Member-only story
Religion is a House
Enter at your own risk
Religion is a house with a door that has a sign on it that says “Come in.” Beyond that door is a different world — of rules wrapped in doctrine that shouts “freedom” from shuttered mouths. A world that offers answers on one condition — that you pay the ultimate price of abnegation in return for peace and happiness. Oftentimes it will threaten you subtly with condemnation … but it never says this at the door.
At the door, Religion will offer you a new robe and tell you to shed your old self. It will offer you faith in return for your brain, launder it and return it to you wholly effaced. When you attempt to question, it will offer you a vacuous rejoinder that reminds you that to question is to doubt, and that doubt is the cardinal sin. As you walk through its corridors, you will see others like you, samefully robed, welcomed into the fold with pomp and the promise of finality to life’s woes and worries. Only if you could look deep into the eyes of the cheering crowd and see … but in your new robes, with your blank mind you’d never be able to see. As you thread the labyrinth, you will come across many others, searching for meaning like you, and you will soon discover that you are the crowd. You will also discover that the house of religion, though small from the outside, is a yawning insatiable chasm. The ones that came before you will offer you…
