a long riff on ethics and religion

I am a social anarchist. I believe in the good of each of us. I don’t think that religion makes us better people. I don’t think that fear of retribution makes us better people. I think that shame makes us worse people and that traditional religion creates a lot of shame in the world. I think that shame drives all kinds of ‘sinful’ behaviors by defining natural behaviors as sinful. The shame that arises from your being labeled sinful drives people into behaviors they wouldn’t choose if left to express their natural longings and desires safely.

Religion should be a place for us to discover our own ethical and moral compass rather than to be given an arbitrary one written for a life and time very different from our own. Religion should be a context where we can explore, as individuals and as community, what the right choices are for our own hearts and for ways to make the world a better place. Religion should support advocacy and a better life for all. It should help us find a way to live a life in tune with what we know to be right.

I don’t need a religion to tell me what is right. I need a religion to help me live a life in integrity. I’ll use a simple example: “Thou shall not steal.” Do I need the ten commandments to tell me that theft is a bad thing? I don’t think so. I don’t want others to steal from me and I don’t feel good if I steal from others. I do not feel in integrity with the world if I have taken something that I have not earned nor returned value for. It is about being in balance with others. So, at the most primary level taking the property without their consent (as a gift or exchange) is wrong. How about less clear territory than direct theft? I try to make choices on the side of integrity, but I stumble and sometimes the answers are not clear. I have my religious community to help find my integrity. As the result of the community dialogue, I find that I try not to steal in many places in my life from the simple to the abstract: I tell the clerk when she makes a change error in my favor. I try to pay the true value of what I purchase, by not purchasing from manufacturers who exploit labor, either here or abroad. I consider ways to return value to the earth in equal measure to what I take for shelter, food, luxury. I consider how and why I drive and arrange my life so I don’t consume more fuel or other resources than I need. I try to live so that I do not steal property or habitat from the other creatures I share this planet with. My list could continue, but these are the implications of living a life of non-stealing (as the Buddhists would say) or living by the eighth commandment. While these religious traditions give us a guideline for living ethically, I believe that the guideline comes forth naturally from finding ways to live in amiably with our global community. I do not need the threat of hell to teach me this lesson. And if we look at the world around us I do not see any evidence that religious creed results in a less theft. Our commander-in-chief while agreeing in the most simple interpretation of the commandment, does not live by in a global sense, we as a nation continue to steal and plunder the wealth of other nations with a rhetoric that asserts ‘might is right.’ Far from any ethical compass that arises simply from reflection on living amiably in community