Why religion works

Many, many, many people live their life following the Quran or the Bible or the Torah or the Guru Granth Sahib or the Tao Te Ching or the Tripitaka or any of the many other books of religious teachings. But really, what is religion? Now, I'm about to be very blunt here and this isn't exactly it so please don't think I'm prejudiced against faith. Still, religion is pretty much when people agree with a God, teacher or supreme deity's views, opinions, or way of life, and follow their teachings in order to become a better person.

I think the concept of religion is very complicated. The dictionary definition of 'religion' is: "the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods." But it's a bit more than that, isn't it? It's believing that you can pray to something or someone, and they can listen, and change your life. It's believing in something that you can't see - having faith. It's hope that the person can bring more good to the world, even if it's not in your lifetime.

When do people start to believe so deeply in their religion and god(s)? For some people, it's embedded in them from a young age, and they've belonged to that religion for as long as they can remember because their family, or even just their country's culture, belongs to it too. For others, something big has to happen to them, like they hit rock bottom and their life was falling apart so they needed something or someone to guide them. Some people have out-of-body experiences, or sometimes sightings of angels or prophets or even the deity themselves. I think it's so interesting that people can swear by religion or god and truly believe that there is someone or something out there, even when they might have never seen them in their entire lives. That's why religion is often called faith: because having faith in Faith is faith itself - if that makes sense?

And I think it's great. People get healed or their lives transformed or they become smarter or blessed or lucky because they belong to a religion. It's really amazing.

I personally don't believe in any religion, though I do think there must be something out there - like a spirit or a presence, that controls how things work out. I am a strong believer that the good always wins - and I believe in karma too. If you're kind, people will be kind back. And if you're a bad person, the consequences will come back to you. Karma originates from Buddism, Sikhism and Hinduism, and they believe that Karma's not so much controlled by god, but rather that it's just a law of nature. And that's kind of where my belief that there is something out there comes from: someone has to be deciding how stuff works, and what's fair and what isn't, and good and bad.

And then there's the whole other thing about whether there is life after death and so on, which will be another post because that will be a long one, too!