The Old Testament Altar
Was Holy
Not Sanitized

Every religion promotes some version of Separation and this isn’t unique to religion. Even social groups impose restrictions on their members. If you want to be a member, you must abide the rules.

With churches, the rules have a moral element. It usually involves a series of Can’t-Dos that aren’t just bad for the group but just bad, as in immoral. Things like you can’t go there or do that or wear that or eat that or say that or think that and so on.

Churches can’t legally tell you who to vote for but they usually find a way to make their opinions known.

As a rule we don’t like being told what we can and can’t do but once we’re convinced that following the rules makes us somehow acceptable, we acquiesce. Fitting in is important.

It’s also true that rules like this on a church level are tolerable because if you don’t like the restrictions in one, you can always move to another.

In recent years, though, religious restrictions have been creeping ever closer to the State level and that’s a problem. Once the State has fully incorporated religious rules, there’s no place you can go.

You don’t have to be religious to know what I’m talking about.

But my focus is not so much on the specific restrictions but the bad spirit they engender in adherents. The people who observe these rules “religiously” become very negative, critical and condemning toward those who don’t. Not just toward the people in the church but everyone. They consider their ideas the gold standard and anyone who falls short is not just different or wrong, but heretical.

History is full of examples. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union loudly protested the consumption of alcohol and played a significant role in establishing the 18th Amendment which prohibited the production, sale and consumption of alcohol for everyone. It went from church level to nationwide. No citizen was allowed to drink.

Christians aren’t the only ones guilty of this.

Some majority Muslim countries (Iran, Iraq, etc.) impose heavy social restrictions on their citizens, maintain distant (at best) relationships with other countries (even Muslim countries) and consider anyone who isn’t them, Satan.

The two groups are very different. They have little in common but one idea they share is their hatred for alcohol and both approached the issue with the same vehemence.

The symbol associated with the WCTU protest was the hatchet. Heart warming they were not.

Those are extreme examples but that same spirit is only just below the surface in many religious groups. When it comes to differences of opinions, religions manage relationships at some level of DefCon. If anyone questions the rules, attack-readiness rises several notches. [Read more…] about 10 Ways Religious Separation Is Not What You Thought