by Ernest Smartt

Created on: July 10, 2008

Independence and the hindrance of religion

Religion sets boundaries. It sets boundaries for how we live in a secular world, and it sets boundaries for how we live out our moral and ethical lives within the religion.

Religion is the broad-brush term used for what is often truly a personal relationship with God or a higher being. Most of us cannot speak for all religions. It might be a bold statement to say we can speak for any religion. However, we can speak for our own personal relationships with God, or the higher being we have chosen to follow.

INDEPENDENCE

Regarding religion in general, if a person is very personally involved in a particular religion it can certainly bring for them a form of independence. It usually involves a form of faith. Faith gives a person a freedom to take risks, to live in a particular way, even when it seems contrary to how others live. Depending on the religion, it can be a very private thing, or it can be something that involves actively living it out in the secular world. Either way, being active in a religion can give a person a sense of freedom and courage and boldness as he converses with others, walks out his daily life, and as he makes tough decisions.

By faith we can seek to concur the world around us. By having a supreme being who we believe is there for us, we can take some risks that we might not ever take if we thought we had to figure it our all by ourselves. There is this sense that the Supreme being is watching over and protecting us. Of course this would not be classified as independence necessarily because it would be a form of dependence on the Supreme. However, regarding the secular world, it produces a freedom, or independence in one's lifestyle.

In the Christian religion, for example, the believer has certain ethical and moral beliefs that he feels he must live by, and his faith in that religion will give him strength, and reason to live out that lifestyle. He can feel free to not cheat the customer if the company uses deception to make sales, or such. He can do this because he has been taught in that religion a set of rights and wrongs to follow. There is something about having the religious teachings, and believing them to be true, that offers freedom and courage to live it out at any cost.

HINDRANCE

Often religion hinders us from doing what we really want to do. It seems to have boundaries for behavior. Sometimes we would rather those boundaries not be there.

Religion also has rules that are often contrary to what

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