Fifty Shades of Religious Saintliness
Everything we need to know about Religious Submission
With all that Bondage and Discipline relationship, Dominance and Submission, I can sense an uncanny resemblance between Religion and this erotica. Are we voluntarily enjoying this submission? Feels like another catastrophic version of fifty shades of Grey has unfurled itself upon this generation. But, why so?
Being an inhabitant of a religious and spiritually acclaimed country like India, I grew up to be an aficionado, until one fine day I got my period. I was a witness to an unexpected trail of interpretations of an innocuous biological phenomenon. So much so that I as an unsullied child studied all the scriptorial references I could find in two days. I even pasted the Newspaper snippets in my journal referring to this unending contest of biology and sanctity.
It was not all bad as I subconsciously embarked upon a journey to find the truth myself.
Know that nothing hits hard like a confrontation between a child's gullibility and curiosity. Even so, the confusion continued to foster in my heart during the wet days when I was termed unworthy of praying.
This particular incident and subsequent encounters spread over time, have now led me to draw a relationship between the consecrated religious versions of reality and the kind of submission we tend to display almost immediately to it. It does us more harm than good, as individuals and as a collective breed.
Why does our sensory and rational capacity spontaneously chokes up in the name of religion?
I couldn’t stop myself from addressing this predicament using an unforced analogy.
We all need a crutch when we have tied our legs together. Religion is nowadays enthusiastic about replacing the ‘truth’ to become our most reliable friend.
We have marked the dates of our most awaited Millennial adventure. Now when we aspire to achieve as demanding a feat as climbing up Mt. K2, we all need a better crutch, a sturdier friend.
Religion is promising us that for free, all it asks us is to keep our legs tied and mouths shut, and we will hoist the flags of our supremacy.
Mt. K2 is blushing at this possibility.
One or two guys in the arena are running in front of us using their legs, they are even calling out our names but religion is refuting them. Their breed is questioned, religion says it’s the exotic mountain goat. We all look amazed at our resemblance to the *mountain goat, but we keep our senses shut for the sake of dependency and to achieve a collective solace.
The real problem occurs as we begin the climb, we know it is not working out, but we’ve already promised to shut up, and since we are too deep into the game, can’t question the friend now, for it would call upon our handicapped fall or could end up in our deaths too.
We are terrified, stuck with this wolf in the sheep’s clothing for life and so continue with our pretence.
We overlook the possibility to untie our legs and open our mouths to speak the truth, at least once, to be able to reach the magnificent peak.
So, we stay where we are, following the orders of our most reliable friend, consciously keeping our faculties of discretion muted until death do us apart.
*Mountain Goat refers to the apparent enlightened beings who see reality as it is.
