“It is not speech which we should want to know: we should know the speaker.” – Kaushitaki Upanishad

I once was told, “Do not judge a religion by its worst, but only by its best.” While I understand this sentiment, I cannot say I fully agree with it. 

With any widespread religion, there will inevitably be those who twist it to serve their own selfish purposes. No religion is immune to this. But, I would argue, some religions are more susceptible to it than others. 

And a lot of this comes down to a religion’s scriptures. 

Take Islam for example. There are plenty of verses in the Qur’an that not only encourage but command violence against those of other religions. Some of these verses do get taken out of context, and some are intended for self-defense, but it is not hard to use the Word of God to justify heinous acts. 

Christianity has a similar problem. Yes, Jesus spoke of radical love and called his followers to serve others. My disagreements with Christian cosmology and theology aside, this is objectively a wonderful thing to base any system of belief around. 

But the same text calls queer love unnatural. The same text orders wives to “submit” to their husbands’ every demand. Even Jesus called a Gentile woman a “dog” and told her he was only here to save the Jewish people. 

And that’s just from the New Testament. Over the last two thousand years, the Bible has been invoked to justify some truly heinous things. Entire sects of Christianity were either forcibly converted or massacred. Women were accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake. Slavedrivers used scripture to justify the ownership of other human beings – and reading parts of Leviticus, this was less of a stretch than one might think. 

And today, the same scripture is invoked in Christian nationalist circles, alongside a revised version of history claiming that this country is and has always been a Christian one. 

Again, no religion is immune to this, but some are more susceptible than others. There are not many Buddhist radicals or Sikh fundamentalists. There are many, many of these in the world’s two most dominant religions, however. That alone should be cause for reflection. 

Religion must either adapt or move out of the way. It is not that religions are incapable of adapting – Christianity today is far, far different than the early church. One may even call it unrecognizable. It is a matter of whether the religion itself embraces positive change. 

Many churches have, and I commend those congregations with all my heart. Those that are welcoming, inclusive, and use their religion not to subjugate others but to serve them, those people deserve all the best and will truly be rewarded in the afterlife. 

But the reality is that there are also many churches that discourage change and act to root out authenticity. And while it is easy to combat these ideologies with their own scripture, it is even easier to justify such anti-human sentiment with the same scripture. I could wait no longer for Christianity to adapt, so I struck out on my own. 

The heralding of any writing by human hand as divine instruction is dangerous – especially writing that diminishes the human spirit in favor of submission and control.