Ask any American what the First Amendment to the Constitution is about, and in most cases you’ll hear: “Freedom of speech!” I have asked that question a few times with people and, invariably, they brought up freedom of speech. Even people of faith seem to forget that it is also about freedom of religion. And freedom of religion is mentioned first in the amendment, before freedom of speech, and then it finishes with freedoms of the press and assembly and to petition the government.
What has happened? Why do we forget such an important right, the right that is stated at the very beginning of all the amendments? The freedom to worship and learn from our Creator, without any dictates from the government, is an essential way to ensure that any good, any light that exists in religion is accessible to the people. It is that freedom that makes it possible for someone to recognize darkness within a religious group and freely choose to look for light from other religious sources. It was also this freedom of religion that should have helped ensure that the American people would always be a people striving to keep light in their lives and throughout the nation.
While there are probably causes too numerous to mention for a decline in faith, certainly when Charles Darwin learned of the concept of Natural Selection and later developed the Theory of Evolution, people found in these reason to doubt that a creator did anything to produce life, since we now had a claim of how we and all life forms got here. There should be no blame, of course, for Mr. Darwin reporting what he had discovered and what he thought it might imply. But people too easily accepted the scientific ideas as a replacement for faith and religion. In time, people fought to get prayer and other religious artifacts removed from public schools. We are now at a point where there are organized groups that oppose most anything religious in any public place. But removing religion from our nation will never solve problems that have a moral basis. It has been religion that has given us the strongest moral foundation, teaching us better ways to live as communities.
So I would say it’s time that we take religion more seriously as a society. Let’s find out what the holy books have to say. I read once a statement in a book that said America was “a nation that believes God has spoken but can’t be bothered to listen to what God has to say.” Let’s don’t be such a nation. As I’ve said in previous posts, it’s time to return back to our religious roots and look for the light there. If there’s too much darkness, look to another religious group or source. The goal of Lightward Bound is to increase the light in our nation (and for that to spread to the world). But an important part of keeping that light is for everyone to be continually seeking the light in religious sources. That is a major reason I have chosen to dedicate Lightward Bound posts to faith, religion, and spirituality during April and May. It is the job of religious congregations to spread light, but people need to be present and participating, for this to happen.
Some forms of light that I believe come from many religions are love or caring about others, truth, hope, living in a clean, upright way and so on. These are good for people and for society. First and foremost, though, is loving people or having a charitable nature toward people. When we can treat everyone with respect, when we routinely take into account how our actions will affect others, when we can forgive them for things they’ve done (even things that hurt us), when we have a natural willingness to help others that we don’t know or who are different from us, then we are part of building a better world, a world with more light. Living with this caring nature makes us feel good ourselves, but it also lifts up others around us. It brightens lives. How would the world be, if everywhere we turned, people treated us decently and seemed to care? This is part of the vision of Lightward Bound.
Please join in and help spread the light!
Emil