious beliefs mingle with political aspirations, even influence secular laws, whether we want them to or not.
They influence national rituals, holidays, the way we celebrate birth, weddings, and death, even our notion of right or wrong. It’s impossible to separate our myths and traditions from our national identities because they’re so subtly sprinkled throughout our existence. Who we think we are and what we think about life and the world we live in was handed to us at birth. We rarely witnessed anyone doing anything differently. When we did, however, we stared in disbelief and utter shock.
We always stare at anyone who is different.
Our parents tell us not to stare, but even they are peeking through their fingers. How odd that person looks, speaks, and dresses. How strange their food smells. How peculiar are their religious practices. Look at the way they celebrate their holidays. My god! They are strange. I don’t even know if I would want to live next door to them let alone allow my son to marry one of their girls.
Once I started to compare cultures, it was natural that I’d end up comparing religious beliefs as well.
It was one of the most beneficial exercises that I’d ever experienced. Little by little, it erased the reverence I held for my own cultural beliefs. I started to recognize myths and superstitions for what they truly were, cultural constructs created out of thin air.
Mine were no more authentic or viable than anyone else’s.
Eventually, I took it to the next step. I recognized that many cultural constructs are harmful to me. That my natural curiosity and imagination is often squelched by the culture. And, most importantly, diversity is far more important than we are told.
In fact, diversity is life. It makes life on this planet possible.
I gave up the religion that I inherited many years ago. Buried it along with old books, bloody crosses, holy water, chanting, sitting on hard pews, and tithing a portion of my earnings. I had outgrown my religion by way of my own curiosity and creativity.
I said goodbye to religion and soon thereafter questions, ideas, dreams, and creative thinking filled that space in my head.
I have never regretted it. I didn’t get to pick my culture, but it wouldn’t have made any difference if I’d inherited a different culture. I would soon be living a life that my family and friends, teachers and religious leaders, kings and emperors largely accepted as the only way to lead a life. I’d still be forced to question the world view that I was handed if I truly wanted personal autonomy.
Once I started asking questions, I’d need to decide how much conformity I was willing to offer to belong.
I’ve given up religion. I tell my religious friends that it’s not as bad as they think. I point out that they, too, have turned their backs on lots of religions. We’re more alike than they think.
I just believe in one less god than they do, their god.
Teresa is a retired educator, author, world traveler, and professional myth buster. You can find her books on Amazon.
