It has been a long time since I've written and I want to start this blog up again.
I have some thoughts on religion I want to share today, and lately so much has been changing for me, that I have barely been able to recall my past self. I'm going to go over some thoughts here because I just can't keep them straight anymore.
If you don't already know, I'm Mormon. Born and raised in a family of Mormons (LDS). My family members over the years have decided one by one to go their own ways from religion and I was the last of my sibling left hanging on to Mormonism. I thought I was right, and I fought to the end of every conversation. And now I surprise myself by no longer considering myself Mormon.
I can not go over all the massive shifts in my life lately so this is not an "update of my life" blog post, but I do want to go over this one about religion because it brings out the topic which I was studying on today. The main thing you'll need to know about my life right now is that I'm dating a Muslim (Islamic faith) and have been asked by him to simply look into the faith of Islam and to make my own mind up. Which is what I'm doing.
Today at the book store while browsing for different book I couldn't find, a small, thin, green book stood out to me. It's title reads, "Islam Is..." It's an introduction to Islam and it's principles. I purchased it and brought it home. Once I got home, I began to read it and something stood out to me that I need to materialize into words because I can not make sense of it in ANY religion, never mind my boyfriend's (new to me) faith.
The concept is of Monotheism which often (and in the case of this book specifically) states is "devotion of all worship to the One God alone."
I wish I could understand this religious reasoning why God would need worshiping at all. It doesn't make sense to me. I have two issues with it that I can not see a way out of for the life of me. If you have any thoughts, feel free to share. I'm open and interested in others opinions.
First, the statement implies there either exists more than one God, or that we are capable of worshiping more than one God at a time. Since we are assuming there is only one God according to the Christian, Muslim, Zoroastrianism, and Judaism faiths (among many others), the real question is this: what is worship? How do we know if we are worshiping something other than the one God?
And secondly, I don't know why we need to worship God at all. I know this may seem to any believer to be total heresy, which I can understand because believe me, I've been there. I was a believer, not long ago.
What is the purpose of believing that God needs worship? In order to worship God, we'd have to know God existed and to whom we were giving of our worship. And yes, with the assumption that God created all things, there is reason enough to worship Him, but what does worship mean? And why does He need it? In order to relate to it, I can only draw from my own experiences, and my experience has been that I don't need praise or worship when I create a work of art or a science project. It's enough for me to admire my own work or share with others if I like. Why would God need worship? Isn't He perfect? Isn't He whole enough? Because He commands it? Why? Why does God need simplistic mortals to worship Him? Doesn't He have angels who do that? Doesn't He have enough self esteem that He doesn't need it?
So, if God doesn't need US to worship HIM, maybe the instruction exists for OUR sake. Maybe worshiping God somehow benefits us? If so, how? It begs the question as to what worship IS. Is worshiping simply acknowledging the existence of someone or something else? Is worshiping an act of singing, praying or dancing? Is worship an emotion, a state of being, a mindset? What is it? Is worship the act of giving gratitude? If so, I can see why we would worship, because having gratitude is scientifically proven to be amazingly beneficial for us, so why call it worship? Why not say only, "Give thanks to God"? That one makes sense. I don't think God needs us to worship Him. If we did not exist, God would not suddenly DIE because there was no one to worship Him.
So what is worship, and why is it such a BIG deal to worship only God? Is worship all consuming? If so, isn't that excessive and off balance? Isn't everything that is off balance also strictly forbidden in these religions? I thought the point of religion was to provide instructions for balance. So how is worship balance? Isn't the connotation one of obsession?
Totally open to thoughts.
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