by Tamara Haddock

Created on: June 20, 2009   Last Updated: June 17, 2011

Many people believe to be a good person you have to be religious. This is not the truth. Religion is not synonymous with good, or the other way around. If that were true, you would never hear of church scandals, which are very common. Everyone has heard of at least one situation where the members of the church were doing things they should not have. It is not just the larger churches involved. There are small town churches around the world that have high-ranking members constantly getting into one problem after another.

Being good means that you try to do what you feel is right. The reason most people think you have to be religious to be good comes from the fact most people have learned the difference in right and wrong from the church they attended as a child.  They believe their moral system came directly from the church, so one who is not religious would not have the same moral system. This is a flawed logic but it does make sense.

This belief is wrong because there are other ways that a person learns the difference between right and wrong. Observing the world around them, family having strong moral core or sometimes, their moral code evolves from events in their lives. If someone hurts them, they will believe it is wrong and they will never hurt someone else the way they have been hurt.

Being religious on the other hand means more than just going to church each week. To be religious is to have faith in your god and going about your daily life in a manner that shows it. More than one person has taken being called religious as an insult because they have heard it used to describe an over the top insincere form of worship. In reality truly being religious takes a degree of dedication that most people do not have.

In itself being religious is a way of showing faith. If a person is religious in something, they are never faltering, always doing their best to live up to their beliefs. It is never easy to put that much of yourself into something; to make the complete commitment to live by the religion you have chosen even if you do not completely agree with all of its doctrine.

While most religions do promote a moral structure that makes being a bad person go against their faith it does not automatically make everyone of their belief good. Many people are good people without being religious. Many people are religious in practice without really being a good person. The two are not mutually inclusive. If you take the time to think about what it means to you to be a good person, you may find that religion has very little to do with your values.

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