One Definition of Religion

As one who believes in a loving, cleansing,
forgiving God, and as one who advocates religion
as a cure for the afflictions of the soul,
I am embarrassed by the use of religion to induce
guilt rather than to cure it.

It is so sad to meet people who think of
themselves as deeply religious and to discover
that what they think of as religion is in fact
a childish fear of losing God's love if they ever
do anything against His will.

I believe that the fundamental message of
religion is not that we are sinners because we
are not perfect, but that the challenge of being
human is so complex that God knows better than
to expect perfection from us.

Religion comes to wash us clean of our sense of
unworthiness and to assure us that when we
have tried to be good and have not been as good
as we wanted to be, we have not forfeited
God's love.

To say that God forgives us for our misdeeds is
not a statement about God, about God's
emotional generosity. It is a statement about us.
To feel forgiven is to feel free to step into the
future uncontaminated by the mistakes of the
past, encouraged by the knowledge that we
can grow and change and need not repeat the
same mistakes.

(H. Kushner)

PS. Thanks, Jerry!