A Young Woman's Nasty Relationship with Religion

 

    

What is religion? 

What does it mean to me?

What does it mean to life, to the world? 

For the longest time I have been wandering, lost. I have been wandering out on lush meadows in the fog. I have been pushing my way through tall grasses, speckled with wildflowers and brambles that gently tear at my skin. I do not notice them much. 

I know what it all means, and I know what it all does. I want it to help me. I want to have that other side to myself. But how can I when I know I cannot ever convince myself to believe in it?

Am I missing out on something wonderful? 

If I do not fear God does that make me the one with the power?

As a woman that sounds appealing. Healing. 

Why do I yearn for religion? Do I not have all the answers? Am I missing out on the whimsy of it? Why am I so tormented?

But how can I admire the worship of a god (who is a man) and fear him if I do not feel his love? How can I worship a god when so many of his male creations, in the image of him, are so horrible to women? Sick, vile creatures. 

Are we not owed love and peace for what we offer the world? Are we not owed love and peace for simply existing? We create life, God does not. We carry knowledge, we carry souls and hearts and wounds and sense and minds just like men do. In fact, more than men do. We are smarter, more wise, more compassionate, more capable of loving our neighbours. 

Is this not something God wants other humans to appreciate? To love in us? Are we simply baby machines to God?

I have come to believe that God and Abrahamic religions perpetuate male-dominating ideals. I believe that they prop up the crumbling patriarchy, keep women where they want us. I believe with my entire soul that there is less "good" to religion than most people would readily admit, and that it has actually always been a way for people to harm each other and control women. 

How am I to believe in a system that undermines women so much as these religions do? How am I expected to find love for a god who has brought so much unreciprocated agony, suffering, and sick, perverted contempt for women? My own kind. Women I know, women I know deserve a different world. 

It is straight-up propaganda. 

This is why I have never understood it. 

I went to church often as a child. I am not a born and raised atheist. But religion, especially Abrahamic religions, are permissive to heteronormative, patriarchal control and perpetuate the dominance and authority over women's bodies and lives that should not be tolerated in the modern age. 

How am I to be expected to believe and love something like that? Would one love the oppressive sermons of a dictator?